Russia is a multinational country, and therefore multilingual. Linguistic scientists count 150 languages - a language such as Russian, which is spoken by 97.72% of the population in Russia, and the language of the Negidal-Ievs, a small people (only 622 people!), living on the Amur River, are equally taken into account here.
Some languages are very similar: people can each speak their own language and at the same time understand each other perfectly, for example, Russian - Belarusian, Tatar - Bashkir, Kalmyk - Buryat. In other languages, although they also have a lot in common - sounds, some words, grammar - it will still not be possible to come to an agreement: a Mari with a Mordovian, a Lezgin with an accident. And finally, there are languages - scientists call them isolated - that are unlike any other. These are the languages of the Kets, Nivkhs and Yukaghirs.
Most of the languages of Russia belong to one of four language families: Indo-European, Altai, Uralic and North Caucasian. Each family has a common ancestor language - a proto-language. Ancient tribes who spoke such a proto-language moved, mixed with other peoples, and once common language split into several. This is how many languages arose on Earth.
Let's say Russian belongs to the Indo-European family. In the same family - English and German, Hindi and Farsi, Ossetian and Spanish (and many, many others). Part of the family is the group of Slavic languages. Here, Czech and Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, etc. coexist with Russian. And together with closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian, it is included in the subgroup of East Slavic languages. Indo-European languages are spoken in Russia by more than 87% of the population, but only 2% of them are not Slavic. These are Germanic languages: German and Yiddish (see the story “Jews in Russia”); Armenian (one makes up a group); Iranian languages: Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish and Tajik; Romance: Moldavian; and even modern Indian languages spoken by gypsies in Russia.
The Altai family in Russia is represented by three groups: Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu. There are only two peoples who speak Mongolian languages - Kalmyks and Buryats, but just the enumeration of Turkic languages may surprise you. These are Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, Kumyk, Altai, Khakass, Shor, Tuvan, Tofalar, Yakut, Dolgan, Azerbaijani, etc. Most of these peoples live in Russia. Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, and Uzbeks also live in our country. The Tungus-Manchu languages include Evenki, Even, Negidal, Nanai, Oroch, Orok, Udege and Ulch.
Sometimes the question arises: where is a separate language, and where are only dialects of the same language? For example, many linguists in Kazan believe that Bashkir is a dialect of Tatar, and the same number of specialists in Ufa are convinced that these two are completely independent language. Such disputes occur not only regarding Tatar and Bashkir.
The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept "Finnish" is conditional - in this case it does not mean official language Finland. It’s just that the languages included in this group have related grammars and similar sounds, especially if you don’t parse the words and listen only to the melody. Finnish languages are spoken by Karelians, Vepsians, Izhorians, Vods, Komi, Maris, Mordovians, Udmurts, and Sami. There are two Ugric languages in Russia: Khanty and Mansi (and the third Ugric is spoken by Hungarians). The Samoyed languages are spoken by the Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups. The Yukaghir language is genetically close to Uralic. These peoples are very small in number, and their languages cannot be heard outside the north of Russia.
The North Caucasian family is a rather arbitrary concept. Unless specialist linguists understand the ancient kinship of the languages of the Caucasus. These languages have very complex grammar and extremely difficult phonetics. They contain sounds that are completely inaccessible to people who speak other dialects.
Experts divide the North Caucasian languages into Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Vainakhs speak Nakh languages, which are mutually understandable - this is the common name for the Chechens and Ingush. (The group received its name from the self-name of the Chechens - Nakhchi.)
Representatives of approximately 30 nations live in Dagestan. “Approximately” - because not all the languages of these peoples have been studied, and very often people determine their nationality precisely by language.
The Dagestan languages include Avar, Andi, Iez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshin, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Ru-Tul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list even half. It’s not for nothing that this republic was called the “mountain of languages.” And a “paradise for linguists”: the field of activity for them here is vast.
Abkhaz-Adyghe languages are spoken by related peoples. In Adyghe - Kabardians, Adygeans, Circassians, Shapsugs; in Abkhazian - Abkhazians and Abazins. But not everything is so simple in this classification. Kabardians, Adyghe, Circassians and Shapsugs consider themselves a single people - Adyghe - with one language, Adyghe, and official sources call four Adyghe peoples.
