Language family. Major language families of the world
I think many of us have heard the famous legend about the construction of the Tower of Babel, during which people angered God so much with their quarrels and squabbles that he divided their single language into a great multitude, so that, not being able to communicate with each other, people could not swear. . This is how we spread throughout the world, each nation with its own linguistic dialect, its own culture and traditions.
According to official data, there are now from 2,796 to more than 7,000 languages in the world. Such a big difference comes from the fact that scientists cannot decide what exactly is considered a language and what is a dialect or adverb. Translation agencies are often faced with the nuances of translation from rare languages.
In 2017, there are approximately 240 language groups, or families. The largest and most numerous of them is Indo-European, to which our Russian language belongs. A language family is a collection of languages united by the sound similarity of word roots and similar grammar. The basis of the Indo-European family is English and German, which form the backbone of the Germanic group. In general, this language family unites peoples occupying the bulk of Europe and Asia.
This also includes such common Romance languages as Spanish, French, Italian and others. The Russian language is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family, along with Ukrainian, Belarusian and others. The Indo-European group is not the most numerous in terms of the number of languages, but they are spoken by almost half of the world’s population, which gives it the opportunity to bear the title of “the most numerous”.
The next family of languages includes more than 250,000 people: Afro-Asian a family that includes Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages, including extinct ones. This group consists of more than 300 languages of Asia and Africa, and is divided into Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, Omotian, Chadian and Berber-Libyan branches. However, the Afro-Asiatic family of languages does not include about 500 dialects and dialects, which are often used in Africa only orally.
Next in terms of prevalence and complexity of study - Nilo-Saharan a family of languages spoken in Sudan, Chad, and Ethiopia. Since the languages of these lands have significant differences among themselves, their study is not only of great interest, but also great difficulties for linguists.
Over a million native speakers include Sino-Tibetan a group of languages, but Tibeto-Burmese The branch includes more than 300 languages, spoken by as many as 60 million people around the world! Some of the languages of this family still do not have their own written language and exist only in oral form. This makes them much more difficult to study and research.
The languages and dialects of the peoples of Russia belong to 14 language families, the main of which are Indo-European, Uralic, North Caucasian and Altai.
- About 87% of the population of Russia belongs to the Indo-European language family, and 85% of it is occupied by the Slavic group of languages (Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Ukrainians), followed by the Iranian group (Tajiks, Kurds, Ossetians), the Romance group (Gypsies, Moldovans) and Germanic group (Jews, Yiddish speakers, Germans).
- The Altai language family (approximately 6.8% of the Russian population) consists of the Turkic group (Altaians, Yakuts, Tuvinians, Shors, Chuvash, Balkars, Karachais), the Mongolian group (Kalmyks, Buryats), the Tungus-Manchu group (Evenks, Evens, Nanais) and the Paleo-Asian group of languages (Koryaks, Chukchis). Some of these languages are currently in danger of extinction, as their speakers are partly switching to Russian, partly to Chinese.
- The Uralic language family (2% of the population) is represented by the Finnish group of languages (Komi, Margaitians, Karelians, Komi-Permyaks, Mordovians), Ugric (Khanty, Mansi) and Samoyedic groups (Nenets, Selkups). More than 50% of the Uralic language family are Hungarians and about 20% are Finns. This includes linguistic groups of peoples living in areas of the Ural Range.
The Caucasian language family (2%) includes the Kartvelian group (Georgians), the Dagestan group (Lezgins, Dargins, Laks, Avars), the Adyghe-Abkhazian (Abkhazians, Adygeis, Kabardians, Circassians) and the Nakh groups (Ingush, Chechens). The study of the languages of the Caucasian family is associated with great difficulties for linguists, and therefore the languages of the local population are still very little studied.
Difficulties are caused not only by the grammar or rules for constructing the language of a given family, but also by pronunciation, which is often simply inaccessible to people who do not speak this type of language. Certain difficulties in terms of study are also created by the inaccessibility of some mountainous regions of the North Caucasus.
language families of the world
The following classifications (+maps) are based on Merritt Ruhlen's book " Guide to the languages of the world" (A Guide to the World's Languages), published by Stanford University Press in 1987), which in turn relies heavily on the work of the great linguist Joseph Greenberg, who died on May 7, 2001. Maps and statistics are only an approximation of reality. Mistakes are allowed.
Khoisan family
There are about 30 languages in this family, spoken by about 100,000 people. The Khoisan family includes the peoples we call Bushmen and Hottentots.
Niger-Kordofanian family
The largest sub-Saharan African family of languages, it includes 1,000 languages with up to 200 million speakers. The most famous languages are Mandinka, Swahili, Yoruba and Zulu.
Nilo-Saharan family
This family is approx. 140 languages and 10 million native speakers. The most famous language: Maasai, spoken by the warlike nomads of East Africa.
Afro-Asian family
This is a large language group, which includes 240 languages spoken by 250 million speakers. It includes: Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as the famous Nigerian language Hausa. Some speak ok. 200 million people!
Indo-European family (including isolates: Basque, Burushaski and Nakhali)
The only major language family, Indo-European, which includes ca. 150 languages with 1 billion native speakers. Among the languages of this family: Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), German (100 million), Russian (300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and America. The number of English speakers around the world may reach 1 billion.
In the region of distribution of this family of languages, there are 3 isolates that cannot be assigned to any family: Basque language living in the territory between France and Spain, Burushaski and impudent that are located on the Indian Peninsula.
Caucasian family
There are 38 in total Caucasian languages, they are spoken by approximately 5 million people. The most famous: Abkhazian and Chechen.
Kartvelian languages are considered by many linguists as a separate family, possibly related to the Indo-European family. This includes the Georgian language.
