What language groups exist? History and habitats

Term language family I first heard from my neighbor. The most interesting thing was that he himself did not know what it was and turned to me for help. Feeling awkward, I replied that I myself didn’t know what a language family was, but promised to look into it.

What is a language family

A language family, or more precisely, language families (since there are many of them) is unity of related languages. And all these large groups of related languages ​​originate from one language ( language - ancestor). The relatedness of languages ​​began to be studied in eighteenth century and began with a study of the ancient language of India - Sanskrit. The language family is divided into subfamilies and groups.

The special science of comparative linguistics discovers the historical connections of languages. It is likely that thousands of years ago there was only one language spoken by the people of that time. There is a special map of language families around the world. Linguistic scientists have found about a hundred language families. So, the main ones include:

• Indo-European(the largest, from Europe to India, includes about four hundred languages).
• Afro-Asian(Afghanistan, Egypt,).
• Altai(Russia, ).
• Sino-Tibetan( , Kyrgyzstan).
• Ural(Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian).
• Austroasiatic( , ).

It is possible that not all families are on this list yet, but at least the main part of them. Scientists still cannot decide on this issue.

Isolate languages ​​or isolated languages

This language with unproven belonging to any family. They are also called the lonely tongue. For example, residents of Spain and France speak Basque. It is a dialect different from all European languages. Linguistic scientists compared it with all possible languages ​​spoken in Europe, America and the Caucasus, but absolutely no connection was found.

At the end of the answer I would like to talk about pidgin. This language is also called Creole. It is a result of colonization when local children begin to talk in two languages ​​at once. In the native language and in the language of the colonizing country. As a result, one appears mixed language.

Languages ​​evolve like living organisms, and languages ​​that descend from a single ancestor (called a "protolanguage") are part of the same language family. A language family can be divided into subfamilies, groups and subgroups: for example, Polish and Slovak belong to the same subgroup of West Slavic languages, part of the Slavic languages ​​group, which is a branch of the larger Indo-European family.

Comparative linguistics, as its name suggests, compares languages ​​in order to discover their historical connections. This can be done by comparing the phonetics of languages, their grammar and vocabulary, even in cases where there are no written sources of their ancestors.

The more distant languages ​​are from each other, the more difficult it is to detect genetic connections between them. For example, no linguist doubts that Spanish and Italian are related, however, the existence of the Altaic language family (including Turkish and Mongolian) is questioned and not accepted by all linguists. At present, it is simply impossible to know whether all languages ​​originate from a single ancestor. If a single human language existed, then it must have been spoken ten thousand years ago (if not more). This makes comparison extremely difficult or even impossible.

List of language families

Linguists have identified more than one hundred major language families (language families that are not considered related to each other). Some of them consist of only a few languages, while others consist of more than a thousand. Here are the main language families of the world.

Special cases

Isolated languages ​​(isolate languages)

An isolate language is an “orphan”: a language whose belonging to any known language family has not been proven. The best example is the Basque language, which is spoken in Spain and France. Even though it is surrounded by Indo-European languages, it is very different from them. Linguists have compared Basque to other languages ​​spoken in Europe, to Caucasian languages, and even to American languages, but no connections have been found.

Korean is another well-known isolate, although some linguists suggest a connection to the Altaic languages ​​or Japanese. Japanese itself is sometimes considered an isolate, but it is best described as belonging to the small Japanese family, which includes several related languages ​​such as Okinawan.

Pidgin and Creole languages

A pidgin is a simplified communication system that developed between two or more groups that do not have a common language. It does not come directly from one language, it has absorbed the characteristics of several languages. When children begin to learn pidgin as a first language, it develops into a full-fledged, stable language called a creole.

Most pidgin or creole languages ​​spoken today are the result of colonization. They are based on English, French or Portuguese. One of the most widely spoken creole languages ​​is Tok Pisin, which is the official language of Papua New Guinea. It is based on English, but its grammar is different, its vocabulary including many loanwords from German, Malay, Portuguese and several local languages.

Russian language is one of the most widespread in the world. What are its most unique properties?

Facts about the Russian language

Russian belongs to the Slavic, or more precisely, East Slavic languages, along with Ukrainian, Belarusian, and also in some cases, distinguished as a separate Ruthenian (it is also considered as a dialect of Ukrainian). All East Slavic languages ​​have a common ancestor - the Old Russian language, which was formed in the 9th-12th centuries.

