Main language families and their features. G

Language family

A language family is the largest unit of classification of peoples (ethnic groups) on the basis of their linguistic kinship - the common origin of their languages from the presumed base language. Language families are divided into language groups.
The largest in number is the Indo-European language family, which includes the following language groups:
- Romanesque: French, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Moldovans, Romanians, etc.;
- Germanic: Germans, English, Scandinavians, etc.;
- Slavic: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.
The second largest is the Sino-Tibetan language family, with the Chinese language group being the largest.
The Altai language family includes a large Turkic language group: Turks, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Yakuts, etc.
The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric group: Finns, Estonians, Hungarians, Komi, etc.
The Semitic group belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic language family: Arabs, Jews, Ethiopians, etc.

Synonyms: Family of Nations

See also: Ethnicities Languages

Finam Financial Dictionary.

See what a “Language family” is in other dictionaries:

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Languages and peoples. Today, the peoples of the world speak more than 3,000 languages. There are about 4000 forgotten languages, some of them are still alive in the memory of mankind (Sanskrit, Latin). By the nature of the language, many researchers judge the degree of kinship between peoples. Language is most often used as an ethnic differentiating feature. The linguistic classification of peoples is the most recognized in world science. At the same time, language is not an indispensable feature that distinguishes one people from another. On one Spanish spoken by several different Latin American peoples. The same can be said about the Norwegians and Danes, who have a common literary language. At the same time, residents of Northern and Southern China speak different languages, but consider themselves to be the same ethnic group.

Each of the major literary languages of Europe (French, Italian, English, German) dominates a territory that is linguistically much less homogeneous than the territory of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples (L. Gumilyov, 1990). The Saxons and Tyroleans hardly understand each other, and the Milanese and Sicilians do not understand each other at all. The English of Northumberland speak a language close to Norwegian, as they are descendants of the Vikings who settled in England. The Swiss speak German, French, Italian and Romansh.

The French speak four languages: French, Celtic (Bretons), Basque (Gascons) and Provençal. Linguistic differences between them can be traced from the beginning of the Romanization of Gaul.

Taking into account their intra-ethnic differences, the French, Germans, Italians, and British should be compared not with Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, but with all Eastern Europeans. At the same time, such systems of ethnic groups as the Chinese or Indians correspond not to the French, Germans or Ukrainians, but to Europeans as a whole (L. Gumilyov, 1990).

All languages of the peoples of the world belong to certain language families, each of which unites languages similar in linguistic structure and origin. The process of formation of language families is associated with the isolation various peoples from each other in the process of human settlement around the globe. At the same time, in one language family Peoples who were initially genetically distant from each other may enter. Thus, the Mongols, having conquered many nations, adopted foreign languages, and the blacks resettled by slave traders in America speak English.

Human races and language families. According to biological characteristics, people are divided into races. The French scientist Cuvier identified early XIX centuries three human races - black, yellow and white.

The idea that human races emerged from different centers was established in the Old Testament: “Can an Ethiopian change his skin and a leopard his spots.” On this basis, the theory of the “Nordic, or Indo-European chosen man” was created among English-speaking Protestants. Such a person was placed on a pedestal by the French Comte de Gobineau in a book with the provocative title "Treatise on Inequality" human races" The word “Indo-European” over time was transformed into “Indo-Germanic”, and the ancestral home of the primitive “Indo-Germans” began to be sought in the region of the North European Plain, which at that time was part of the kingdom of Prussia. In the 20th century ideas about racial and national elitism turned into the bloodiest wars in human history.

By the middle of the 20th century. Many classifications of human races have developed - from two (Negroid and Mongoloid) to thirty-five. Most scientists write about four human races with the following centers of origin: the Greater Sunda Islands - the homeland of the Australoids, East Asia - the Mongoloids, Southern and Central Europe - the Caucasoids, and Africa - the Negroids.

All these races, their languages and centers of origin are correlated by some researchers with different original hominids. The ancestors of the Australoids are Javan Pithecanthropus, the Mongoloids are Sinanthropus, the Negroids are African Neanderthals, and the Caucasoids are European Neanderthals. The genetic connection of certain ancient forms with the corresponding modern races can be traced using morphological comparisons of craniums. Mongoloids, for example, are similar to Sinanthropus with a flattened face, Caucasians are similar to European Neanderthals with strongly protruding nasal bones, and the broad nose makes Negroids similar to African Neanderthals (V. Alekseev, 1985). In the Paleolithic, people were the same black, white, yellow as they are today, with the same differentiation of skulls and skeletons. This means that intercivilizational differences go back to ancient times, to the beginning of the human race. These should also include interlingual differences.