Dravidian family
These are ancient languages India, total ok. 25, number of speakers 150 million people. The most famous languages of this family are Tamil and Telugu.
Ural-Yukaghir family
This family includes 20 languages with a number of speakers of 20 million. The most famous languages are: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Sami - the language of the Laplanders.
Altaic family (including Ket and Gilat isolates)
The Altai family includes about 60 languages, spoken by about 250 million people. This family includes Turkish and Mongolian languages.
There is a lot of discussion going on regarding this family. The first controversial issue is how to classify the Altaic and Uralic languages (see above), since they have a similar grammatical structure.
The second controversial issue: many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included in this family, or even that these three languages are related to each other!
Isolates are also presented here: Ket and Gilyak languages.
Chukchi-Kamchatka family ("Paleo-Siberian") family
Perhaps this is the smallest family, with only 5 languages spoken by 23,000 speakers. The distribution area of these languages is the northeastern part of Siberia. Many linguists believe that these are two different families.
Sino-Tibetan family
A very significant language family, which includes about 250 languages. Only 1 billion people speak!
Miao-Yao languages, Austro-Asiatic and Dai family
Austro-Asiatic (Munda languages in India and Mon-Khmer languages in southeast Asia) includes 150 languages spoken by 60 million people, including Vietnamese.
The Miao-Yao family of languages consists of 4 languages spoken by 7 million people living in southern China and Southeast Asia.
There are 60 languages and 50 million speakers in the Dai family, which includes the Thai language (Siamese).
These three language families are sometimes combined with the Austronesian family (below) into a hyperfamily called Austrian ( Austrian). On the other hand, some linguists consider the Miao-Yao and Dai families to be related to the Chinese languages.
Austronesian family
This family includes 1,000 different languages spoken by 250 million people. Malay and Indonesian (essentially the same language) are spoken by approx. 140 million. Other languages in this family include: Madagascar in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of Formosa Island (Taiwan) - now almost replaced by the Chinese language - and many languages of the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the North Pacific to Maori in New Zealand.
Indian-Pacific and Australian families
The Indian-Pacific family includes approx. 700 languages, most of them are widespread on the island of New Guinea, the number of speakers of these languages is approximately 3 million. Many linguists do not believe that all these languages are related to each other. In fact, some of them haven't even been studied! On the other hand, some believe that this family may also include the Tasmanian language - now extinct.
It is possible that the 170 Australian Aboriginal languages also belong to this family. Unfortunately, only 30,000 speakers of these languages remain today.
Eskimo-Aleut family
The Eskimo-Aleut family of languages consists of 9 languages spoken approx. 85,000 people. The Inuit language plays a key role today in administration in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and the Canadian territory of Nunavut.
Na-Dene family of languages
This family includes 34 languages with approx. 200,000 people. The most famous examples are Tlingit, Haida, Navajo and Apache.
Amerind family (North America)
Although many linguists do not accept the idea of combining all Northern (except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages) and South American Indian languages into one family, they are often combined for convenience. The Amerindian family includes almost 600 languages spoken by more than 20 million people. In North America, the most famous languages are: Ojibwe, Cree, Dakota (or Sioux), Cherokee and Iroquois, Hopi and Nahuatl (or Aztec), as well as the Mayan languages.
Amerind family (South America)
The language map of South America includes some of the North American subfamilies and others. The most famous languages are Quechua (the language of the Inca Indians), Guarani and Caribbean. The Andean subfamily of languages (which includes Quechua) has almost 9 million speakers!
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. The same Spanish language is spoken by several different Latin American peoples. The same can be said about the Norwegians and Danes, who have a common literary language. At the same time, residents of Northern and Southern China speak different languages, but consider themselves to be the same ethnic group.
Each of the major literary languages of Europe (French, Italian, English, German) dominates a territory that is linguistically much less homogeneous than the territory of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples (L. Gumilyov, 1990). The Saxons and Tyroleans hardly understand each other, and the Milanese and Sicilians do not understand each other at all. The English of Northumberland speak a language close to Norwegian, as they are descendants of the Vikings who settled in England. The Swiss speak German, French, Italian and Romansh.
The French speak four languages: French, Celtic (Bretons), Basque (Gascons) and Provençal. Linguistic differences between them can be traced from the beginning of the Romanization of Gaul.
Taking into account their intra-ethnic differences, the French, Germans, Italians, and British should be compared not with Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, but with all Eastern Europeans. At the same time, such systems of ethnic groups as the Chinese or Indians correspond not to the French, Germans or Ukrainians, but to Europeans as a whole (L. Gumilyov, 1990).
All languages of the peoples of the world belong to certain language families, each of which unites languages similar in linguistic structure and origin. The process of formation of language families is associated with the isolation of different peoples from each other in the process of human settlement across 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 three human races at the beginning of the 19th century - 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 put on a pedestal by the French Comte de Gobineau in a book with the provocative title “Treatise on the Inequality of Human Races.” The word “Indo-European” over time was transformed into “Indo-Germanic”, and the ancestral home of the primitive “Indo-Germans” began to be sought in the region of the North European Plain, which at that time was part of the kingdom of Prussia. In the 20th century ideas about racial and national elitism turned into the bloodiest wars in human history.
By the middle of the 20th century. Many classifications of human races have developed - from two (Negroid and Mongoloid) to thirty-five. Most scientists write about four human races with the following centers of origin: the Greater Sunda Islands - the homeland of the Australoids, East Asia - the Mongoloids, Southern and Central Europe - the Caucasoids, and Africa - the Negroids.
