Dr. C. George Boeree
The Khoisan Family
languages with about 100,000 speakers, the
family includes the people we call the Bushmen and the Hottentots.
The Niger-Kordofanian Family
sub-Saharan African family of languages,
includes some 1,000 languages with close to 200 million speakers.
known are Mandinka, Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu.
The Nilo-Saharan Family
140 languages and 10 million
best known of these languages is Maasai, spoken by the tall
of east Africa.
The Afro-Asiatic Family
This is a
major language group, with 240 languages
250 million speakers. It includes ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and
as well as the great Nigerian language Hausa. The many dialects of
alone are spoken by as many as 200 million people.
The Indo-European Family
(with the isolates Basque, Burushaski, and Nahali)
The single largest language family, Indo-European has about 150 languages and about three billion speakers. Languages include Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), German (100 million), Russian (300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and the Americas. With English, one can reach approximately one billion people in the world.
three language isolates represented on
map, unrelated to any of the language families: Basque thrives
France and Spain. Burushaski and Nahali are found in the Indian
The Caucasian Family
There are 38 Caucasian languages between Russian and the Middle East, with about five million speakers. Abkhasian and Chechenian are the most familiar.
Kartvelian languages are considered by many
to be a separate family, possibly related to Indo-European. Its
example is Georgian.
The Dravidian Family
the "old" languages of India, with about
representaties and 150 million speakers. Best known are Tamil and
The Uralic-Yukaghir Family
about 20 languages with 20 million
in this family. Best known are Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and
the language of the Lapplanders.
The Altaic Family
(with the isolates Ket and Gilyak)
There are about 60 langauges in the Altaic family, with about 250 million speakers. Included are Turkish and Mongolian.
considerable controversy about this
First, it is often classified with the Uralic languages (see above),
have a similar grammatic structures.
Second, many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included, or that these last three are even related to each other!
represented here are the language isolates
The Chukchi-Kamchatkan ("Paleosiberian") Family
smallest family, this one includes 5
with 23,000 speakers in the farthest northeastern reaches of Siberia.
Many linguists consider these two unrelated families.
The Sino-Tibetan Family
important language family, it includes some
languages. Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) alone is spoken by one
The Miao-Yao, Austro-Asiatic, and Daic Families
(Munda in India and Mon-Khmer in
Asia) has 150 languages and 60 million speakers, including
consists of four langauges with seven million speakers,
all over southern China and southeast Asia generally.
Daic has some 60 languages with 50 million speakers, especially Thai (Siamese).
language families are sometimes grouped
the Austronesian family (below) into a "superfamily" called
the other hand, some linguists consider Miao-Yao and Daic relatives of
The Austronesian Family
includes some 1000 different languages,
by about 250 million speakers. Malay and Indonesian (essentially
language) account for about 140 million. Other examples include
in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of
(Taiwan) -- now almost displaced by Chinese -- and the many languages
the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the north Pacific to Maori in New
The Indo-Pacific and Australian Families
There are about 700 languages in the Indo-Pacific family, most of them in the island of New Guinea, with about 3 million speakers. Many linguists are not at all convinced that all these languages are related. In fact, a number of them have yet to be studied! On the other hand, some believe that the family may include Tasmanian, now extinct.
related are the 170 languages of the
aborigines. Sadly, there are only about 30,000 native speakers
The Eskimo-Aleut Family
Eskimo-Aleut family consists of nine languages,
by about 85,000 people. The Inuit today play an important role in
the governing of
Nunaat) and the Canadian territory of Nunavut.
The Na-Dene Family
includes 34 languages spoken by about
people. Best known examples are Tlingit, Haida, Navaho, and
The Amerind Family (North America)
many linguists do not accept the idea that
North and South American Indian languages (other than the Na-Dene and
can be classified into one family, it is often accepted for convenience
sake. Amerind includes nearly 600 languages, with more than 20
speakers. In North America, some of the best known names are
Cree, Dakota (or Sioux), Cherokee and Iroquois, Hopi and Nahuatl (or
and the Mayan languages.
The Amerind Family (South America)
map of South America includes some of
North American sub-families, and adds a few more. Well known
include Quechua (Inca), Guarani, and Carib. The Andean language
(which includes Quechua) numbers nearly nine million speakers!
Posted on July 15, 2000; revisions posted Nov. 25, 2003