The modern literary Russian language developed around the middle of the 18th century - it is believed that it was based on the Moscow dialect, largely supplemented by a large number of other Russian dialects.

The writing of the Russian language, as well as other East Slavic and many Slavic languages ​​of the far abroad - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

The total number of native Russian speakers, according to some estimates, is about 260 million people. On the Internet, the official language of the Russian Federation is in 2nd place in popularity, second only to English (albeit very significantly): about 6.4% of modern sites are based on Russian content, while approximately 53.6% of the web is written in English -pages. For comparison, about 5.6% of sites contain content in German (the 3rd most common language on the Internet), 5.1% - in Japanese (4th place).

It is obvious that Russian is a language of global importance, which is native or understandable to a huge number of people from a wide variety of countries. It is difficult to explain its popularity solely by Russia's political and cultural role in the world - although, of course, it is significant in both cases. The Russian language is beautiful due to the presence in it of a number of unique properties that distinguish it from other languages.

We can look at some of the most notable examples of this.

In what areas is the difference most obvious?

First of all, Russian is one of the few European languages ​​in which sentences can be constructed with an almost free arrangement of words. In particular, this applies to subjects and predicates. “I went to the library”, “I went to the library”, “I went to the library” - the essence is the same.

Often Russian words form oxymorons - that is, combinations of words with opposite meanings, as well as stable phrases according to principles that are not entirely logical for a native speaker of, relatively speaking, English. But - quite correct from the point of view of perception of a Russian speaker. The phrases “No, probably”, “Hands can’t reach it” will most likely not be possible to literally translate into Western European languages.

The morphology of numerals in the Russian language is very complex. Depending on the case, you can say: “three hundred forty-four”, “three hundred forty-four”, “three hundred forty-four”, etc. It is extremely difficult for a person for whom Russian is a non-native language to adapt to this peculiarity of the use of numerals.

In Russian, the strengthening or weakening of a subjective assessment of something is usually expressed using suffixes. For example, in words such as “house” and “domishche”. In English, a similar method is difficult, and only the phrases little house and big house will have similar meanings.

Of course, there is more than one difference between the Russian language and other languages. We have only looked at some examples. Taking into account the unique characteristics of the official language of the Russian Federation, we will try to reflect the difference between the Russian language and other languages ​​in a small table.

Table

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 languages ​​of the world 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 should be ensured by general criteria for classifying 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, the language of description and the specific situation. Within the framework of 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 an additional means for unambiguously designating languages, regardless of the language of description, indicate for each its self-name.

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 above- 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 identified 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 branching, they are not even enough.

Example of using taxa

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.

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 the 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

see also

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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Various languages ​​of the peoples of the world belong to certain language families (at a lower level of hierarchy - groups), which unite languages ​​according to their linguistic structure and origin. To identify individual languages, a language dictionary is used, and to group language indicators, usually a linguistic classification into language families and groups, based on the sign of linguistic relationship. Data to characterize the linguistic composition can be obtained from population census materials, as well as from current population records, special surveys, etc.(it is impossible to establish the exact figure due to the conventional distinction between different languages ​​and dialects of the same language). In the past, there were approximately 4 thousand more languages, now forgotten. In genealogical classification, languages ​​are grouped into families based on kinship, established by comparing their vocabulary and grammar. Families are divided into groups (or branches), and some groups, in turn, are divided into subgroups.

Most linguists distinguish the following language families: Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Kartvelian, North Caucasian, Dravidian, Ural, Eskimo-Aleutian, Altai, Chukchi-Kamchatka, Niger-Cardafan, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, Sino-Tibetan, Australasian, Andamanese, group of Papuan families, Australian and group Indian families. Yukaghir, Korean, Japanese, Nivkh, Ket, Basque, Ainu and a number of other languages ​​are considered isolated (not included in any linguistic family).

The largest language family, comprising languages ​​spoken by almost half of the world's population, is Indo-European. It is numerically predominant in the Russian Federation and the CIS, in most of foreign Europe, Iran and Afghanistan, in the north of the Hindu subcontinent, in the vast majority of American countries, in Australia and New Zealand.