All these races, their languages and centers of origin are correlated by some researchers with different original hominids. The ancestors of the Australoids are Javan Pithecanthropus, the Mongoloids are Sinanthropus, the Negroids are African Neanderthals, and the Caucasoids are European Neanderthals. The genetic connection of certain ancient forms with the corresponding modern races can be traced using morphological comparisons of craniums. Mongoloids, for example, are similar to Sinanthropus with a flattened face, Caucasians are similar to European Neanderthals with strongly protruding nasal bones, and the broad nose makes Negroids similar to African Neanderthals (V. Alekseev, 1985). In the Paleolithic, people were the same black, white, yellow as they are today, with the same differentiation of skulls and skeletons. This means that intercivilizational differences go back to ancient times, to the beginning of the human race. These should also include interlingual differences.
The oldest finds of representatives of the Negroid race were discovered not in Africa, but in Southern France, in the Grimaldi Cave near Nice, and in Abkhazia, in the Kholodny Grotto. An admixture of Negroid blood is found not only among Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, residents of the south of France and the Caucasus, but also among residents of the north-west - in Ireland (L. Gumilyov, 1997).
Classical Negroids belong to the Niger-Kordofanian language family, which began to populate Central Africa from North Africa and Western Asia quite late - somewhere at the beginning of our era.
Before the arrival of the Negroids (Fulani, Bantu, Zulus) in Africa, the territory south of the Sahara was inhabited by the Kapoids, representatives of a recently identified race, which included the Hottentots and Bushmen, belonging to the Khoisan language family. Unlike blacks, capoids are not black, but brown: they have Mongoloid facial features, they speak not while exhaling, but while inhaling, and are sharply different from both blacks and Europeans and Mongoloids. They are considered a remnant of some ancient race of the southern hemisphere, which was displaced from the main areas of its settlement by Negroids (L. Gumilyov, 1997). Then many Negroids were transported to America by slave traders
Another ancient race of the southern hemisphere is the Australoid (Australian family). Australoids live in Australia and Melanesia. With black skin, they have huge beards, wavy hair, and broad shoulders, and exceptional reaction speed. Their closest relatives lived in southern India and belong to the Dravidian language family (Tamil, Telugu).
Representatives of the Caucasoid (white race), belonging mainly to the Indo-European language family, inhabited not only, as now, Europe, Western Asia and the North of India, but also almost the entire Caucasus, a significant part of Central and Central Asia and Northern Tibet.
The largest ethnolinguistic groups of the Indo-European language family in Europe are Romance (French, Italians, Spaniards, Romanians), Germanic (Germans, English), Slavic (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs). They inhabit North Asia (Russians), North America (Americans), South Africa (immigrants from England and Holland), Australia and New Zealand (immigrants from England), and a significant part of South America (Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin Americans).
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 in 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.
There are about 3,000 languages all over the world; no one has yet been able to calculate the exact number. Although, according to available UNESCO data, there are 2,796 languages in the world. Seeing the exact figure, any linguist will smile, not because the exact number of languages in the world was counted, but from what was counted. All over the world there are many mixed languages and languages that are extinct or languages of small tribes that are not officially listed anywhere. In this regard, it is practically impossible to calculate the exact number of languages. But linguists managed to distribute all the languages of the world into groups or families.
Many different languages are similar to each other, for example, a citizen of Russia can communicate with a citizen of Belarus and Ukraine, or vice versa, and everyone will be able to understand each other. Basically, the languages of those peoples whose lands border each other or by the ethnic origin of the countries are similar. As we know, 1000 years ago, in the territory where Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are now located, there were the lands of Kievan Rus. And the ancestors of the above countries communicated in the same Old Church Slavonic language. Until our time, the borders have changed, and in place of Kievan Rus, three new states grew up: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Map of the distribution of languages of Ukraine
Chinese dialect map
Indigenous languages of South America
Arabic dialects
Dialects of the Russian language
Map of African languages
German dialect map
Map of Finno-Ugric languages
Map of Slavic languages
Map of Indian languages
Language families and groups
Currently, linguists distinguish the following families and groups of languages:
- Indian group. This is the largest group in terms of number of speakers, as Indian languages are spoken by more than 1 billion people. This group includes the languages of Central and Northern India, as well as Pakistan. You can also include the gypsies who moved to Europe from India in the 5th - 10th centuries into this group. n. e. Of the extinct languages, this group includes the ancient Indian language - Sanskrit. The famous epic poem of ancient India, the Mahabharata, was written in this language.
- Iranian group. The languages of this group are spoken in Iran (Persian) and Afghanistan (Afghan). In this group there is a dead Scythian language.
- Slavic group. This includes a large number of different languages, which are usually further divided into subgroups.
- eastern subgroup; Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages
- Western subgroup; Polish, Slovak, Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian and Polabian which is a dead language
- southern subgroup; Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic which is also a dead language
- Baltic group. This group speaks Latvian and Lithuanian.
- German group. This group includes almost all the languages of Western Europe; Scandinavian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic), English, German, Dutch and modern Jewish language Yiddish. Among all the above languages in this group, English is the most widely spoken and is spoken by more than 400 million people. USA - 215 million, UK 58 million, Canada 33.5 million, Australia - 20 million, Ireland - 4 million, South Africa - 4 million, New Zealand 3.6 million. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Regarding the Yiddish language, we can say that almost all Jews speak it. One of the languages of the Germanic group, Boer, is widespread in South Africa thanks to immigrants from Holland.
- Roman group. French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. This group also includes Provençal, Sardinian (island of Sardinia), Catalan (Eastern Spain) and Moldavian.
- Celtic group. The languages of this group are spoken in Ireland and on the nearby islands, as well as on the Brittany peninsula of France (Breton language), in Wales (Welsh language). The dead languages of this group include the language of the ancient Gauls, who lived on the territory of modern France.