In Russia there are languages that are not included in any of the four families. These are primarily the languages of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. All of them are few in number. The Chukchi, Koryak and Itelmen languages speak the Chukchi-Kamchatka languages; in Eskimo-Aleutian - Eskimos and Aleuts. The languages of the Kets on the Yenisei and the Nivkhs on Sakhalin and Amur are not included in any language family.
There are many languages, and in order for people to agree, they need a common one. In Russia it became Russian, because Russians are the most numerous people country and they live in all its corners. It is the language of great literature, science and international communication.
Languages, of course, are equal, but even the richest country cannot publish, for example, books on all issues in the language of several hundred people. Or even several tens of thousands. In a language that is spoken by millions, this is feasible.
Many peoples of Russia have lost or are losing their languages, especially representatives of small nations. Yes, almost forgotten native language Chu-lymys are a small Turkic-speaking people in Siberia. The list, unfortunately, is long. In Russian cities, Russian is becoming the common language for the multinational population. And most often the only one. However, in Lately taking care of own languages in large centers national cultural and educational societies took over. They usually organize Sunday schools for children.
Most languages of Russia before the 20s. XX century had no writing. Georgians, Armenians, and Jews had their own alphabet. Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Finns wrote in the Latin alphabet (Latin alphabet). Some languages are still unwritten.
The first attempts to create a written language for the peoples of Russia were made even before the revolution, but they began to take this seriously in the 20s: they reformed the Arabic script, adapting it to the phonetics of the Turkic languages. It did not apply to the languages of the Caucasian peoples. They developed a Latin alphabet, but there were not enough letters to accurately designate sounds in the languages of small nations. From 1936 to 1941, the languages of the peoples of Russia (and the USSR) were translated into Slavic alphabet(except for those that had their own, which were also ancient), they added superscript marks, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and combinations of letters that were strange to the Russian eye like “ь” and “ь” after vowels. It was believed that a single alphabet helped to better master the Russian language. Recently, some languages have begun to use the Latin alphabet again. (For a detailed classification, see the volume “Linguistics. Russian Language” of the “Encyclopedia for Children”.)
Languages of the peoples of Russia
1. Indo-European languages
o Slavic (namely East Slavic) - Russian (about 120 million speakers according to the 1989 census)
o Germanic languages - Yiddish (Jewish)
o Iranian languages - Ossetian, Talysh, Tat (the language of the Tats and Mountain Jews)
o Indo-Aryan languages - Romani
2. Uralic languages
o Finno-Ugric languages
§ Mari
§ Sami
§ Mordovian languages - Moksha, Erzya
§ Ob-Ugric languages - Mansi, Khanty
§ Permian languages - Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt
§ Baltic-Finnish - Vepsian, Votic, Izhorian, Karelian
o Samoyed languages - Nganasan, Nenets, Selkup, Enets
3. Turkic languages- Altai, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Tofalar, Tuvan, Khakass, Chuvash, Shor, Yakut
4. Tungus-Manchu languages- Nanai, Negidal, Orok, Oroch, Udege, Ulch, Evenki, Even
5. Mongolian languages- Buryat, Kalmyk
6. Yenisei languages- Ket
7. Chukotka-Kamchatka languages- Alyutor, Itelmen, Kerek, Koryak, Chukchi
8. Eskimo-Aleut languages- Aleutian, Eskimo
9. Yukaghir language
10. Nivkh language
11. North Caucasian languages
o Abkhaz-Adyghe languages - Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian
o Nakh-Dagetan languages
§ Nakh languages - Batsbi, Ingush, Chechen
§ Dagestan languages
§ Avar
§ Andean languages - Andean, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kwanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin
§ Dargin
§ Laksky
§ Lezgin languages - Agul, Archin, Budukh, Kryz, Lezgin, Rutul, Tabasaran, Udi, Khinalug, Tsakhur
§ Tsuz languages - Bezhitinsky (Bezhitinsky, or Kapuchensky), Ginukhsky, Gunzibsky (Gunzalsky, Khunzalsky, Nakhadinsky), Khvarshinsky, Tsezsky
There are many speakers of languages from other countries living in Russia, including those that were part of the USSR. These languages include Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Armenian, Azerbaijani, as well as German, Bulgarian, Finnish, etc.
language families of the world
The following classifications (+maps) are based on Merritt Ruhlen's book " Guide to the languages of the world" (A Guide to the World's Languages), published by Stanford University Press in 1987), which in turn relies heavily on the work of the great linguist Joseph Greenberg, who died on May 7, 2001. Maps and statistics are only an approximation of reality. Mistakes are allowed.
