Diagram of language families. See what “Language family” is in other dictionaries

There are a large number of language families and a wide variety of languages ​​in the world. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the world's largest language families, which are distinguished by lexical and grammatical composition, kinship of origin and community geographical location their carriers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.

In turn, language families the world is divided into groups. They are distinguished according to a similar principle. There are also languages ​​that do not belong to any of the identified families, as well as so-called isolated languages. It is also common for scientists to distinguish macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.

Indo-European family

The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It began to be distinguished in ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began to study the Proto-Indo-European language.

The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages ​​whose speakers live across vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages ​​are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, the Indo-European family includes Eastern European peoples speaking languages ​​of the Slavic group. These are Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.

This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages ​​it includes. However, these languages ​​are spoken by almost half of the world's population.

Afro-Asian family

Languages ​​representing Afro-Asiatic language family, are used by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.

This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. These include the Semitic branch, the Egyptian, Chadian, Cushitic, Berber-Libyan and Omotian. In general, the Afro-Asiatic family includes more than 300 languages ​​of the African continent and parts of Asia.

However, this family is not the only one on the continent. Other unrelated languages ​​exist in large numbers, especially to the south, in Africa. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not presented in written form until the 20th century. and were used only orally. Some of them are purely oral to this day.

Nilo-Saharan family

The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages ​​are represented by six language families. One of them is Songhai Zarma. The languages ​​and dialects of the other family, the Sahrawi family, are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, the Fur, is also common in Sudan.

The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The last family - coma - is widespread in Ethiopia and Sudan.

The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they represent great difficulty for linguistic researchers. The languages ​​of this macrofamily were greatly influenced by the Afro-Asian macrofamily.

Sino-Tibetan family

The Sino-Tibetan language family has more than a million speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible thanks to the large Chinese population speaking a language belonging to one of the branches of this language family Chinese. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.

The other branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are classified as the Tibeto-Burman branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.

Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most languages ​​of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many as yet unrevealed secrets.

North and South American languages

Currently, as we know, the vast majority of North and South American languages ​​belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. When settling the New World, European colonists brought their own languages ​​with them. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear completely. Many monks and missionaries who arrived from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages ​​and dialects of the local population.

Thus, the languages ​​of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. Later, some experts revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well linguistically.

Language families of Russia

All the peoples of Russia speak languages ​​belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages ​​and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Uralic. Moreover, most of the country's population speaks languages ​​belonging to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages ​​are very close to each other. Their speakers can understand each other almost without difficulty. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.

Altaic language family

The Altai language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchu and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their speakers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But several dozen languages ​​are included in the Turkic group. These include Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.

The group of Tungus-Manchu languages ​​includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is in danger of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand, and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long-term study of the Altai language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altai proto-language. This is explained by the large number of borrowings by its speakers from other languages ​​due to close contact with their representatives.

Ural family

The Uralic languages ​​are represented by two large families - Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages ​​of the second family are spoken by the Enets, Nenets, Selkups, and Nganasans. The carriers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).

The name of this family comes from the name of the Ural range, where the formation of the Uralic proto-language is believed to have taken place. The languages ​​of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages ​​of the Uralic family both on the territory of Russia and abroad.

North Caucasian family

The languages ​​of the peoples of the North Caucasus present a huge challenge for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. The concept of a North Caucasian family itself is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages ​​of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and in-depth work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how disjointed and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.

Difficulties concern not only the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most complex languages on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.

A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.

Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of related peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adygeis, Abkhazians, etc.

Other language families

The language families of the peoples of Russia are not always extensive, uniting many languages ​​into one family. Many of them are very small, and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and Far East. Thus, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmen, and Koryaks. Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.

A large number of nationalities scattered across the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages ​​that are not included in any known language family. Like, for example, the Nivkhs, who inhabit the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.

However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten Russia's cultural and linguistic diversity. Not only individual languages, but also entire language families are under threat of extinction.

Language family is a group of languages ​​united linguistically, having one common ancestor language, called proto-language.
Most languages ​​in the world belong to some kind language family. Languages ​​that have no obvious relationship with other languages, and which cannot be classified into any family, are called language isolates .
Creole languages ​​– These are the only languages ​​in the world that can neither be called isolates nor be classified as belonging to any language family. They form a special type of language.

