Language Families and the Growth of Languages

English comes from the world's largest language family (collection of related languages - older than written history)

Language family is the largest grouping
Language branch (part of a family - a collection of languages with a common ancestral language) can also be referred to as a sub-family
Language group (collection of languages with a recent connection)
Some languages develop on their own, unrelated to any families, these are known as isolated languages (Basque)

Indo-European (the largest and most widespread language family)
Sino-Tibetan (located in China and Southeast Asia - includes Mandarin, which is the world's most spoken native language - Chinese languages are based on logograms)
Afro-Asiatic (located in Southwest Asia and North Africa - includes Arabic and Hebrew)
Niger-Congo (located in sub-Saharan Africa - includes Swahili)
Austronesian (located in Southeast Asia - includes Javanese and the other languages of Indonesia)
Dravidian (located in South Asia - mainly southern India and SriLanka - includes Tamil)
Altaic (located in Central Asia - includes Turkish)
Japanese (includes both phonetic and logogram, which are symbols that represent words)
Tai-Kadai (located in Thailand and China - closely linked to Austronesian)
Austro-Asiatic (located in Southeast Asia - includes Finnish)
Nilo-Saharan (located in north central Africa - includes Nubian)

Indo-Iranian (Southwest and South Asia - includes Hindi and Farsi)
Romance (Southwest Europe and Latin America - includes Spanish, French, Italian)
Germanic (Northwestern Europe and North America - includes English, German, Swedish)
Balto-Slavic (Eastern Europe - includes Russian and Polish)
Albanian
Armenian
Greek
Celtic

Select each tab to view more information about each language family.

The languages of the modern world have contributed to language divergence through relocation diffusion

You can tell which language was or is the most powerful by the toponyms (names of cities or important landmarks)

It is believed the Indo-European languages all came from Proto-Indo-European (a pre-historic language family also known as Nostriatic)

Conquest Theory (Kurgan Theory) - from the Kurgan hearth in the steppe region of Central Asia, this group moved conquering areas in their path
Agricultural Migration Theory (Renfrew Hypothesis) - from the Anatolian hearth in Turkey, these people migrated trading their agricultural goods

Indo-European expansion 4000-1000 BC, according to the Kurgan hypothesis.

Indo-European expansion 4000 to 1000 BC, according to the Kurgan hypothesis

When people acculturate they face language replacement, but when a person or group learns a simplified version of the language it is known as pidgin (a basic or rudimentary form of a language)

In some cases, entirely new languages were formed when groups from various locations came together, this is known as a creole language (the most famous example is Creole - a blending of French, Native American languages and African languages - notice that the Creole language has a capital "C")
Early simplified communications created the necessity of trade languages

When the assimilated people give up their language totally they have experienced language extinction (for example, languages from the eastern Germanic group)

There are currently endangered languages such as Celtic and Welsh (original to the UK isles)
Hebrew and Native American languages are being actively revived

View the video below to learn more. To make the video full screen, select the double arrows at the bottom right corner of the object.

IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS (Images are available in the Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons License Attribution)