Khoisan family
There are about 30 languages in this family, spoken by about 100,000 people. The Khoisan family includes the peoples we call Bushmen and Hottentots.
Niger-Kordofanian family
The largest sub-Saharan African family of languages, it includes 1,000 languages with up to 200 million speakers. The most famous languages are Mandinka, Yoruba and Zulu.
Nilo-Saharan family
This family is approx. 140 languages and 10 million native speakers. The most famous language: Maasai, spoken by the warlike nomads of East Africa.
Afro-Asian family
This is a big language group, which includes 240 languages spoken by 250 million speakers. It includes: ancient Egyptian and Aramaic, as well as the famous Nigerian language Hausa. Some speak ok. 200 million people!
Indo-European family (including isolates: Basque, Burushaski and Nakhali)
The only major language family, Indo-European, which includes ca. 150 languages with 1 billion native speakers. Among the languages of this family: Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), (100 million), Russian ( 300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and America. The number of English speakers around the world may reach 1 billion.
In the region of distribution of this family of languages, there are 3 isolates that cannot be attributed to any family: those living in the territory between France and Spain, Burushaski and impudent that are located on the Indian Peninsula.
Caucasian family
There are 38 in total; they are spoken by approximately 5 million people. The most famous: Abkhazian and Chechen.
Kartvelian languages are considered by many linguists as a separate family, possibly related to the Indo-European family. This includes the Georgian language.
Dravidian family
These are ancient languages India, total ok. 25, number of speakers 150 million people. The most famous of the languages of this family are Telugu and Telugu.
Ural-Yukaghir family
This family includes 20 languages with 20 million speakers. The most famous languages are: Estonian, Hungarian, Sami - the language of the Laplanders.
Altaic family (including Ket and Gilat isolates)
The Altai family includes about 60 languages, spoken by about 250 million people. Mongolian languages also belong to this family.
There is a lot of discussion going on regarding this family. First controversial issue: How to classify Altaic and Uralic languages (see above), since they have a similar grammatical structure.
The second controversial issue: many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included in this family, or even that these three languages are related to each other!
Isolates are also presented here: Ket and Gilyak languages.
Chukchi-Kamchatka family ("Paleo-Siberian") family
Perhaps this is the smallest family, with only 5 languages spoken by 23,000 speakers. The distribution area of these languages is the northeastern part of Siberia. Many linguists believe that these are two different families.
Sino-Tibetan family
A very significant language family, which includes about 250 languages. Only 1 billion people speak!
Miao-Yao languages, Austro-Asiatic and Dai family
Austro-Asiatic (Munda languages in India and Mon-Khmer languages in southeast Asia) includes 150 languages spoken by 60 million people, including Vietnamese.
The Miao-Yao family of languages consists of 4 languages spoken by 7 million people living in southern China and Southeast Asia.
There are 60 languages and 50 million speakers in the Dai family, which includes the Thai language (Siamese).
These three language families are sometimes combined with the Austronesian family (below) into a hyperfamily called Austrian ( Austrian). On the other hand, some linguists consider the Miao-Yao and Dai families to be related to the Chinese languages.
Austronesian family
This family includes 1,000 different languages spoken by 250 million people. Malay and Indonesian (essentially the same language) are spoken by approx. 140 million Other languages in this family include: Madagascar in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of Formosa Island (Taiwan) - now almost replaced by Chinese - and many languages of the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the North Pacific to Maori in New Zealand.
Indian-Pacific and Australian families
The Indian-Pacific family includes approx. 700 languages, most of them spoken on the island New Guinea, the number of speakers of these languages is approximately 3 million. Many linguists do not believe that all these languages are related to each other. In fact, some of them haven't even been studied! On the other hand, some believe that this family may also include the Tasmanian language - now extinct.
It is possible that the 170 Australian Aboriginal languages also belong to this family. Unfortunately, only 30,000 speakers of these languages remain today.
Eskimo-Aleut family
The Eskimo-Aleut family of languages consists of 9 languages spoken approx. 85,000 people. The Inuit language plays a key role today in administration in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and the Canadian territory of Nunavut.
Na-Dene family of languages
This family includes 34 languages with approx. 200,000 people. The most famous examples are Tlingit, Haida, Navajo and Apache.
