Languages of the World

This page contains general information about many of the world's languages. (It is still incomplete; I'll be adding more information about each of the language families listed, as time allows.)

This information is chiefly compiled from the following recommended sources:

• Michael Covington, Mark Rosenfelder, The sci.lang FAQ, www.zompist.com/langfaq.html, 2002

• Stephen Roger Fisher, A history of language, Reaktion Books, London, 1999

• Kevin Katzner, The languages of the world, Routledge, London, 1992

• The Encyclopedia Britannica, 'Languages of the World'

Contents

Indo-European languages map

Non-Indo-European languages map

Languages and their families

INDO-EUROPEAN family

URALIC family

ALTAIC family

Paleo-Siberian families

Caucasian family

DRAVIDIAN family

SINO-TIBETAN family

Tai-Kadai family

AUSTROASIATIC family

AUSTRONESIAN family

PAPUAN families

AUSTRALIAN families

AFRO-ASIATIC (Hamito-Semitic) family

NIGER-KORDOFANIAN family

Nilo-Saharan families

Khoisian family

NORTH AMERICAN families

South American families

Language Isolates

Pidgins and Creoles

Indo-European languages map

The New World families in these maps are based on the maps found in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which seems to represent pre-Columbian language usage. Also be aware that many of these classifications are still quite controversial.

Old World families are based on the Oxford World Atlas and other sources.

Non-Indo-European languages map

Dividing the world's languages into two maps allows us to indicate some of the overlapping language areas of the world (e.g. Altaic and Indo-European in Siberia), but non-IE languages overlap too; a particularly mottled area is Southeast Asia.

There are many New Guinean language families; some linguists group them all together as Papuan but this too is controversial. There are 27 families of Australian languages; the largest is Pama-Nyungan.

Languages and their families

Following is an incomplete list of some of the world's language families.

A language family is a group of languages that have been proven to have descended from a common ancestral language. Branches of families likewise represent groups of languages with a more recent common ancestor. For example, English, Dutch, and German have a common ancestor, which we label Proto-West-Germanic, and thus belong to the West Germanic branch of Germanic. Icelandic and Norwegian are descended from Proto-North Germanic, a separate branch of Germanic. All the Germanic languages have a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic; farther back, this ancestor was descended from Proto-Indo- European, as were the ancestors of the Italic, Slavic, and other branches.

Not all languages are known to be related to each other. It is possible that they are related but the evidence of relationship has been lost; it's also possible they arose separately. It is likely that some of the families listed here will eventually turn out to be related to one another.

While low-level close relationships are easy to demonstrate, higher-order classification proposals must rely on more problematic evidence and tend to be controversial. The groups listed here are commonly accepted by most linguists today.

This list isn't intended to be exhaustive, but includes several hundred of the world’s major current languages.

INDO-EUROPEAN family

Based on language comparisons and re-construction, it would appear that the Indo-Europeans lived in a cold northern region, that it was not near the water but among forests, that they raised such domestic animals as the sheep, the dog, the cow and the horse, and that among wild animals they knew the bear and the wolf, that among metals they probably knew only copper.

The general consensus is that the original Indo-European civilisation developed somewhere in Eastern Europe before 3000 BCE. About 2500 BCE it broke up; the people left their homeland and migrated in many different directions. Some moved into Greece, others made their way into Italy, others moved through Central Europe until they made their way into Britain and Ireland. Wherever they settled, the Indo-Europeans appear to have overcome the existing population and imposed their language on them.

Germanic (Teutonic)

It is generally assumed that by the first century BCE, Germanic peoples speaking a fairly uniform language lived on both sides of the North and Baltic seas. The West Germanic tribes settled between the Elbe and Oder rivers and it is here that the German language gradually evolved. The East Germanic tribes settled east of the Oder River, but their languages have long since become extinct. In Scandinavia, the North Germanic tribes spoke a language we now call Old Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages. In the 5^th century CE, three West Germanic tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, crossed the North Sea into Britain, bringing with them a language that would later be known as English. And in the 9^th century, Old Norse was carried far westward to Iceland.

North Germanic:

Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese

West Germanic:

English, Scots (Lallans), Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, Luxembourgian, Afrikaans, German, Yiddish

Italic

The Italic tribes moved into the Appenine peninsula during the first millenium BCE. The original Italic languages (including Oscan, Umbran and Venetic) became extinct by the beginning of the 1st century CE, having been swallowed up by the group’s most successful member, Latin. After the 5^th century CE, as the Roman Empire crumbled, the Latin of each region began to develop in its on individual way, eventually becoming languages in their own right, called Romance languages.