In addition to the above groups, Greek, Albanian and Armenian languages are separately distinguished, which are classified as Indo-European languages. Also included in this group are such dead languages as Hittite (Asia Minor) and Tocharian (the territory of Central Asia).
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE
STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY
MAIN LANGUAGE FAMILIES
Performed
5th year student
OKU "Master"
specialties
"Language and Literature
(English)"
Introduction
1. Indo-European languages
1.1. Indo-Aryan languages
1.2. Iranian languages
1.3. Romance languages
1.4. Celtic languages
1.5. Germanic languages
1.6. Baltic languages
1.7. Slavic languages
1.8. Armenian language
1.9. Greek language
2. Sino-Tibetan family
3. Finno-Ugric family
4. Turkic family
5. Semitic-Hamitic (Afroasiatic) family
List of used literature
Introduction
It should be noted that there are about 20 language families in total. The largest of them is the Indo-European family, whose languages are spoken by approximately 45% of the world's population. Its distribution area is also the largest. It covers Europe, South-West and South Asia, North and South America, Australia. The largest group within this family is the Indo-Aryan, which includes the languages Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, etc. The Romance group is also very large, including Spanish, Italian, French and some other languages. The same can be said about the Germanic group (English, German and a number of other languages), the Slavic group (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, etc.), the Iranian group (Persian, Tajik, Baluchi, etc.).
The second largest number of speakers is the Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) family, whose languages are used by 22% of all inhabitants of the planet. It is clear that the Chinese language provides it with such a large share in the world.
The large ones also include the Niger-Kordofanian family (distributed in Africa, south of the Sahara), the Afroasiatic family (mainly in the Near and Middle East), the Austronesian family (mainly in Southeast Asia and Oceania), the Dravidian family (in South Asia), Altai family (in Asia and Europe).
Currently, there are more than two and a half thousand languages. The exact number of languages has not been established, as this is a very difficult process. There are still territories that are poorly studied linguistically. These include some areas of Australia, Oceania, and South America. Therefore, the study and research of the origin of languages is very relevant.
1. AndNdo-European languages
Indo-European languages represent one of the largest families of languages in Eurasia (about 200 languages). They have spread over the last five centuries also to North and South America, Australia and partly to Africa. The most active was the expansion of the languages of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Russian, which led to the appearance of Indo-European speech on all continents. The top 20 most widely spoken languages (counting both their native speakers and those using them as a second language in interethnic and international communication) now include English, Hindi and Urdu, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, French, Punjabi, Italian, Ukrainian.
The Indo-European (according to the tradition accepted among German scientists, Indo-Germanic) family of languages is the most well studied: based on the study of its languages in the 20s. 19th century Comparative historical linguistics began to take shape, the research methods and techniques of which were then transferred to other language families. The founders of Indo-European studies and comparative studies include the Germans Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, the Dane Rasmus Christian Rask and the Russian Alexander Khristoforovich Vostokov.
Comparativists aim to establish the nature and degree of similarity (primarily material, but also to some extent typological) of the languages under study, to find out the ways of its origin (from a common source or due to convergence as a result of long-term contacts) and the reasons for divergence (divergence) and convergence (convergence) between languages of the same family, reconstruct the proto-linguistic state (in the form of a set of archetypes as a kind of matrix in which accumulated knowledge about the internal structure of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European is recorded) and trace the directions of subsequent development.
Today, it is most often believed that the area of the original or fairly early distribution of speakers of the Indo-European language extended from Central Europe and the Northern Balkans to the Black Sea region (southern Russian steppes). At the same time, some researchers believe that the initial center of irradiation of Indo-European languages and cultures lay in the Middle East, in close proximity to the speakers of Kartvelian, Afroasiatic and, probably, Dravidian and Ural-Altaic languages. Traces of these contacts give rise to the Nostratic hypothesis.
Indo-European linguistic unity could have its source either in a single proto-language, a base language (or, rather, a group of closely related dialects), or in a situation of linguistic union as a result of the development of a number of initially different languages. Both perspectives, in principle, do not contradict each other; one of them usually gains predominance in a certain period of development of a linguistic community.
Relations between members of the Indo-European family were constantly changing due to frequent migrations, and therefore the currently accepted classification of Indo-European languages must be adjusted when referring to different stages in the history of this linguistic community. Earlier periods are characterized by the proximity of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian, Baltic and Slavic languages, the proximity of Italic and Celtic is less noticeable. The Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, Albanian languages have many common features with Indo-Iranian languages, and the Italic and Celtic languages with Germanic, Venetian and Illyrian.
The main features characterizing the relatively ancient state of the Indo-European source language:
a) In phonetics: functioning of [e] and [o] as variants of one phoneme; the probability that vowels at an earlier stage lack phonemic status; [a] special role in the system; the presence of laryngeals, the disappearance of which led to the opposition of long and short vowels, as well as to the appearance of melodic stress; distinguishing between voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops; the difference between the three rows of back linguals, the tendency towards palatalization and labialization of consonants in certain positions;
b) In morphology: heteroclitic declension; the probable presence of an ergative (active) case; a relatively simple case system and the later appearance of a number of indirect cases from combinations of a name with a postposition, etc.; the proximity of the nominative with -s and the genitive with the same element; the presence of an “indefinite” case; the opposition of animate and inanimate classes, which gave rise to the three-genus system; the presence of two series of verb forms, which led to the development of thematic and athematic conjugation, transitivity/intransitivity, activity/inactivity; the presence of two series of personal endings of the verb, which became the reason for the differentiation of present and past tenses and mood forms; the presence of forms in -s, which led to the appearance of one of the classes of present stems, the sigmatic aorist, a number of mood forms and a derivative conjugation;
With) In syntax: interdependence of places of sentence members; the role of particles and preverbs; the beginning of the transition of a number of full-valued words into service elements; some initial features of analyticism.
