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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy.
Sundberg takes this tree metaphor to a delightfully lavish extreme, tracing, say, how Indo-European linguistic roots sprouted a variety of modern-day living languages including Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Italian — and, of course, our Language of the Future.
This list only includes primary language families that are accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics; for language families that are not accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics, see the article "List of proposed language families".
Indo-European is the largest language family, followed by Sino-Tibetan, and lastly Afro-Asiatic. The Language Tree below shows languages that come from the same origin. (sorry about the quality. I’ve relabelled some popular languages) The numbers on the tree below are in millions of native speakers.
While the visualization makes all the world languages seem disparate, this linguistic family tree shows how they grew from a common root. It also explains how languages can evolve and branch out over time.
Explore the fascinating world of language trees and their historical relationships between languages. Discover the visually stunning tree created by Minna Sundberg.
A language family is a group of different languages that all descend from a particular common language. The one language that generated those other languages in its family is known as a protolanguage .
A language family, like any other family, is best thought of as a tree. The idea is that there is one single language — the trunk — that all the members of the language family grew out of. The concept of branches is also useful because usually these new languages form by splitting off from each other.
Learn about the 14 major language families, their origins and evolution, and the ancestry of historical and modern languages from around the world.
The chart below shows the relations among some of the languages in the Indo-European family. Though you wouldn’t think to look at the tangle of lines and arrows, the chart is very much simplified: many languages and even whole language families are left out. Use it, therefore, with caution.