Romance:

French, Occitan (incl. Provençal), Rhaeto-Romanic (incl. Friuli, Romansch, Ladin), Italian, Sardinian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Romanian, and Moldavian

Celtic

The Celts were among the first Indo-Europeans to migrate from the eastern homeland across Western Europe, eventually occupying the Iberian peninsula and Britain and Ireland by the 5^th century BCE. In the last few centuries BCE, three Celtic languages dominated the European mainland: Gaulish (France and northern Italy), Celtiberian (Spain and Portugal) and Galatian (Turkey). Eventually, they all succumbed to the might of Latin. Today, only two Celtic subgroups survive in coastal pockets of Europe’s far west.

The original Gaelic (Goidelic) speakers were the Irish, probably the first Celts to arrive in Britain and Ireland around 600 BCE. Around the 5^th century CE, Gaelic-speaking Irish colonists settled the Isle of Man and Scotland, assimilating the indigenous Picts.

The Brythonic Celts, (or Britons), followed the Irish into Britain in the first few centuries BCE. Their tongue remained so similar to Continental Gaulish that it was considered the same language up until the Roman occupation. Invading Germanic tribes in the 5^th century CE, then pressed the Britons to Britain’s peripheries: southern Scotland, Wales, Devon and Cornwall.

For several centuries, Britons also escaped the Saxon trespass by migrating back to the continent, south to Brittany in France, where Breton is still spoken today. 

Goidelic:

Irish (Gaelic), Scots Gaelic, Manx (Gaelic)

Brythonic:

Welsh, Cornish (officially extinct), Breton

Hellenic (Greek)

Greek-speaking people moved into the Greek peninsula in the second millennium BCE. Although a few dialects evolved over the centuries, none became daughter languages. Greek today is not so different to the ancient dialect Homer spoke.

Slavic

The Slavic tribes appear to have settled the area between the Vistula and Dnieper rivers by the 7^th century BCE. In the succeeding centuries, they began a slow migration in three different directions: west towards the Elbe and Oder rivers, displacing East Germanic; south into the Balkans, displacing Latin; and east into the Russian heartland.

East Slavic:

Russian, Belorussian, Ukranian

West Slavic:

Polish, Czech, Slovian, Sorbian (Lusatian)

South Slavic:

Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Macedonian

Baltic

The Baltic peoples probably moved into western Russia around 2000 BCE. For centuries they occupied a large area from the Oka River (near Moscow) to the Baltic Sea. About the 6^th century CE, the eastern Balts were forced to move westwards by the more numerous Slavs. Today only two languages remain:

Lithuanian, Latvian

They are the most conservative of the Indo-European languages, retaining a number of archaic features of Indo-European that vanished from the others long before they were committed to writing.

Albanian

The origin of Albanian is uncertain and it was not until 1854 that it was proven to be Indo-European. It forms a separate branch of the family with many words found in no other Indo-European language, most likely borrowed from languages now extinct.

Armenian

Like Albanian, much of the Armenian vocabulary is not found in any other Indo-European language, although it contains so many Persian borrowings, that until 1875, it was thought to be a dialect of Persian.

Indo-Iranian

While the other Indo-European migrations appear to have been towards the west, the Indo-Iranians headed southeast, toward the Caspian Sea and on to Iran and Afghanistan. After traversing arid deserts and great mountains, they finally reached India at about 1500 BCE. Perhaps by 1000 BCE, the dialects of India and Iran were sufficiently different to be considered separate languages. In the 6^th century BCE, Persian became the dominant language of the ancient world.

Iranian:

Farsi (Persian), Pashto, Kurdish, Baluchi, Tadzhik, Ossetian, Gilaki, Mazanderani

Indo-Aryan:

(Classical) Sanskrit; (Midland) Hindi, Urdu, Rajasthani, Bihari, Bhili; (East) Assamese, Bengali, Oriya; (Northwest) Punjabi, Lahnda, Sindhi, Nepali, Pahari, Kashmiri, (Southwest) Marathi, Gujurati, Sinhalese, Konkani, Maldivian; Romany

URALIC family

Named after the Ural Mountains that form the border between Europe and Asia, the ancestors of the Uralic peoples are believed to have occupied a broad belt of central European Russia about six thousand years ago. In the third millennium BCE, Uralic tribes began a series of migrations in different directions: east, north, and west.