1 .1 Indo-Aryan languages
Indo-Aryan languages (Indian) are a group of related languages that go back to the ancient Indian language.
The Indo-Aryan (Indian) languages (more than 40) include: the Apabhransha group of languages, Assami languages, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Vedic, Gujarati, Magahi, Maithili, Maldivian, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pali, Punjabi, Pahari group of languages, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Sindhi, Urdu, Hindi, Romani. Areas of distribution of living Indian languages: northern and central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal. The total number of speakers is 770 million people.
All of them go back to the ancient Indian language and, together with the Iranian, Dardic and Nuristan languages, belong to the Indo-Iranian linguistic community. The most ancient period of development is represented by the Vedic language (the language of worship, from the 12th century BC) and Sanskrit (epic period: 3-2 centuries BC; epigraphic period: first centuries AD; classical period: 4- 5th century AD) language Turkic Indo-European grammar
Features of modern Indian languages:
a)INphonetics: number of phonemes from 30 to 50: preservation of aspirated and cerebral consonant classes; the rarity of contrasting long and short vowels; lack of initial combination of consonants;
b)INmorphology: loss of old inflection, development of analytical forms and creation of new inflection;
c)INsyntax: fixed verb position; widespread use of function words;
d)INvocabulary: the presence of words dating back to Sanskrit and external borrowings (from non-Aryan languages of India, from Arabic, Persian, English); the formation of a number of local language unions (Himalayan, etc.); the presence of numerous alphabets, historically dating back to Brahmi.
1 .2 Iranian languages
Iranian languages are a group of languages dating back to the reconstructed ancient Iranian language, part of the Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. Iranian languages are spoken in the Middle East, Central Asia, Pakistan and the Caucasus among the Iranian peoples, whose population is currently estimated at approximately 150 million.
The Iranian languages (more than 60) include Avestan, Azeri, Alan, Bactrian, Bashkardi, Balochi, Vanj, Wakhan, Gilan, Dari, Old Persian, Zaza (language/dialect), Ishkashim, Kumzari (language/dialect), Kurdish, Mazanderan, Median, Munjan, Ormuri, Ossetian, group of Pamir languages, Parachi, Parthian, Persian, Pashto/Pashto, Sangisari language/dialect, Sargulyam, Semnan, Sivendi (language/dialect), Scythian, Sogdian, Middle Persian, Tajik, Tajrishi ( language/dialect), Talysh, Tat, Khorezm, Khotanosak, Shugnan-Rushan group of languages, Yaghnobi, Yazgulyam, etc.
Features of Iranian languages:
a)in phonetics: preservation in ancient Iranian languages of the subsequently lost correlation of duration; preservation in consonantism mainly of the proto-language system; the development in later languages of correlations based on aspiration, which are presented differently in different languages.
b)in morphology: at the ancient stage - inflectional formation and ablaut of the root and suffix; diversity of declension and conjugation; trinity of the system of number and gender; multi-case inflectional paradigm; the use of inflections, suffixes, augments, and different types of stems to construct verb forms; rudiments of analytical structures; in later languages - unification of types of formation; extinction of ablaut; binary systems of number and gender (up to the extinction of gender in a number of languages); formation of new verbal analytical and secondary inflectional forms based on participles; variety of person and number indicators of the verb; new formal indicators of passive, voice, aspect characteristics, time.
c)in syntax: the presence of a safe structure; the presence of ergative sentence construction in a number of languages.
The first written monuments from the 6th century. BC. Cuneiform for Old Persian; Middle Persian (and a number of other languages) monuments (from the 2nd-3rd centuries AD) in a variety of Aramaic writing; a special alphabet based on Middle Persian for Avestan texts.
1 .3 Romance languages
Romance languages are a group of languages and dialects that are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family and genetically go back to a common ancestor - Latin. The name Romanesque comes from the Latin word Romanus (Roman).
The Romance group unites the languages that emerged from Latin:
· Aromanian (Aromunian),
· Galician,
· Gascony,
· Dalmatian (extinct at the end of the 19th century),
· Spanish,
· Istro-Romanian,
· Italian,
· Catalan,
· Ladino (language of the Jews of Spain),
Megleno-Romanian (Meglenitic),
· Moldavian,
· Portuguese,
· Provençal (Occitan),
Romansh they include: Swiss, or Western, Romansh / Graubünden / Courvalian / Romansh, represented by at least two varieties - the Surselvian / Obwaldian and Upper Engadine languages, sometimes subdivided into a larger number of languages;
· Tyrolean, or Central, Romansh / Ladin / Dolomitic / Trentino and
· Friulian/Eastern Romansh, often classified as a separate group,
· Romanian,
· Sardinian (Sardinian),
· French-Provençal,
· French.
Literary languages have their own variants: French - in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada; Spanish - in Latin America, Portuguese - in Brazil.
More than 10 creole languages arose from French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
In Spain and Latin American countries, these languages are often called neo-Latin. The total number of speakers is about 580 million people. More than 60 countries use Romance languages as national or official languages.
Areas of distribution of Romance languages:
· “Old Romania”: Italy, Portugal, almost all of Spain, France, southern Belgium, western and southern Switzerland, the main territory of Romania, almost all of Moldova, isolated inclusions in northern Greece, southern and northwestern Yugoslavia;
· “New Romania”: part of North America (Quebec in Canada, Mexico), almost all of Central America and South America, most of the Antilles;
· Countries that were former colonies, where Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese), without displacing local ones, became official - almost all of Africa, small territories in South Asia and Oceania.
Romance languages are a continuation and development of folk Latin speech in the territories that became part of the Roman Empire. Their history is marked by tendencies towards differentiation (divergence) and integration (convergence).