Amerind family (North America)
Although many linguists do not accept the idea of combining all Northern (except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages) and South American Indian languages into one family, they are often combined for convenience. The Amerindian family includes almost 600 languages spoken by more than 20 million people. In North America, the most famous languages are: Ojibwe, Cree, Dakota (or Sioux), Cherokee and Iroquois, Hopi and Nahuatl (or Aztec), as well as the Mayan languages.
Amerind family (South America)
Language card South America includes some of the North American subfamilies and others. The most famous languages are Quechua (the language of the Inca Indians), Guarani and Caribbean. The Andean subfamily of languages (which includes Quechua) has almost 9 million speakers!
The development of languages can be compared to the process of reproduction of living organisms. In past centuries, their number was much smaller than today; there were so-called “proto-languages”, which were the ancestors of our modern speech. They broke up into many dialects, which were distributed throughout the planet, changing and improving. Thus, various language groups were formed, each of which descended from one “parent”. Based on this criterion, such groups are classified into families, which we will now list and briefly consider.
The largest family in the world
As you might have guessed, the Indo-European language group (more accurately, it is a family) consists of many subgroups that are spoken throughout much of the world. Its distribution area is the Middle East, Russia, all of Europe, as well as the countries of America that were colonized by the Spaniards and the British. Indo-European languages are divided into three categories:
Native speeches
Slavic language groups are very similar in both sound and phonetics. They all appeared at about the same time - in the 10th century, when the Old Church Slavonic language, invented by the Greeks - Cyril and Methodius - for writing the Bible, ceased to exist. In the 10th century, this language split, so to speak, into three branches, among which were the eastern, western and southern. The first of them included the Russian language (Western Russian, Nizhny Novgorod, Old Russian and many other dialects), Ukrainian, Belarusian and Rusyn. The second branch included Polish, Slovak, Czech, Slovinian, Kashubian and other dialects. The third branch is represented by Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Slovenian. These languages are common only in those countries where they are official, and Russian is the international one.
Sino-Tibetan family
This is the second largest language family, which covers the entire area of South and Southeast Asia. The main “protolanguage,” as you guessed, is Tibetan. All who come from him follow him. These are Chinese, Thai, Malay. Also language groups belonging to the Burmese regions, Bai language, Dungan and many others. Officially, there are about 300 of them. However, if you take into account adverbs, the number will be much higher.
Niger-Congo family
The linguistic groups of the peoples of Africa have a special phonetic system, and, of course, a special sound, unusual for us. Characteristic feature grammar here is the presence of nominal classes, which is not found in any Indo-European branch. Indigenous African languages are still spoken by people from the Sahara to the Kalahari. Some of them “assimilated” into English or French, some remained original. Among the main languages that can be found in Africa, we highlight the following: Rwanda, Makua, Shona, Rundi, Malawi, Zulu, Luba, Xhosa, Ibibio, Tsonga, Kikuyu and many others.
Afroasiatic or Semito-Hamitic family
There are language groups spoken in North Africa and the Middle East. It also still includes many of the dead languages of these peoples, such as Coptic. Of the currently existing dialects that have Semitic or Hamitic roots, the following can be named: Arabic (the most widespread in the territory), Amharic, Hebrew, Tigrinya, Assyrian, Maltese. Also often included here are the Chadic and Berber languages, which are essentially spoken in Central Africa.
Japanese-Ryukyuan family
It is clear that the distribution area of these languages is Japan itself and the adjacent Ryukyu Island. Until now, we have not finally figured out from which proto-language all those dialects that are now used by the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun originated. There is a version that this language originated in Altai, from where it spread, along with its inhabitants, to the Japanese islands, and then to America (the Indians had very similar dialects). There is also an assumption that the birthplace of the Japanese language is China.
Consider the origin of languages: at one time the number of languages was small. These were the so-called “proto-languages”. Over time, proto-languages began to spread across the Earth, each of them becoming the ancestor of its own language family. The language family is the most large unit classification of language (peoples and ethnic groups) based on their linguistic relationship.
Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages of the same language group retain many common roots, have similar grammatical structure, phonetic and lexical similarities. There are now more than 7,000 languages from more than 100 language families of languages.