Afroasiatic family of languages, distributed in Northern and Northeastern Africa and Southwestern Asia, consists of 5 groups: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Pashtun and Chadian.

To the Kartvelian family(Western Transcaucasia) includes the Mingrelian language with its close Laz language, united in the Georgian-Zan group, and the Svan language. All these languages ​​are spoken by Georgians, among whom the Mingrelians, Laz and Svans partially retained their languages ​​in everyday life.

To a North Caucasian family include the Abkhaz-Adyghe and Nakh-Dagestan groups.

The dominant Dravidian family in South India consists of seven groups. The most numerous is the southern group, which includes such multimillion-dollar languages ​​of South India as Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.

Languages ​​of the Afroasiatic (or Semitic-Hamitic) family common among peoples living in North and North-East Africa, as well as in South-West Asia.

The population of sub-Saharan Africa speaks the languages ​​of the Niger-Kordofanian (East and West Africa), Nilo-Saharan (mainly Central Africa) and Khoisan (South-West Africa) families.

Uralic language family geographically localized in the north of the European part of the Russian Federation, in Central Europe (Hungary), in the Volga region, the Baltic states, Finland and in the north of Scandinavia. It consists of two groups - Finno-Ugric (or Finno-Ugric) and Samoyed.

Eskimo-Aleut language family includes the Eskimo languages ​​and the closely related Aleutian. Their carriers are settled in the vast Arctic areas of America, as well as in the extreme northeast of Asia.

To the Altai family of languages, distributed over vast areas from Turkey in the west to north-east Siberia in the east, include Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu languages. Turkic languages ​​include subgroups: Chuvash, or Bulgar (Chuvash language), Oguz, or southwestern (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Sakha (Buryat) and some others), Kipchak, or northwestern (Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz , Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai and Karaite), Karluk, or southeastern (Uzbek and Uyghur), Yakut (Yakut and Dolgan), South Siberian (Altai, Khakass, Tuvan and other languages) subgroups.

To modern Mongolian languages, widespread mainly in the Central Asian regions, include Mongolian proper, Buryat, Kalmyk, close to it Oirat and a number of others. The Tungus-Manchu languages ​​include the Manchu language in China, which is gradually falling out of use, as well as Evenki, Evenki, which is close to it, and some other languages ​​of Eastern Siberia and the Far East.

Chukotka-Kamchatka family, localized in the extreme northeast of Russia, unites Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen and other languages.

The largest of the language families are as follows: Indo-European (44.8% of the total world population), Sino-Tibetan (22.6%), Niger-Kordofanian (6.1%), Afroasiatic (5.6%), Austronesian (4.9%), Dravidian ( 3.9%). The thirteen most common languages ​​are spoken by almost 2/3 of the population of our planet. The most common languages ​​of the world include (number of speakers, end of 20th century, million people): Chinese (1300), English (460), Hindi and Urdu (370), Spanish (320), Russian (260), Bengali, Indonesian and Arabic (190 each), Portuguese (180), Japanese (130), German (100), French (100).

Along with the most widespread, there are so-called isolated languages, or isolated languages, not understandable even to close neighbors; their use is limited to small areas (Yukaghir, Nivkh, Ket, Basque, etc.) or individual countries (Japanese).

In the vast majority of cases, the names of the people and the language coincide. There are, however, cases where several peoples speak the same language. So, English (with minor local differences) is spoken by the British, US Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, English-Canadians and some others. Spanish is the native language not only of Spaniards, but also of most of the peoples of Latin America. German is spoken by Germans, Austrians and German-Swiss. Usually, each nation speaks the same language (sometimes dialect differences are so great that communication between individual groups of people without knowledge of the generally accepted literary language is impossible).

However, the practice of bilingualism is becoming increasingly widespread when parts of a people or even entire nations use two languages ​​in everyday life. Bilingualism is a fairly common phenomenon in multinational countries, where national minorities, in addition to their native language, usually also use the language of the largest nation. Bilingualism is also typical for countries with massive immigrant populations. Therefore, the number of speakers of individual languages ​​does not always coincide with the number of peoples for whom these languages ​​are native. This especially applies to the languages ​​of large nations that serve as languages ​​of interethnic communication.