The oldest finds of representatives of the Negroid race were discovered not in Africa, but in Southern France, in the Grimaldi Cave near Nice, and in Abkhazia, in the Kholodny Grotto. An admixture of Negroid blood is found not only among Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, residents of the south of France and the Caucasus, but also among residents of the north-west - in Ireland (L. Gumilyov, 1997).

Classical Negroids belong to the Niger-Kordofanian language family, which began to populate Central Africa from North Africa and Western Asia quite late - somewhere at the beginning of our era.

Before the arrival of the Negroids (Fulani, Bantu, Zulus) in Africa, the territory south of the Sahara was inhabited by the Kapoids, representatives of a recently identified race, which included the Hottentots and Bushmen, belonging to the Khoisan language family. Unlike blacks, capoids are not black, but brown: they have Mongoloid facial features, they speak not while exhaling, but while inhaling, and are sharply different from both blacks and Europeans and Mongoloids. They are considered a remnant of some ancient race of the southern hemisphere, which was displaced from the main areas of its settlement by Negroids (L. Gumilyov, 1997). Then many Negroids were transported to America by slave traders

Another ancient race of the southern hemisphere is the Australoid (Australian family). Australoids live in Australia and Melanesia. With black skin, they have huge beards, wavy hair, and broad shoulders, and exceptional reaction speed. Their closest relatives lived in southern India and belong to the Dravidian language family (Tamil, Telugu).

Representatives of the Caucasoid (white race), belonging mainly to the Indo-European language family, inhabited not only, as now, Europe, Western Asia and the North of India, but also almost the entire Caucasus, a significant part of Central and Central Asia and Northern Tibet.

The largest ethnolinguistic groups of the Indo-European language family in Europe are Romance (French, Italians, Spaniards, Romanians), Germanic (Germans, English), Slavic (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs). They populate Northern Asia (Russians), North America(Americans), South Africa (immigrants from England and Holland), Australia and New Zealand(immigrants from England), a significant part South America(Hispanic and Portuguese-speaking Latinos).

The largest representative of the Indo-European family is the Indo-Aryan group of peoples of India and Pakistan (Hindustani, Bengalis, Marathas, Punjabis, Biharis, Gujjars). This also includes the peoples of the Iranian group (Persians, Tajiks, Kurds, Baluchis, Ossetians), the Baltic group (Latvians and Lithuanians), Armenians, Greeks, Albanians..

The most numerous race is the Mongoloids. They are divided into subraces belonging to different language families.

Siberian, Central Asian, Central Asian, Volga and Transcaucasian Mongoloids form the Altai language family. It unites the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu ethnolinguistic groups, each of which in turn is divided into ethnolinguistic subgroups. Thus, the Turkic Mongoloids are divided into the Bulgar subgroup (Chuvash), southwestern (Azerbaijanis, Turkmens), northwestern (Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs), southeastern (Uzbeks, Uighurs), northeastern (Yakuts) subgroups.

The most widely spoken language in the world, Chinese (over 1 billion people), belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is used in writing by North Chinese and South Chinese Mongoloids (Chinese or Han), who differ significantly from each other anthropologically and colloquial speech. The Tibetan Mongoloids also belong to the same language family. The Mongoloids of Southeast Asia are classified into the Parataic and Austroasiatic language families. The peoples of the Chukchi-Kamchatka and Eskimo-Aleut language families are also close to the Mongoloids.

There are also subraces, with which groups of certain languages are usually correlated, that is, the system of human races is arranged hierarchically.

Representatives of the listed races include 3/4 of the world's population. The remaining peoples belong to small races or microraces with their own language families.

At the contact of the main human races, mixed or transitional racial forms are encountered, often forming their own language families.

Thus, the mixing of Negroids with Caucasians gave rise to mixed-transitional forms of peoples of the Afroasiatic, or Semitic-Hamitic family (Arabs, Jews, Sudanese, Ethiopians). Peoples speaking languages of the Ural language family (Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mordovians, Estonians, Hungarians) form transitional forms between Mongoloids and Caucasians. Very complex racial mixtures formed into the North Caucasian (Abkhazians, Adygeans, Kabardians, Circassians, Chechens, Ingush peoples of Dagestan) and Kartvelian (Georgians, Mingrelians, Svans) language families.