The Samoyed tribes headed east and eventually further north about five thousand years ago. The Finns and Estonians reached their modern homeland in the west by the first century CE, displacing the aboriginal Lappish language with their own. The Hungarians made their migration from Siberia into the heart of Europe in the ninth century CE.

Finno-Ugric

Finnic:

Finnish, Estonian, Lappish (Saami), Mordvin, Udmurt (Votyak), Mari (Cheremish), Komi

Ugric:

Hungarian, Ostyak, Vogul

Samoyed

Nenets, Selkup, Nganasan (Tavgi), Enets

ALTAIC family

The Altaic languages are generally believed to have originated near the Altai Mountains and western Mongolia. Today, they are spoken in a belt stretching from Turkey, across Central Asia and China, to Siberia. It is still not clear whether the different branches of the Altaic family are genetically related or the result of areal diffusions.

By the 7^th century CE, the Turks had left their home in the Altai Mountains and forged an empire stretching from western China to the Black Sea, where the Turkic group of languages are still spoken and are largely mutually intelligible. The Mongol group of languages are spoken in Mongolia and northern China. Mongolian was the language of the Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan in the 13^th century. The Tungusic languages are spoken in central and eastern Siberia, and in northern China. Manchu, once spoken by the great Manchu Dynasty, has all but died out.

Turkic

South-western:

Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen

North-western:

Kazakh, Kirgiz, Tatar, Bashkir

South-eastern:

Uzbek, Uigur

Independent:

Chuvash, Yakut

Mongol

Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk

Tungusic

Northern:

Evenki, Even

Southern:

Manchu, Nanai, Sibo

Korean

Korean and its related dialects and languages have been spoken on the Korean peninsula for at least two thousand years. It is the only surviving member of its group. As it shares many features of phonology and grammar with the Altaic languages, and many grammatical structures with Japanese, linguists are gradually considering it to be (like Japanese) a separate group within the Altaic family.

Japanese

Modern Japanese probably descended from the language of the Yayoi culture in northern Kyūshū about two thousand years ago. Although its phonology is quite different from Korean, and shares similarities to some Austronesian languages, Japanese is now generally believed to be related to Korean, and form a separate group of the Altaic family.

Note: The Uralic and Altaic languages show enough similarities in grammar and phonology to be considered by many to belong together in a single Ural-Altaic super-family. However, there are not enough correspondences in vocabulary for this theory to be firmly established.

Paleo-Siberian families

Paleo-Siberian is really a term covering a small group of related languages, as well as three other languages having no direct link with either each other or with any other known languages. (Although Ket, in particular, is considered by some scholars to be descended from a common ancestor of the Sino-Tibetan family.) Some scholars also group them with Ainu, and sometimes with and the Aleut languages. This is really a geographical grouping of unrelated language families rather than a genetic link.

Luorawetlan:

Chukchi, Koryak, Kamchadal

Gilyak:

Nivkh

Yeniseyan:

Ket (Yenisey-Ostyak)

Yukagir:

Yukagir

Caucasian family

The Caucasian languages are a group of linguistically diverse languages spoken in the Caucasus Mountains. It is uncertain whether the southern group (including Georgian) is really genetically related to the other groups. Some scholars claim that Basque might be a long-lost relative of the Caucasian family, but this cannot be proven.

Southern:

Georgian

Western:

Kabardian, Circassian, Adygei, Abkhazian, Abazinian

Eastern:

Chechen, Ingush

Dagestan:

Avar, Lezgin, Dargin, Lak, Tabasaran

DRAVIDIAN family

The Dravidian languages were spoken over much the Indian sub-continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans about 1000 BCE. Today, they are mainly spoken in the southern India and southern Pakistan, with a few minor languages still spoken in pockets of central India, including:

Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gondi, Kurukh, Kui, Tulu, Brahui

East Asian super-family?

Over the last few centuries, scholars have tried to examine the links in vocabulary, phonology and grammar between the various languages of East Asia. Though links among the four major East Asian language families cannot yet be proven, modern linguists consider the East Asian language families to be linked in a chain of interrelated languages and language groups (shown below): 

Sino-Tibetan

Perhaps only two or three thousand years after the last glaciation, the early Sino-Tibetans moved from their homeland in northern Siberia into the Yellow and Yangtze River valleys, starting one of the greatest population explosions in history. It was probably here, with the domestication of rice about eight thousand years ago, that the resulting elaboration of cultures generated the three Southeast Asian language families as well.