Main features of Romance languages:
a)in phonetics: the general Romance system has 7 vowels (the greatest preservation in Italian); development of specific vowels (nasals in French and Portuguese, labialized front vowels in French, Provençal, Romansh; mixed vowels in Balkan-Romanian); formation of diphthongs; reduction of unstressed vowels (especially final ones); neutralization of openness/closedness e And O in unstressed syllables; simplification and transformation of consonant groups; the emergence as a result of palatalization of affricates, which in some languages became fricatives; weakening or reduction of the intervocalic consonant; weakening and reduction of the consonant in the outcome of the syllable; a tendency towards open syllables and limited compatibility of consonants; a tendency to phonetically link words in the speech stream (especially in French);
b)in morphology: maintaining inflection with a strong tendency towards analyticism; the name has 2 numbers, 2 genders, no case category (except for Balkan-Roman ones), transfer of object relations by prepositions; variety of article forms; preservation of the case system for pronouns; agreement of adjectives with names in gender and number; formation of adverbs from adjectives using the suffix -mente (except Balkan-Romanian); an extensive system of analytical verb forms; the typical Romance verb scheme contains 16 tenses and 4 moods; 2 pledges; peculiar non-personal forms;
c)in syntax: word order is fixed in some cases; the adjective usually follows the noun; determiners precede the verb (except for Balkan-Romance ones).
1 .4 Celtic languages
The Celtic group is formed by the languages Breton, Welsh (Cymric), Gaulish, Gaelic, Irish, Celtiberian, Cornish, Cumbrian, Lepontian, Man(k), Pictish, Scottish (Erish). In the 1st millennium BC. Celtic languages were spread over a large part of Europe (now part of Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, northern Italy), reaching in the east to the Carpathians and through the Balkans to Asia Minor. Later, their distribution area was greatly reduced; the Manx, Cornish, Celtiberian, Lepontian, and Gaulish languages became extinct. The living languages are Irish, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. Irish is one of the official languages in Ireland. Welsh is used in the press and on radio, Breton and Gaelic are used in everyday communication.
The vocalism of New Celtic languages is characterized by interaction with neighboring consonants. As a result of this, rounding, palatalization, reversal, narrowing, contact nasalization, etc., became widespread (in diachrony and synchrony). Some of these phenomena, as the causes that caused them disappear, turn into morphological means for expressing number, case, kind, etc.
The island languages deviate sharply from the ancient Indo-European type: numerous combinatorial changes (aspiration, palatalization and labialization of consonants); infixation of pronouns in verb forms; "conjugated" prepositions; specific use of verbal names; word order. These and many other features make the Celtic languages stand out among the Indo-European languages. languages (explanations: influence of non-Indo-European substrate; historical innovations). Preservation of a number of archaic features. Changes in living languages: loss of the opposition of personal absolute and conjunctive verb endings in many tenses and moods (Irish).
1.5 Germanic languages
Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family. Distributed in a number of Western European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), Northern. America (USA, Canada), southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia), Asia (India), Australia, New Zealand. The total number of native speakers is about 550 million people.
Modern Germanic languages are divided into 2 subgroups: West Germanic and North Germanic (Scandinavian).
West Germanic languages include English, Frisian, High German (German), Dutch, Boer, Flemish, and Yiddish.
English language is the native language of the majority of the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain - England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. In addition, English is used as an official language in the Republic of South Africa, the Republic of India and Pakistan.
Frisian distributed among the population of the Friesland Islands in the North Sea. The literary Frisian language developed on the basis of West Frisian dialects.
High German is the native language of the population of Germany, Austria and a large part of Switzerland, as well as the literary language of the urban population of the northern regions of Germany; the rural population of these areas still speaks a distinct dialect called Low German or "Platdeutsch". In the Middle Ages, Low German was the language of an extensive folk literature that has come down to us in a number of artistic works.
Dutch Language is the native language of the Dutch people.
Afrikaans, also called "Afrikaans", spoken over a large area of the Republic of South Africa. The Boer language, close to Dutch, is spoken by the Boers or Afrikaners - descendants of Dutch colonists who left Holland in the 17th century.
Flemish very close to Dutch. It is spoken by the population of northern Belgium and parts of the Netherlands. Along with French, Flemish is the official language of the Belgian state.
Yiddish- the language of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, which developed in the 10th - 12th centuries on the basis of Middle High German dialects.
North Germanic languages include: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese.
Swedish is the native language of the Swedish people and the population of the coastal strip of Finland, where representatives of ancient Swedish tribes moved in the distant past. Of the Swedish dialects that currently exist, the dialect of the inhabitants of the island of Gotland, the so-called Gutnic dialect, stands out sharply for its peculiarities. Modern Swedish consists of German words written and arranged according to English grammar. The active Swedish vocabulary is not very large.
Danish is the native language of the Danish people and was for several centuries the state and literary language of Norway, which was part of the Danish state from the end of the 14th century. until 1814
Swedish and Danish, languages that were close in the past, but have diverged significantly from each other at the present time, are sometimes combined into a subgroup of East Scandinavian languages.
Norwegian, the native language of the Norwegian people, is spoken throughout Norway. Due to the special historical conditions of the development of the Norwegian people, who were forced to remain under Danish rule for almost 400 years, the development of the Norwegian language was greatly delayed. Currently, in Norway there is a process of formation of a single national Norwegian language, which, in its characteristics, occupies an intermediate position between the Swedish and Danish languages.
In Icelandic says the people of Iceland. The ancestors of modern Icelanders were Norwegians who settled here in the 10th century. Over the course of almost a thousand years of independent development, the Icelandic language acquired a number of new features that significantly distinguished it from the Norwegian language, and also retained many features characteristic of the Old Norse language, while the Norwegian language lost them. All this has led to the fact that the difference between the Norwegian and (New) Icelandic languages is currently very significant.