Linguists have identified more than one hundred major language families of languages.
| Language family | Number languages |
Total carriers language |
% from the population Earth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indo-European | > 400 languages | 2 500 000 000 | 45,72 |
| Sino-Tibetan | ~300 languages | 1 200 000 000 | 21,95 |
| Altai | 60 | 380 000 000 | 6,95 |
| Austronesian | > 1000 languages | 300 000 000 | 5,48 |
| Austroasiatic | 150 | 261 000 000 | 4,77 |
| Afroasiatic | 253 000 000 | 4,63 | |
| Dravidian | 85 | 200 000 000 | 3,66 |
| Japanese (Japanese-Ryukyus) | 4 | 141 000 000 | 2,58 |
| Korean | 78 000 000 | 1,42 | |
| Tai-kadai | 63 000 000 | 1,15 | |
| Ural | 24 000 000 | 0,44 | |
| Others | 28 100 000 | 0,5 |
As can be seen from the list, ~45% of the world's population speaks languages of the Indo-European family of languages.
Language groups of languages.
Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages of the same language group have many similarities in word roots, grammatical structure and phonetics. There is also a smaller division of groups into subgroups.
The Indo-European family of languages is the most widespread language family in the world. The number of speakers of languages of the Indo-European family exceeds 2.5 billion people who live on all inhabited continents of the Earth. The languages of the Indo-European family arose as a result of the consistent collapse of the Indo-European proto-language, which began about 6 thousand years ago. Thus, all languages of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European family includes 16 groups, including 3 dead groups. Each group of languages can be divided into subgroups and languages. The table below does not indicate smaller divisions into subgroups, and there are also no dead languages and groups.
| Indo-European family of languages | |
|---|---|
| Language groups | Incoming languages |
| Armenian | Armenian language (Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian) |
| Baltic | Latvian, Lithuanian |
| German | Frisian languages (West Frisian, East Frisian, North Frisian languages), English language, Scots (English-Scots), Dutch, Low German, German , Hebrew language (Yiddish), Icelandic language, Faroese language, Danish language, Norwegian language (Landsmål, Bokmål, Nynorsk), Swedish language (Swedish dialect in Finland, Skåne dialect), Gutnian |
| Greek | Modern Greek, Tsakonian, Italo-Romanian |
| Dardskaya | Glangali, Kalasha, Kashmiri, Kho, Kohistani, Pashai, Phalura, Torvali, Sheena, Shumashti |
| Illyrian | Albanian |
| Indo-Aryan | Sinhala, Maldivian, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Oriya language, Bihari languages, Punjabi, Lahnda, Gujuri, Dogri |
| Iranian | Ossetian language, Yaghnobi language, Saka languages, Pashto language Pamir languages, Balochi language, Talysh language, Bakhtiyar language, Kurdish language, Caspian dialects, Central Iranian dialects, Zazaki (Zaza language, Dimli), Gorani (Gurani), Persian language (Farsi) ), Hazara language, Tajik language, Tati language |
| Celtic | Irish (Irish Gaelic), Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic), Manx, Welsh, Breton, Cornish |
| Nuristan | Kati (kamkata-viri), Ashkun (ashkunu), Vaigali (kalasha-ala), Tregami (gambiri), Prasun (wasi-vari) |
| Romanskaya | Aromunian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Romanian, Moldavian, French, Norman, Catalan, Provençal, Piedmontese, Ligurian (modern), Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol, Venetian, Istro-Roman, Italian, Corsican, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Sardinian, Aragonese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Galician, Portuguese, Miranda, Ladino, Romansh, Friulian, Ladin |
| Slavic | Bulgarian language, Macedonian language, Church Slavonic language, Slovenian language, Serbo-Croatian language (Shtokavian), Serbian language (Ekavian and Iekavian), Montenegrin language (Iekavian), Bosnian language, Croatian language (Jekavian), Kajkavian dialect, Molise-Croatian, Gradishchan-Croatian, Kashubian, Polish, Silesian, Lusatian subgroup (Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, Slovak, Czech, Russian language, Ukrainian language, Polesie microlanguage, Rusyn language, Yugoslav-Rusyn language, Belarusian language |
The classification of languages explains the reason for the difficulty of learning foreign languages. To the carrier Slavic language, which belong to the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages, it is easier to learn a language of the Slavic group than a language of another group of the Indo-European family, such as the Romance languages (French) or the Germanic group of languages (English). It is even more difficult to learn a language from another language family, for example Chinese, which is not part of the Indo-European family, but belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
Choosing foreign language to study, they are guided by the practical, and more often the economic, side of the matter. To get a well-paid job, people choose first of all such popular languages as English or German.
