Major language families. Language families

The development of languages can be compared to the process of reproduction of living organisms. In past centuries, their number was much smaller than today; there were so-called “proto-languages”, which were the ancestors of our modern speech. They broke up into many dialects, which were distributed throughout the planet, changing and improving. Thus, various language groups were formed, each of which descended from one “parent”. Based on this criterion, such groups are classified into families, which we will now list and briefly consider.

The largest family in the world

As you might have guessed, the Indo-European language group (more accurately, it is a family) consists of many subgroups that are spoken throughout much of the world. Its distribution area is the Middle East, Russia, all of Europe, as well as the countries of America that were colonized by the Spaniards and the British. Indo-European languages are divided into three categories:

Native speeches

Slavic language groups are very similar in both sound and phonetics. They all appeared at about the same time - in the 10th century, when they ceased to exist Old Slavonic language, invented by the Greeks - Cyril and Methodius - to write the Bible. In the 10th century, this language split, so to speak, into three branches, among which were the eastern, western and southern. The first of them included the Russian language (Western Russian, Nizhny Novgorod, Old Russian and many other dialects), Ukrainian, Belarusian and Rusyn. The second branch included Polish, Slovak, Czech, Slovinian, Kashubian and other dialects. The third branch is represented by Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Slovenian. These languages are common only in those countries where they are official, and Russian is the international one.

Sino-Tibetan family

This is the second largest language family, which covers the area of the entire Southern and South-East Asia. The main “protolanguage,” as you guessed, is Tibetan. All who come from him follow him. These are Chinese, Thai, Malay. Also language groups belonging to the Burmese regions, Bai language, Dungan and many others. Officially, there are about 300 of them. However, if you take into account adverbs, the number will be much higher.

Niger-Congo family

The linguistic groups of the peoples of Africa have a special phonetic system, and, of course, a special sound, unusual for us. Characteristic feature grammar here is the presence of nominal classes, which is not found in any Indo-European branch. Indigenous African languages are still spoken by people from the Sahara to the Kalahari. Some of them “assimilated” into English or French, some remained original. Among the main languages that can be found in Africa, we highlight the following: Rwanda, Makua, Shona, Rundi, Malawi, Zulu, Luba, Xhosa, Ibibio, Tsonga, Kikuyu and many others.

Afroasiatic or Semito-Hamitic family

There are language groups spoken in North Africa and the Middle East. It also still includes many of the dead languages of these peoples, such as Coptic. Of the currently existing dialects that have Semitic or Hamitic roots, the following can be named: Arabic (the most widespread in the territory), Amharic, Hebrew, Tigrinya, Assyrian, Maltese. Also often included here are the Chadian and Berber languages, which, in fact, are used in Central Africa.

Japanese-Ryukyuan family

It is clear that the distribution area of these languages is Japan itself and the adjacent Ryukyu Island. Until now, we have not finally figured out from which proto-language all those dialects that are now used by the inhabitants of the country originated Rising Sun. There is a version that this language originated in Altai, from where it spread, along with the inhabitants, to japanese islands, and then to America (the Indians had very similar dialects). There is also an assumption that the homeland Japanese language is China.

Languages and peoples. Today, the peoples of the world speak more than 3,000 languages. Forgotten languages there are about 4000, 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 the Northern and South China They speak different languages, but consider themselves to be of 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. By 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 as early as 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- Mongoloids, Southern and Central Europe - Caucasoids and Africa - 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. Genetic connection of certain ancient forms with the corresponding modern races can be traced using morphological comparisons of the skulls. 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 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

Other ancient race southern hemisphere - Australoid (Australian family). Australoids live in Australia and Melanesia. They have huge beards with black skin, Wavy hair, and broad shoulders, 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 the Middle 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 population globe. 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 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 identifying 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, the language of description and the 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 like this 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 existing classification(or to construct a classification where it does not exist yet) and assign an object to a specific taxon, the criterion of preserving the 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- upper a basic level of, 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 different families they do not have to be of the same level of depth, only their relative order within the same 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, but for the Austronesian ones, famous for their branching, they are not even enough.