Faroese language, spoken in the Faroe Islands, which lie north of the Shetland Islands, like Icelandic, retains many of the features of the Old Norse language from which it broke off.
The languages Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are sometimes grouped together on the basis of their origins into one group called the West Scandinavian language group. However, the facts of the modern Norwegian language indicate that in its present state it is much closer to the Swedish and Danish languages than to Icelandic and Faroese.
Distinctive features of the Germanic languages:
a)in phonetics: dynamic stress on the first (root) syllable; reduction of unstressed syllables; assimilative variation of vowels, which led to historical alternations in umlaut (by row) and refraction (by degree of rise); common Germanic consonant movement;
b)in morphology: widespread use of ablaut in inflection and word formation; formation (next to a strong preterite) of a weak preterite using a dental suffix; distinguishing between strong and weak declensions of adjectives; manifestation of a tendency towards analyticalism;
c)in word formation: the special role of the noun phrase (stem); the prevalence of suffixation in nominal word production and prefixation in verbal word production; the presence of conversion (especially in English);
d)in syntax: tendency to fix word order;
e)in vocabulary: layers of native Indo-European and common Germanic, borrowings from the languages of Celtic, Latin, Greek, French.
1.6 Baltic languages
The Baltic group (the name belongs to G.G.F. Nesselman, 1845) includes the languages Latvian, Lithuanian, Prussian.
Modern Baltic languages are widespread in the eastern Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, the northeastern part of Poland - Suvalkija, partly Belarus).
Modern Baltic languages are represented by Lithuanian and Latvian (sometimes Latgalian is also distinguished). The extinct Baltic languages include Prussian (before the 18th century; East Prussia), Yatvingian or Sudavian (before the 18th century; north-eastern Poland, southern Lithuania, adjacent regions of Belarus), Curonian (before the mid-17th century; on the coast Baltic Sea within modern Lithuania and Latvia), Selonsky, or Selian (documents of the 13th-15th centuries; part of eastern Latvia and north-east Lithuania), Galindsky, or Golyadsky (in Russian chronicles "Golyad"; documents of the 14th century; southern Prussia and, probably, the Protva River basin).
Features of the Baltic languages:
a)INphonetics: the contrasts between palatalized and non-palatalized, simple consonants and affricates, tense and unstressed, long and short vowels are significant; the presence of intonation contrasts; the possibility of accumulation of up to 3 consonants at the beginning of a syllable; the presence of closed and open syllables;
b)INmorphology: the use of quantitative and qualitative alternation of vowels in the verb; in names there is movement of stress, change of intonation; wealth of suffix inventory; neuter remains; 2 numbers; 7 cases, including instrumental, locative and vocative); 3 degrees of gradualness; 5 types of noun stems; distinguishing between nominal and pronominal types of declension for an adjective; the moods are indicative, conditional, desirable, imperative, and in Latvian, going back to the Finno-Ugric substrate, obligatory and retelling; active, reflexive, passive voices; diverse types of tenses and moods;
c)INsyntax: precedence of the genitive to other cases in the chain of names;
d)INvocabulary: most of the words are from the original I.-e. vocabulary; almost a single dictionary of the Baltic languages; significant commonality of Baltic and Slavic vocabulary; borrowings from Finno-Ugric, German, Polish, Russian languages.
1.7 Slavic languages
The Slavic group includes the languages Belarusian, Bulgarian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian, Macedonian, Polabian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Old Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Czech.
Slavic languages are widespread in Europe and Asia (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, as well as the states of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Austria). Speakers of Slavic languages also live in the countries of America, Africa, and Australia. The total number of speakers is about 300 million people.
Slavic languages, according to the degree of their proximity to each other, form groups: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, or Serbian and Croatian, Slovenian) and Western Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish with Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbians).
general characteristicsSlavic languages
a)Grammar
Grammatically, Slavic languages, with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, have a highly developed system of noun inflections, up to seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional and vocative). The verb in Slavic languages has three simple tenses (past, present and future), but is also characterized by such a complex characteristic as aspect. The verb can be imperfect or perfect and denotes the completeness of the action of the species. Participles and gerunds are widely used (one can compare their use with the use of participles and gerunds in English). In all Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, there is no article. The languages of the Slavic subfamily are more conservative and therefore closer to the Proto-Indo-European language than the languages of the Germanic and Romance groups, as evidenced by the retention by the Slavic languages of seven of the eight cases for nouns that were characteristic of the Proto-Indo-European language, as well as the development of verb aspect.
b)Vocabulary composition
The vocabulary of Slavic languages is predominantly of Indo-European origin. There is also an important element of the mutual influence of the Baltic and Slavic languages on each other, which is reflected in the vocabulary. Borrowed words or translations of words go back to the Iranian and Germanic groups, as well as to Greek, Latin, and Turkic languages. They also influenced the vocabulary of such languages as Italian and French. Slavic languages also borrowed words from each other. The borrowing of foreign words tends to translate and imitate rather than simply absorb them.
c)Writing
Perhaps it is in the written form that the most significant differences between the Slavic languages lie. Some Slavic languages (in particular, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Polish) have a written language based on the Latin alphabet, since the speakers of these languages belong predominantly to the Catholic faith. Other Slavic languages (such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) use adopted variants of the Cyrillic alphabet as a result of the influence of the Orthodox Church. The only language, Serbo-Croatian, uses two alphabets: Cyrillic for Serbian and Latin for Croatian.
1 .8 Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language, usually classified as a separate subgroup, less often combined with Greek and Phrygian languages.