VoxBook audio course will help you learn English
Additional materials on language families.
Below are the main language families and the languages included in them. The Indo-European language family is discussed above.
Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) language family.
Sino-Tibetan is one of the largest language families in the world. Includes more than 350 languages spoken by more than 1200 million people. Sino-Tibetan languages are divided into 2 groups, Chinese and Tibeto-Burman.
● The Chinese group is formed by Chinese and its numerous dialects, the number of native speakers is more than 1050 million people. Distributed in China and beyond. And Min languages with more than 70 million native speakers.
● The Tibeto-Burman group includes about 350 languages, with a number of speakers of about 60 million people. Distributed in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, southwestern China and northeastern India. Main languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers), Tibetan (more than 5 million), Karen languages (more than 3 million), Manipuri (more than 1 million) and others.
The Altai (hypothetical) language family includes the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu language groups. sometimes include the Korean and Japanese-Ryukyuan language groups.
● Turkic language group - widespread in Asia and Eastern Europe. The number of speakers is more than 167.4 million people. They are divided into the following subgroups:
・ Bulgar subgroup: Chuvash (dead - Bulgar, Khazar).
・ Oguz subgroup: Turkmen, Gagauz, Turkish, Azerbaijani (dead - Oguz, Pecheneg).
・ Kypchak subgroup: Tatar, Bashkir, Karaite, Kumyk, Nogai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altai, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar. (dead - Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Golden Horde).
・ Karluk subgroup: Uzbek, Uyghur.
・ Eastern Hunnic subgroup: Yakut, Tuvan, Khakass, Shor, Karagas. (dead - Orkhon, ancient Uyghur.)
● The Mongolian language group includes several closely related languages of Mongolia, China, Russia and Afghanistan. Includes modern Mongolian (5.7 million people), Khalkha-Mongolian (Khalkha), Buryat, Khamnigan, Kalmyk, Oirat, Shira-Yugur, Mongorian, Baoan-Dongxiang cluster, Mogul language - Afghanistan, Dagur (Dakhur) languages.
● Tungus-Manchu language group related languages in Siberia (including Far East), Mongolia and northern China. The number of carriers is 40 - 120 thousand people. Includes two subgroups:
・ Tungus subgroup: Evenki, Evenki (Lamut), Negidal, Nanai, Udean, Ulch, Oroch, Udege.
・ Manchu subgroup: Manchu.
Languages of the Austronesian language family are distributed in Taiwan, Indonesia, Java-Sumatra, Brunei, Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, Oceania, Kalimantan and Madagascar. This is one of largest families(the number of languages is over 1000, the number of speakers is over 300 million people). Divided into the following groups:
● Western Austronesian languages
● languages of eastern Indonesia
● Oceanian languages
Afroasiatic (or Semitic-Hamitic) language family.
● Semitic group
・Northern subgroup: Aisorian.
・ Southern group: Arabic; Amharic, etc.
・ dead: Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew (Hebrew).
・ Hebrew (the official language of Israel has been revived).
● Cushitic group: Galla, Somalia, Beja.
● Berber group: Tuareg, Kabyle, etc.
● Chadian group: Hausa, Gwandarai, etc.
● Egyptian group (dead): Ancient Egyptian, Coptic.
Includes the languages of the pre-Indo-European population of the Hindustan Peninsula:
● Dravidian group: Tamil, Malalayam, Kannara.
● Andhra Group: Telugu.
● Central Indian group: Gondi.
● Brahui language (Pakistan).
The Japanese-Ryukyu (Japanese) family of languages are common in the Japanese archipelago and the Ryukyu Islands. Japanese is an isolated language that is sometimes classified in the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・ Japanese and dialects.
The Korean language family is represented by one single language - Korean. Korean is an isolated language that is sometimes classified in the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・Japanese language and dialects.
・Ryukyuan languages (Amami-Okinawa, Sakishima and Yonagun language).
Tai-Kadai (Thai-Kadai, Dong-Tai, Paratai) family of languages, distributed on the Indochina Peninsula and in adjacent areas of Southern China.
●Li languages (Hlai (Li) and Jiamao) Thai languages
・northern subgroup: northern dialects of the Zhuang language, Bui, Sek.