Example of using taxa

taxon
family	Indo-European	Austronesian
subfamily	"European"	Malayo-Polynesian
above the branch		Central-East 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 (to 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 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

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

Wikimedia Foundation.

2010.

Most of the world's languages are grouped into families. A language family is a genetic linguistic association.
But there are isolated languages, i.e. those that do not belong to any known language family.

There are also unclassified languages, of which there are more than 100.

Language family

There are about 420 language families in total. Sometimes families are united into macro-families. But at present, only theories about the existence of the Nostratic and Afrasian macrofamilies have received reliable substantiation. Nostratic languages
- a hypothetical macrofamily of languages, uniting several language families and languages of Europe, Asia and Africa, including Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Uralic, and sometimes also Afroasiatic and Eskimo-Aleutian languages. All Nostratic languages go back to a single Nostratic parent language. Afroasiatic languages - a macrofamily of languages distributed in northern Africa from And Canary Islands to the Red Sea coast, as well as in Western Asia and on the island of Malta. Groups of speakers of Afroasiatic languages (mainly various dialects Arabic) are found in many countries outside their main range. Total number There are about 253 million speakers.

The existence of other macrofamilies remains only a scientific hypothesis that requires confirmation.
Family– this is a group of definitely, but quite distantly related languages that have at least 15% matches in the base list.

The language family can be figuratively represented as a tree with branches. Branches are groups of closely related languages. They do not have to be of the same level of depth, only their relative order within the same family is important. Let us consider this question using the example of the Indo-European family of languages.

Indo-European family

This is the most widespread language family in the world. It is represented on all inhabited continents of the Earth. The number of speakers exceeds 2.5 billion. The Indo-European family of languages is considered part of the macrofamily of Nostratic languages.
The term “Indo-European languages” was introduced by the English scientist Thomas Young in 1813.

Thomas Young
The languages of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language, whose speakers lived about 5-6 thousand years ago.
But it is impossible to name exactly where the Proto-Indo-European language originated; there are only hypotheses: regions such as Eastern Europe, Western Asia, steppe territories at the junction of Europe and Asia. With a high probability, the archaeological culture of the ancient Indo-Europeans can be considered the so-called “Yamnaya culture”, the bearers of which in the 3rd millennium BC. e. lived in the east modern Ukraine and southern Russia. This is a hypothesis, but it is supported by genetic studies indicating that the source of at least part of the Indo-European languages in Western and Central Europe was a wave of migration of speakers of the Yamnaya culture from the territory of the Black Sea and Volga steppes approximately 4,500 years ago.

The Indo-European family includes the following branches and groups: Albanian, Armenian, as well as Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Romance, Illyrian, Greek, Anatolian (Hittite-Luvian), Iranian, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, Nuristan and Tocharian languages groups (Italic, Illyrian, Anatolian and Tocharian groups are represented only by dead languages).
If we consider the place of the Russian language in the taxonomy of the Indo-European language family by level, it will look something like this:

Indo-European family
↓
Branch: Balto-Slavic
↓
Group: Slavic
↓
Subgroup: East Slavic
↓
Language: Russian

Slavic

Isolated languages (isolates)

There are more than 100 of them. In fact, each isolated language forms a separate family, consisting only of that language. For example, Basque (northern regions of Spain and adjacent southern regions of France); Burushaski (this language is spoken by the Burish people living in the mountainous regions of Hunza (Kanjut) and Nagar in northern Kashmir); Sumerian (the language of the ancient Sumerians, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia in the 4th-3rd millennia BC); Nivkh (the language of the Nivkhs, widespread in the northern part of Sakhalin Island and in the basin of the Amguni River, a tributary of the Amur); Elamite (Elam is a historical region and ancient state(III millennium - mid-VI century BC) in the southwest of modern Iran); Hadza (in Tanzania) languages are isolated. Only those languages are called isolated for which there is sufficient data and inclusion in the language family has not been proven for them, even after intensive attempts to do so.

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 related languages originate from the same language ( language - ancestor). The relatedness of languages began to be studied in eighteenth century and started with research ancient language 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. Exists special card 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.