Sinitic

Chinese, whose written history goes back 3500 years, consists of seven related but mutually unintelligible languages including:

Mandarin (Yellow River basin), Min Nan (Taiwan and Hainan), Min Pei (Fujian), Wu (Yangtze delta), Yüeh (Cantonese: Pearl River delta), Hakka (Guangxi), Gan (Shanxi), Hsiang (Hunan)

Tibeto-Burman

Tibetic:   

Tibetan, Balti, Bahing, Vayu, Mishing, Dhimal

Baric:     

Bodo, Garo

Burmic:  

Burmese, Yi (Lolo), Nakhi (Moso), Kachin, Kuki-Chin, Meithei, Lushei, Lepcha

Karenic:  

Karen, Lahu, Akha, Lisu, Pa-o, Palaychi

Tai-Kadai family

Traditionally assumed to be branches of the Sino-Tibetan family, though never conclusively proven, the Daic and Miao-Yao groups are generally now considered as a separate family, sharing some characteristics with the Sinitic and the Austronesian languages.

Tai-speaking peoples occupy a mottled band stretching across Thailand, Laos, northern Vietnam, into southern China and the island of Hainan. The Miao and Yao peoples have lived in the mountains of southern China since the beginning of Imperial history (where they were mentioned in government records). Many migrated into Southeast Asia during the last two centuries.

Tai (Daic)

Thai, Lao, Chuang, Puyi, Tung, Nung, Shan, Kadai, Kam-Sui

Miao-Yao

Mong (Miao), Mien (Yao)

AUSTROASIATIC family

Until recently, the three groups of Austro-Asiatic languages were considered to be separate families. Every recent study, however, confirms the underlying unity of this family. It seems that these families separated well over 4000 years ago and have, over time, undergone subsequent displacement by the Tai-Kadai, Sino-Tibetan and Indo-Aryan languages that surround them.

The Munda peoples live in pockets of isolation in eastern India. The Nicobarese people live in the Nicobar Islands, northwest of Sumatra. The Mon-Khmer peoples, who built an empire in the jungles of Southeast Asia five centuries ago, can still be heard in the national language of Cambodia, as are the Viet and Muong peoples, who form the bulk of modern Vietnam. The Vietnamese group, which shares many tonal characteristics with the Sino-Tibetan languages, was only recently considered to be part of this family.

Munda

Santali, Mundari, Ho, Savara, Korku, Khasi

Mon-Khmer

Khmer (Cambodian), Mon, Palaung, Bahnar, Sedang, Khasi

Nicobarese

Shompē

Vietnamese

Vietnamese, Muong

AUSTRONESIAN family

Indonesian:

Malay-Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Tagalog, Visayan, Malagasy, Balinese, Minankabau, Achinese, Batak, Buginese, Ilocano, Bikol, Pampangan, Pangasinian, Igirot, Maranao, Jarai, Rhade, Cham, Chamorro, Palau

Micronesian:

Marshallese, Gilbertese, Ponapean, Yap, Truk, Nauruan

Melanesian:

Fijian, Motu, Yabim, Tolai, Tetun

Polynesian:

Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Uvea, Tongan, Niuwean, Raratongan, Tuamotu, Marquesan

PAPUAN families

Hundreds of languages (loosely grouped into dozens of families) including:

Enga, Chimbu, Hagen, Kate in Papua New Guinea

Marind and Nimboran in West Irian; and Tolai and Baining in New Britain

AUSTRALIAN families

Classified into 27 families, the largest being Pama-Nyungan, consisting of about 200 languages originally spoken over most of Australia, including Aranda, Murngin. The 26 non-Pama-Nyungan families are mainly found in Arnhem Land and the Kimberleys.

AFRO-ASIATIC (Hamito-Semitic) family

Semitic

Arabic:

Arabic, Maltese

Canaanitic:

Hebrew

Aramaic:

Aramaic, Syriac, Assyrian

Ethiopic:

Amharic, Trigrinya, Tigre, Gurage, Harari, Geez

Berber

Shluh, Tamazight, Riffian, Kabyle, Shawia, Tuareg

Cushitic

Somali, Galla, Sidamo, Beja, Afar, Samo

Chadic

Hausa

Egyptian

Coptic

NIGER-KORDOFANIAN family

Western Sudanic

Mande:

Mende, Malinka, Bambara, Dyula, Soninke, Susu, Kpelle, Vai, Loma

Western Atlantic:

Fulani, Wolof, Serer, Dyola, Temne, Kissi, Gola, Balante

Voltaic:

Mossi, Gurma, Dagomba, Kabre, Senufo, Bariba

Kwa:

Yoruba, Ibo, Ewe, Twi, Fanti, Ga, Adangme, Fon, Edo, Urhobo, Idoma, Nupe, Agni, Baule, Kru, Grebo, Bassa