・central subgroup: Tai (Tho), Nung, southern dialects of the Zhuang language.
・Southwestern subgroup: Thai (Siamese), Laotian, Shan, Khamti, Ahom language, languages of black and white Tai, Yuan, Ly, Kheung.
●Dun-Shui languages: dun, shui, mak, then.
●Be
●Kadai languages: Lakua, Lati, Gelao languages (northern and southern).
●Li languages (Hlai (Li) and Jiamao)
The Uralic language family includes two groups - Finno-Ugric and Samoyed.
●Finno-Ugric group:
・Baltic-Finnish subgroup: Finnish, Izhorian, Karelian, Vepsian languages, Estonian, Votic, Livonian languages.
・Volga subgroup: Mordovian language, Mari language.
・Perm subgroup: Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Yazva languages.
・Ugric subgroup: Khanty and Mansi, as well as Hungarian languages.
・Sami subgroup: languages spoken by the Sami.
●The Samoyedic languages are traditionally divided into 2 subgroups:
・northern subgroup: Nenets, Nganasan, Enets languages.
・southern subgroup: Selkup language.
There are about 3,000 languages all over the world; no one has yet been able to calculate the exact number. Although, according to available UNESCO data, there are 2,796 languages in the world. Seeing the exact figure, any linguist will smile, not because the exact number of languages in the world was counted, but from what was counted. All over the world there are many mixed languages and languages that are extinct or languages of small tribes that are not officially listed anywhere. In this regard, it is practically impossible to calculate the exact number of languages. But linguists managed to distribute all the languages of the world into groups or families.
Many different languages are similar to each other, for example, a citizen of Russia can communicate with a citizen of Belarus and Ukraine, or vice versa, and everyone will be able to understand each other. Basically, the languages of those peoples whose lands border each other or by the ethnic origin of the countries are similar. As we know, 1000 years ago, in the territory where Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are now located, there were lands Kievan Rus. And the ancestors of the above countries communicated in the same Old Church Slavonic language. Until our time, the borders have changed, and in place of Kievan Rus, three new states grew up: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Map of the distribution of languages of Ukraine
Chinese dialect map
Indigenous languages of South America
Arabic dialects
Dialects of the Russian language
Map of African languages
German dialect map
Map of Finno-Ugric languages
Map of Slavic languages
Map of Indian languages
Families and groups of languages
Currently, linguists distinguish the following families and groups of languages:
- Indian group. This is the largest group in terms of number talking people, as Indian languages are spoken by more than 1 billion people. This group includes the languages of Central and Northern India, as well as Pakistan. You can also include the gypsies who moved to Europe from India in the 5th - 10th centuries into this group. n. e. Of the extinct languages, this group includes the ancient Indian language - Sanskrit. The famous epic poem was written in this language ancient india"Mahabharata"
- Iranian group. The languages of this group are spoken in Iran (Persian) and Afghanistan (Afghan). In this group there is a dead Scythian language.
- Slavic group . This includes a large number of different languages, which are usually further divided into subgroups.
- eastern subgroup; Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages
- Western subgroup; Polish, Slovak, Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian and Polabian which is a dead language
- southern subgroup; Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic which is also a dead language
- Baltic group. This group speaks Latvian and Lithuanian.
- German group. Almost all languages belong to this group Western Europe; Scandinavian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic), English, German, Dutch and modern Jewish Yiddish. Among all the above languages, the most widespread in this group is English language it is spoken by more than 400 million people. USA - 215 million, UK 58 million, Canada 33.5 million, Australia - 20 million, Ireland - 4 million, South Africa - 4 million, New Zealand 3.6 million. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Regarding the Yiddish language, we can say that almost all Jews speak it. One of the languages of the Germanic group, Boer, is widespread in South Africa thanks to immigrants from Holland.
- Roman group. French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese languages. This group also includes Provençal, Sardinian (island of Sardinia), Catalan (Eastern Spain) and Moldavian.
- Celtic group. The languages of this group are spoken in Ireland and on the nearby islands, as well as on the Brittany peninsula of France (Breton language), in Wales (Welsh language). The dead languages of this group include the language of the ancient Gauls, who lived on the territory of modern France.
In addition to the above groups, Greek, Albanian and Armenian languages are separately distinguished, which are classified as Indo-European languages. Also included in this group are such dead languages as Hittite (Asia Minor) and Tocharian (the territory of Central Asia).
