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This List of language families also includes language isolates, unclassified languages and other types of languages.
Contents
By number of languages
Ethnologue 18 lists the following language families as containing at least 1% of the 7,472 known languages in the world:
- Niger–Congo (1,538 languages) (20.6%)
- Austronesian (1,257 languages) (16.8%)
- Trans–New Guinea (480 languages) (6.4%)
- Sino-Tibetan (457 languages) (6.1%)
- Indo-European (444 languages) (5.9%)
- Australian (378 languages) (5.1%)
- Afro-Asiatic (375 languages) (5.0%)
- Nilo-Saharan (205 languages) (2.7%)
- Oto-Manguean (177 languages) (2.4%)
- Austroasiatic (169 languages) (2.3%)
- Volta Congo (108 languages) (1.5%)
- Tai–Kadai (95 languages) (1.3%)
- Dravidian (85 languages) (1.1%)
- Tupian (76 languages) (1.0%)
Glottolog 2.4 lists the following as the largest families:
- Niger–Congo (1,544 languages)
- Austronesian (1,276 languages)
- Indo-European (585 languages)
- Sino-Tibetan (472 languages)
- Atlantic–Congo (432 languages)
- Afro-Asiatic (372 languages)
- Nuclear Trans–New Guinea (315 languages)
- Pama–Nyungan (240 languages)
- Otomanguean (178 languages)
- Austroasiatic (164 languages)
- Tai–Kadai (96 languages)
- Dravidian (81 languages)
- Arawakan (76 languages)
- Mande (74 languages)
- Tupian (71 languages)
Language counts can vary significantly depending on what is considered a dialect. For example, Lyle Campbell counts 27 Otomanguean languages, though he, Ethnologue, and Glottolog disagree as to which languages belong in the family.
Language families
In the following, each bullet item is a known or suspected language family. Phyla with historically wide geographical distributions but comparatively few current-day speakers include Eskimo–Aleut, Na-Dené, Algic, Quechuan and Nilo-Saharan. The geographic headings over them are meant solely as a tool for grouping families into collections more comprehensible than an unstructured list of a few hundred independent families. Geographic relationship is convenient for that purpose, but these headings are not a suggestion of any "super-families" phylogenetically relating the families named. The number of individual languages in a family and number of speakers are only rough estimates. See dialect or language and linguistic demography for further explanation.
Unclassified languages
Languages are considered unclassified either because, for one reason or another, little effort has been made to compare them with other languages, or, more commonly, because they are too poorly documented to permit reliable classification. Most such languages are extinct and most likely will never be known well enough to classify.
Europe
Africa
Asia
New Guinea
South America
Extinct families and unclassified languages
This section lists extinct languages and families which have no known living relatives. While a minority are well-known but are still classified as genetically independent (like the ancient Sumerian language), the lack of attestation makes many languages hard to put into larger groups.
Other language classifications
The classification of languages into families assumes that all languages develop from a single parent proto-language and evolve over time into different daughter language(s). While the vast majority of languages fit this description fairly well, there are exceptions.
A mixed language often refers to a particular combination of existing languages, which may be from different genetic families. A pidgin is a simple language used for communication between groups. This may involve simplification and/or mixing of multiple languages. When a pidgin develops into a more stable language which children learn from birth, it is usually called a creole language.
Whether for ease of use or created for use in fiction, languages can also be constructed from the ground up, rather than develop from existing languages. These are known as constructed languages.
Sign languages
The family relationships of sign languages are not well established due to a lagging in linguistic research, and many are isolates (cf. Wittmann 1991).
Beyond these language families exists many isolate languages, including:
Proposed families
A list of proposed language families which connect established families into larger genetic groups. The support for these proposals varies. The Dené–Yeniseian languages, for example, are a recent proposal which has been generally well-received, whereas reconstructions of the Proto-World language are often viewed as fringe science. Proposals which are themselves based on other proposals have the likelihood of their parts noted in parenthesis.