Similar racial mixing occurred in America, only it was much more intense than in the Old World, and, in general, did not affect language differences.

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 the once single 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 - group 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 are two completely independent languages. Similar disputes occur not only regarding Tatar and Bashkir.

The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept of "Finnish" is conditional - in in this case it does not designate the official language of 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. On Finnish languages they say Karelians, Vepsians, Izhorians, Vods, Komi, Maris, Mordovians, Udmurts, 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 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 in the 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. Thus, they have practically forgotten the native language of the Chu-lymys - 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, recently national cultural and educational societies have taken care of their own languages in large centers. 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 the Slavic alphabet (except for those that had their own, which was also ancient), superscripts were added, 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

Language family

Language taxonomy- an auxiliary discipline that helps to organize the objects studied by linguistics - languages, dialects and groups of languages. The result of this ordering is also called taxonomy of languages.

The taxonomy of languages is based on the genetic classification of languages: the evolutionary-genetic grouping is natural, not artificial, it is quite objective and stable (in contrast to the often rapidly changing areal affiliation). The goal of linguistic taxonomy is to create a single, coherent system of world languages based on the identification of a system of linguistic taxa and corresponding names, arranged according to certain rules (linguistic nomenclature). The terms “systematics” and “taxonomy” are often used interchangeably.

Design principles

The following principles are characteristic of linguistic taxonomy:

A single hierarchically organized system.
Unified system of taxa.
Unified nomination system.

Unity of the entire system and the comparability of units of the same level must be ensured general criteria to assign objects to one level or another. This applies to both the upper levels (families and groups) and the lower ones (languages and dialects). In a unified taxonomy, the criteria for classifying objects to the same level must meet the following requirements: applicability to any object and consistency(or unambiguous) assignment of an object to a certain class.

Unified taxon system. Linguists can only envy the orderly system of taxa in biology. Although there are many terms in linguistics (family, group, branch, sometimes phylum, phylum, stock), their use varies greatly depending on the author, language of description and specific situation. Within taxonomy, these taxa are ordered and used according to certain rules.

Unified nomination system. Unlike biology, where there is a harmonious system of nomination in Latin using a binary name for the basic unit, there is nothing similar in linguistics and is unlikely to arise. Therefore, the main thing that a taxonomist can do is, firstly, to organize the names of languages in the language of description, choosing the main name for each idiom and group of idioms; secondly, as additional means to unambiguously designate languages, regardless of the language of description, indicate its self-name for each.

Using lexical statistics data. To determine the level of taxa in an existing classification (or to construct a classification where it does not yet exist) and to assign an object to a specific taxon, the criterion of preserving basic vocabulary is used; not only for constructing the upper levels of classification (which is trivial), but also for distinguishing individual idioms. The percentage of matches is calculated from the standard 100-word Swadesh list. The emphasis is deliberately on the percentage of matches (although the decay time may be given for reference), since there is no unanimity on this issue among comparativists, and for constructing a taxonomy of languages, the relative percentage of matches, rather than the absolute decay time, is quite sufficient.

Upper levels of taxonomy

The main upper levels (taxa) of taxonomy are: family, branch, group. If necessary, the number of taxa can be increased by adding prefixes over- And under-; For example: subfamily, supergroup. Occasionally the term may also be used zone, often to designate not genetic but rather areal or paraphyletic groupings, see for example the classification of Bantu languages or Austronesian languages.

Family- the upper basic level on which all taxonomy is based. A family is a group of distinctly but widely related languages that have at least 15 percent overlap in the base list. For examples, see the list of Eurasian families or the overview of African families.

For each family, the list of branches, groups, etc. is determined taking into account the traditionally distinguished groupings, the degree of their proximity to each other and the time of disintegration into components. At the same time, branches and groups of different families do not have to be of the same level of depth; only their relative order within one family is important.

The table shows examples of constructing taxonomy with strict use of taxa. If for Indo-European languages some levels can be skipped, then for Austronesian languages, famous for their ramifications, they are not even enough.

Example of using taxa

taxon
family	Indo-European	Austronesian
subfamily	"European"	Malayo-Polynesian
above the branch		Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
zone		East Malayo-Polynesian
subzone		oceanic
branch	Balto-Slavic	Central-East Ocean
subbranch		Central Pacific (Fiji-Polynesian)
group	Slavic	East Fijian-Polynesian group
subgroup	East Slavic	Polynesian
sub-subgroup		Nuclear Polynesian
microgroup		Samoan
language	Ukrainian	tokelau

Language/dialect

Therefore, in linguistic taxonomy, a scale with four levels of proximity is used: language - adverb - dialect - patois, developed on an empirical basis.