Benue-Congo

Bantu:

Swahili, Luba, Kongo, Lingala, Mongo, Ruanda, Rundi, Kikuyu, Kamba, Sukuma, Nyamwesi, Hehe, Chagga, Makonde, Ganda, Nkole, Chiga, Gisu, Toro, Nyoroi, Nyanja, Tumbuka, Bemba, Tonga, Lozi, Lwena, Lunda, Shona, Fang, Bulu, Yaundé, Duala, Bubi, Mbundu, Chokwe, Ambo, Herero, Makua, Thonga, Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Swazi, Zulu, Xhosa, Venda

Efik:

Efik, Ibibio, Tiv

Adamawa-Eastern

Adamawa:

Mbum, Ijo

Eastern:

Zande, Sango, Gbaya, Banda

Nilo-Saharan families:

Chari-Nile (Macro-Sudanic)

Nubian, Luo, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Lango, Acholi, Alur, Teso, Karamojong, Masai, Turkana, Bari, Lotuko, Nandi, Suk (Pokot)

Saharan

Kanuri, Teda, Songhai, Djerma

Maban

Maba, Fur

Khoi-san family

Bushman, Hottentot, Sandawe, Hatsa

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NORTH AMERICAN families:

A large number of language families are found in North and South America. There are numerous proposals which group these into larger units, some of which will probably be demonstrated in time. To date no New World language has been proven to be related to any Old World family.

Eskimo-Aleut

Inupik, Yupik, Aleut

Na-Dené (Athapascan)

Navajo, Apache, Chipewyan, Carrier, Chilcotin, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida

Wakashan-Salishan

Nootka, Kwakiutl, Flathead, Lillooet, Shuswap, Thompson, Okanagan

Algonkian

Cree, Ojibwa (Chippewa), Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Naskapi, Micmac, Arapaho, Delaware, Fox, Passamaquoddy

Iroquoian

Mohawk, Oneida, Cherokee, Seneca

Siouan-Caddoan

Dakota, Assiniboin, Winnebago, Crow, Omaha, Osage, Pawnee

Muskogean

Choctaw, Cickasaw, Creek, Mikasuki (Seminole)

Uto-Aztecan

Nahuatl (Aztec), Hopi, Comanche, Paiute, Papago, Pima, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, Tarahumara, Mayo, Keresan, Tewa, Towa, Zuñi

Oto-Manguean

Otomi, Mazahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, Mazatec, Chinantec, Tarasco, Mixe, Zoque, Totonac

Penutian-Mayan

Yakima, Nez Perce, Klamath, Tsimshian, Yuma, Mohave Yacutec (Maya), Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Chontal, Huastec, Quiché, Mam, Cakchiquel, Kekchi

South American families

Macro-Chibchan

Mosquito, Lenca, Guaymi, Cuna, Bribri, Cabecar

Ge-Pano-Carib

Carib, Ge, Panoan, Chiquito, Tacana

Andean Equatorial

Quechua, Aymara, Jivaro, Araucanian, Guarani, Tupi, Arawak

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Language Isolates

A number of languages around the world have never been successfully shown to be related to any others — in at least some cases because any related languages have long been extinct.

The most famous isolates are:

Basque

-spoken in northern Spain and southern France

Ainu

-still spoken by the aboriginal inhabitants of Hokkaido in Japan

Burushaski

-spoken in north-western Kashmir.

These have apparently survived successive waves of Indo-European and Altaic-speaking peoples over millennia.

Japanese and Korean are considered by some linguists to be isolates, although there is evidence that they are related to each other, and probably to the Altaic languages. Vietnamese and its sister-language, Muong, have been linked to the Sino-Tibetan and Mon-Khmer families, and are usually now considered to form part of the Austroasiatic group.

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Pidgins and Creoles

Pidgins and Creoles are languages that bridge the gap between people who could not otherwise communicate. A pidgin language is one with a much-reduced vocabulary based on a colonial language to which native words have been added. In some cases, it is a simplified form of a local language, often with borrowings from another. A pidgin language has no native speakers; that is, it is always spoken in addition to one’s mother tongue. When a pidgin eventually becomes the mother tongue of a group of people it is thereafter referred to as a Creole language. Creole languages have an expanded (or re-expanded) vocabulary to suit their users’ everyday needs.

Two pidgins, one based on English (Tok Pisin) and the other on a Melanesian language, Motu, (Police Motu) are used in Papua New Guinea by its linguistically various inhabitants.

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