"related languages" and "proto-language"

Genetic connections

If we compare, for example, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, we will find striking similarities between them, which indicate that they belong to the same language family. This "family resemblance" does not appear when comparing French and German languages. But if we again compare German, English, Dutch, Swedish and Danish, we again find a “family resemblance” between these languages.
The basic idea is that these languages ​​are similar in that they all evolved from a common pre-existing language (also called a proto-language). We know the common origin ( from Latin) the five languages ​​mentioned in the first case, which today are called Romance languages, but we have no written evidence of the ancestor language of the four languages ​​in the second example that are today called Germanic languages, although we have every reason to believe that one existed. Linguists manage to establish genetic classifications by comparing languages ​​and trying to constantly determine current rules similarities (and differences). This method is called comparative linguistics. The classification of languages ​​into groups is called genetic classification: two languages ​​belonging to the same group are genetically related.

Deceptive resemblance

However, the following must be kept in mind. Similarities between two or more languages ​​can occur due to their genetic connection (the similarities come from some common feature in the past), but there may be other sources of similarity:

- borrowing: the fact that the French sloo tomate looks like an Aztec word tomatl does not prove that these languages ​​are related to each other, but shows that they were in contact. The name that the plant brought to Europe received came from the name of the people where this plant grows. That's why French“borrowed” a word from another language and adapted it.

- accidental similarity: languages ​​have limited systems sounds to express thousands of complex concepts. If we randomly select two languages ​​that are completely different from each other, we will always find 3 - 4 words that will be similar in form and meaning.
Therefore, we can talk about a genetic connection only if there are several similarities in different directions, even partial, and not isolated, but striking.

Language family groups, extended families

Since there are closely related languages ​​that originated from a single ancestor language 1000 or 2000 years ago, it can be assumed that there are other related languages ​​that originated from a single ancestor language of an earlier period. In the 19th century, with an emphasis on systematic and converging common features in languages, several linguists have discovered the existence of a large language families – Indo-European. This is the first language family discovered, which includes: Romance, Germanic, Slavic languages, Greek and others. And if you are surprised that French and Russian have the same common ancestor language, then try comparing French and Nepali, or Pashto and Kurdish! Despite the differences between these languages, they all belong to Indo-European family languages. Belonging to the same family does not necessarily mean obvious similarities, or a standard level of understanding between speakers of these languages.

Classification

Some groups of languages ​​may have many divisions within themselves. These divisions are sometimes called "families" or "subfamilies", sometimes creating misunderstandings. When talking about internal departments, the following terms can be used. There is currently no consensus regarding the correct use of these terms: the division of languages ​​can be called " group», « branch», « subgroup"etc. If the family forms a large number of languages ​​and internal divisions, then we can already talk about “ superfamily" or " macrofamily" For example, as is the case with Niger-Congo a family of languages, which consists of 1300 - 1500 languages ​​(the number depends on the sources) and represents 1/5 or even ¼ of all languages ​​in the world.

It is possible to classify into the same group of the same family of languages ​​languages ​​that are very far from each other geographically, and that are spoken even on different continents. For example, the Eskimo-Aleut family includes languages Eastern Siberia and Alaska, on the other side Pacific Ocean– which are separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean. Actually Eskimo-Aleut languages can be found throughout North America from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast and even in Greenland. In the same way languages Austronesian family languages ​​are common on the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, Southeast Asia and even Madagascar, which is located next to the African continent!

On the other hand, some regions of the globe exhibit great diversity and complexity of genetically related languages. For example, in Europe there are three families of languages, and throughout American continent contains almost half of the planet's languages, although these 400 languages ​​are spoken by about 25 million people. Many Amerindian language families consist of fewer than 15 languages. IN Papua New Guinea, whose territory is twice the size of France - from 600 to 800 languages, which make up about twenty families. It should be noted that such a discrepancy is the result of the “isolation” of some peoples, but also the lack of information about these languages, which makes their classification difficult.
It is also necessary to keep in mind that the classification of languages ​​is a source of constant debate and discussion between linguists, so the number of language families and their composition may differ depending on the source.