According to this scale, if two idioms have a similar percentage in a 100-word base list< 89 (что соответствует времени распада, по формуле Сводеша-Старостина , >1100 years ago), then the idioms are different languages. If percentage of matches > 97 (decay time< 560 лет), то идиомы являются dialects one language. For the remaining interval (89-97), an intermediate level of very close languages / distant dialects is proposed, for which the term “ adverb" in cases where the corresponding idiom is traditionally regarded as a component of another language. When such an idiom is considered to be a separate language, the taxon “language” is retained behind it, and the association in which it is included and corresponding in degree of similarity to a single language is called “ cluster».

The use of lower level taxa is clearly illustrated in the table. Moreover, it often happens that one or more idioms in one cluster are considered languages, while others are not, although they are at the same level of mutual intelligibility / structural proximity. An example is the Vainakh cluster, which includes the Chechen and Ingush languages and the Akkin-Orstkhoi dialect.

Use of lower level taxa (for “languages and dialects”)

levels	examples

Level 1 usually matches either A) independent language(poorly intelligible with other languages), or b) group ( cluster) closely related languages.
Level 2 corresponds A) adverbs (groups of dialects) or b) individual closely related languages(partially mutually intelligible).	Picardian, Walloon, "literary French"
Level 3 corresponds to individual dialects (with good mutual understanding).		Pskov group of dialects (GG), Tver GG, Moscow
Level 4 corresponds to individual talk(With very slight structural differences).		Moscow city,

Prim.: Underlined names are revealed in the following rows of the table.

These levels also relate to the degree of mutual intelligibility, which is especially useful when the percentage of overlap between languages is unknown.

Between two languages Mutual intelligibility is very difficult and normal communication is impossible without special training.
Inside the tongue between two adverbs there is mutual intelligibility, but not complete; communication is possible, but misunderstandings or errors may occur.
Between dialects Within the dialect there is almost complete mutual intelligibility, although speakers note the peculiarities of each dialect, usually in pronunciation (accent) and use of some words.

The identification of languages and dialects may not coincide with the traditional approach. For example:

The Chinese branch includes up to 18 languages, traditionally considered dialects of the Chinese language
The French language (or oil language) includes Francian (on the basis of which the dialect was formed French literary language), Picard, Norman and other dialects.
The Serbo-Croatian cluster includes the Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian dialects, and the latter also Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian literary languages(= dialects).
The Western Oguz cluster consists of Turkish, Gagauz, and South Crimean Tatar languages.
The Nogai cluster consists of Nogai, Kazakh and Karakalpak languages.
The Ibero-Romance cluster includes Portuguese, Galician, Asturo-Leonese, Spanish, and (Upper) Aragonese.

Macro levels

Despite the fact that the top basic taxon in the taxonomy is the family, it also takes into account information about deeper relationships. But taxa for higher levels do not lend themselves to such strict formalization as lower ones.

Superfamily- a union of close families (percentage of matches = 11-14), which are traditionally considered one family, but in accordance with the definition of family in linguistic taxonomy, should be moved to a higher level. The superfamily appears to be the Altaic languages in a broad sense(including Korean and Japanese-Ryukyuan languages), Cushitic and Austronesian.
Macrofamily(= phyla) - a union of families, with at least somehow established correspondences and approximately calculated percentages of matches. These, apparently, are the Nostratic, Afroasiatic, Sino-Caucasian, and Khoisan macro-family.
Hyperfamily- unification of macro-families, extremely hypothetical; for example, the Borean hyperfamily.
Hypothesis- an alleged association of families, without establishing correspondence and calculating the percentage of matches between individual components. As a rule, it is done offhand. For example, the Nilo-Saharan, wide-Khoisan hypothesis.

In the works of mainly foreign linguists (see, for example,) other terms are also used:

Stock (stock) is a union of families ( families), which in this case are understood more narrowly than defined above. Examples of drainages are Indo-European (with Germanic, Romance and other families), Uralic, Sino-Tibetan, Autronesian; Thus, drain, as a rule, corresponds to the above definition family.
Phylum/phyla (phylum, pl. phyla) is a pool of drains (also called superstock - superstock) or families (if the term runoff is not used), and, as a rule, it is more likely to be assumed than proven. Overall consistent macrofamily.

Notes

Literature

Koryakov Yu. B., Maysak T. A. Systematics of the world’s languages and databases on the Internet // Proceedings of the International Seminar “Dialogue “2001” on computer linguistics and its applications. Volume 2. M., Aksakovo, 2001.

Examples of reference books built on the basis of taxonomy or similar:

Koryakov Yu. B. Atlas of Caucasian languages. M., 2006
Register of World Languages (in development)
Dalby D. Vol. 1-2. Hebron, 2000
Gordon R. G., Jr. (ed). Ethnologue.com Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th Edition. SIL, 2005
Kaufmann T. The native languages of Latin America: general remarks // Atlas of the World's Languages (edited by C. Moseley and R.E.Asher). 1994
Meso-American Indian languages in Languages of the World // Britannica CD. Version 97. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997.
Voegelin C.F. & F.M. Classification and Index of the World’s languages. NY., 1977
Wurm S. Australasia and the Pacific // Atlas of the World’s Languages (edited by C. Moseley and R.E.Asher). 1994

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Language families are a term used to classify peoples according to language. A language family includes languages that are related to each other.

It manifests itself in the similarity in the sound of words denoting the same object, as well as in the similarity of elements such as morphemes and grammatical forms.

According to the theory of monogenesis, the world's language families were formed from the proto-language spoken by ancient peoples. The division occurred due to the predominance of the nomadic lifestyle of the tribes and their distance from each other.

Language families are divided as follows.

Language family name	Languages included in the family	Regions of distribution
Indo-European		India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Fiji
		India, Pakistan
		Countries former USSR and Eastern Europe
	English	USA, UK, European countries, Canada, Africa, Australia
	German	Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy
	French	France, Tunisia, Monaco, Canada, Algeria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg
	Portuguese	Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Macau
	Bengal	Bengal, India, Bangladesh
Altai	Tatar	Tatarstan, Russia, Ukraine
	Mongolian	Mongolia, China
	Azerbaijani	Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Central Asia
	Turkish	Türkiye, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, USA, France, Sweden
	Bashkir	Bashkorstan, Tatarstan, Urdmutia, Russia.
	Kyrgyz	Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, China
Ural	Hungarian	Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia
	Mordovian	Mordovia, Russia, Tatarstan, Bashkorstan
	Evenk	Russia, China, Mongolia
		Finland, Sweden, Norway, Karelia
	Karelian	Karelia, Finland
Caucasian	Georgian	Georgia, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Iran
	Abkhazian	Abkhazia, Türkiye, Russia, Syria, Iraq
	Chechen	Chechnya, Ingushetia, Georgia, Dagestan
Sino-Tibetan	Chinese	China, Taiwan, Singapore

	Laotian	Laos, Thailand,
	Siamese
	Tibetan	Tibet, China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan
	Burmese	Myanmar (Burma)
Afro-Asian	Arab	Arab countries, Iraq, Israel, Chad, Somalia,

	Barbary	Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Egypt, Mauritania

From this table it is clear that languages of the same family can be distributed in the most various countries and parts of the world. And the very concept of “language families” was introduced to facilitate the classification of languages and their compilation family tree. The most widespread and numerous is the Indo-European family of languages. Peoples speaking languages of the Indo-European family can be found in any hemisphere of the Earth, on any continent and in any country. There are also languages that are not included in any language family. These are also artificial.

If we talk about the territory of Russia, then a wide variety of language families are represented here. The country is inhabited by people of more than 150 different nationalities, who can consider almost every language family to be their native language. The linguistic families of Russia are distributed geographically depending on which country a particular region borders on, and which language is most widespread in the country bordering the region.

Some nationalities have occupied a certain territory since ancient times. And at first glance it may seem strange why these particular language families and languages predominate in this region. But there is nothing strange about this. In ancient times, human migrations were determined by the search for new hunting grounds, new lands for agriculture, and some tribes simply led a nomadic lifestyle.

The forced relocation of entire peoples during the Soviet era also played a significant role. The languages from the Indo-European, Uralic, Caucasian and Altai families are most fully represented in Russia. The Indo-European family occupies Western and Central Russia. Representatives live mainly in the north-west of the country. Northeast and southern regions are predominantly occupied by Altai language groups. Caucasian languages are represented mainly in the territory lying between the Black and Caspian seas.