There are a large number of language families and a wide variety of languages ​​in the world. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the world's largest language families, which are distinguished by their lexical and grammatical composition, relatedness of origin, and the common geographic location of their speakers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.

In turn, the world's language families are divided into groups. They are distinguished according to a similar principle. There are also languages ​​that do not belong to any of the identified families, as well as so-called isolated languages. It is also common for scientists to distinguish macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.

Indo-European family

The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It began to be distinguished in ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began to study the Proto-Indo-European language.

The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages ​​whose speakers live across vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages ​​are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, Eastern European peoples who speak languages ​​of the Slavic group also belong to the Indo-European family. These are Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.

This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages ​​it includes. However, these languages ​​are spoken by almost half of the world's population.

Afro-Asian family

Languages ​​representing the Afro-Asiatic language family are spoken by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.

This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. These include the Semitic branch, the Egyptian, Chadian, Cushitic, Berber-Libyan and Omotian. In general, the Afro-Asiatic family includes more than 300 languages ​​of the African continent and parts of Asia.

However, this family is not the only one on the continent. Other unrelated languages ​​exist in large numbers, especially to the south, in Africa. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not presented in written form until the 20th century. and were used only orally. Some of them are purely oral to this day.

Nilo-Saharan family

The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages ​​are represented by six language families. One of them is Songhai Zarma. The languages ​​and dialects of the other family, the Sahrawi family, are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, the Fur, is also common in Sudan.

The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The last family - coma - is widespread in Ethiopia and Sudan.

The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they represent great difficulty for linguistic researchers. The languages ​​of this macrofamily were greatly influenced by the Afro-Asian macrofamily.

Sino-Tibetan family

The Sino-Tibetan language family has more than a million speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible due to the large Chinese population speaking Chinese, which is part of one of the branches of this language family. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.

The other branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are classified as the Tibeto-Burman branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.

Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most languages ​​of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many as yet unrevealed secrets.

North and South American languages

Currently, as we know, the vast majority of North and South American languages ​​belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. When settling the New World, European colonists brought their own languages ​​with them. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear completely. Many monks and missionaries who arrived from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages ​​and dialects of the local population.

Thus, the languages ​​of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. Later, some experts revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well linguistically.

Language families of Russia

All the peoples of Russia speak languages ​​belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages ​​and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Uralic. Moreover, most of the country's population speaks languages ​​belonging to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages ​​are very close to each other. Their speakers can understand each other almost without difficulty. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.

Altaic language family

The Altai language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchu and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their speakers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But several dozen languages ​​are included in the Turkic group. These include Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.

The group of Tungus-Manchu languages ​​includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is in danger of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand, and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long-term study of the Altai language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altai proto-language. This is explained by the large number of borrowings by its speakers from other languages ​​due to close contact with their representatives.

Ural family

The Uralic languages ​​are represented by two large families - Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages ​​of the second family are spoken by the Enets, Nenets, Selkups, and Nganasans. The carriers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).

The name of this family comes from the name of the Ural range, where the formation of the Uralic proto-language is believed to have taken place. The languages ​​of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages ​​of the Uralic family both on the territory of Russia and abroad.

North Caucasian family

The languages ​​of the peoples of the North Caucasus present a huge challenge for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. The concept of a North Caucasian family itself is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages ​​of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and in-depth work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how disjointed and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.

Difficulties concern not only the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most complex languages ​​on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.

A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.

Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of related peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adygeis, Abkhazians, etc.

Other language families

The language families of the peoples of Russia are not always extensive, uniting many languages ​​into one family. Many of them are very small, and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and the Far East. Thus, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmen, and Koryaks. Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.

A large number of nationalities scattered across the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages ​​that are not included in any known language family. Like, for example, the Nivkhs, who inhabit the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.

However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten Russia's cultural and linguistic diversity. Not only individual languages, but also entire language families are under threat of extinction.

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 big ones literary languages Europe (French, Italian, English, German) dominates on 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, peoples that were initially genetically distant from each other can enter into one language family. 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” was transformed over time into “Indo-Germanic”, and the ancestral home of the primitive “Indo-Germans” began to be sought in the area 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.

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.

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.