It is common in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, USA, Iran, France and other countries. The total number of speakers is over 6 million people.
It is assumed that the Armenian language is based on the language of the Hayas-Armen tribal union within the state of Urartu. The Armenian ethnic group was formed in the 7th century. BC. in the Armenian Highlands.
In the history of the written literary language, 3 stages are distinguished: ancient (from the beginning of the 5th century, from the time of the creation of the Armenian alphabet, to the 11th century, when oral ancient Armenian went out of use; the written version, Grabar, functioned in literature, competing with the new literary language , until the end of the 19th century, and has remained in the cult sphere to this day); middle (from the 12th to the 16th centuries; formation of dialects), new (from the 17th century), characterized by the presence of eastern and western variants of the literary language and the presence of many dialects.
Properties of the Armenian language:
a)in phonetics: at the ancient stage - the Indo-European phonological system with some modifications; removing opposition by length/shortness; the transition of syllabic Indo-European sonants into vowels and non-syllabic sonants into consonants; the emergence of new fricative phonemes; the appearance of affricates; change of plosives by interruption, similar to the Germanic movement of consonants; the presence of three rows - voiced, voiceless and aspirated; in the middle period - deafening of voiced and voicing of deaf; monophthongization of diphthongs; in the new period - a divergence between the two options, primarily in consonantism.
b)in morphology: predominantly inflectional-synthetic system; the appearance of analytical verbal constructions already in the ancient period; preservation of the three-row system of demonstrative pronouns; inheritance from i.-e. the basic principles of the formation of verbal and nominal stems, individual case and verbal inflections, word-forming suffixes; presence of 2 numbers; the withering away of the category of gender in the eastern version; use of the agglutinative principle of plural formation. numbers; distinguishing 7 cases and 8 types of declension; preservation of almost all categories of Indo-European pronouns; the verb has 3 voices (active, passive and neuter), 3 persons, 2 numbers, 5 moods (indicative, imperative, desirable, conditional, incentive), 3 tenses (present, past, future), 3 types of action (performing, perfect and subject to completion), 2 types of conjugation, simple and analytical forms (with a predominance of analytical), 7 participles.
1.9 Greek language
The Greek language forms a special group within the Indo-European community. Genetically most closely related to the ancient Macedonian language. Distributed in the south of the Balkan Peninsula and the adjacent islands of the Ionian and Aegean seas, as well as in southern Albania, Egypt, southern Italy, Ukraine, and Russia.
Main periods: Ancient Greek (14th century BC - 4th century AD), Central Greek, or Byzantine (5th-15th centuries), Modern Greek (from the 15th century).
The main stages of the development of ancient Greek: archaic ((14-12 centuries BC - 8 centuries BC), classical (from 8-7 to 4 centuries BC), Hellenistic (time Koine formations; 4th-1st centuries BC), Late Greek (1st-4th centuries AD). In ancient Greek, dialect groups were distinguished: Ionian-Attic, Arcado-Cypriot (South Achaean), Aeolian (North Achaean, related). with the language of Crete-Mycenaean monuments), Dorian.
From the end of the 5th century. BC. The Attic superdialect becomes the literary language. In the Hellenistic period, on the basis of the Attic and Ionian dialects, the Pan-Greek Koine was formed in literary and colloquial varieties. Later, there was a return to the Attic norm, which led to competition between two autonomous linguistic traditions.
Modern Greek Koine is formed on the basis of southern dialects and widely spread in the 18th and 19th centuries. Literary Modern Greek exists in two variants: kafarevusa "purified" and dimotika "folk".
In the Greek language, many structural properties are manifested due to long historical interaction during the formation of the Balkan language union.
Features of the Ancient Greek language:
a)in phonetics: 5 vowel phonemes, varying in length/shortness; formation of long vowels or diphthongs from adjacent vowels; musical stress is mobile, of three types: acute, obtuse and vested; 17 consonants, including voiced stops, voiceless and aspirated consonants, nasals, smooth consonants, affricates, spirants; thick and weak aspiration; transition i.-e. syllabic sonants into groups “vowel + consonant” (or “consonant + vowel”); reflection i.-e. labiovelar mainly in the form of anterior lingual or labial;
b)in morphology: 3 kinds; presence of articles; 3 numbers; 5 cases; 3 types of declination; 4 inclinations; 3 pledges; 2 types of conjugation; 2 groups of tenses (main: present, futurum, perfect; historical: aorist, imperfect, plusquaperfect);
c)in syntax: free word order; developed system of parataxis and hypotaxis; the important role of particles and prepositions;
d)in vocabulary: layers are native Greek, pre-Greek (Pelasgian), borrowed (from Semitic, Persian, Latin).
2. Sino-Tibetan family
Sino-Tibetan languages (Sino-Tibetan languages) are one of the largest language families in the world. Includes over 100, according to other sources, several hundred languages, from tribal to national. The total number of speakers is over 1100 million people.
In modern linguistics, the Sino-Tibetan languages are usually divided into 2 branches, different in the degree of their internal division and in their place on the linguistic map of the world - Chinese and Tibeto-Burman. The first is formed by the Chinese language with its numerous dialects and groups of dialects. It is spoken by over 1050 million people, including about 700 million in the dialects of the northern group. The main area of its distribution is the PRC south of the Gobi and east of Tibet.
The remaining Sino-Tibetan languages, numbering about 60 million speakers, are included in the Tibeto-Burman branch. Peoples speaking these languages inhabit most of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, large areas of southwestern China and northeastern India. The most important Tibeto-Burman languages or groups of closely related languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers) in Myanmar and (over 5.5 million) in Sichuan and Yunnan (PRC); Tibetan (over 5 million) in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan (PRC), Kashmir (northern India), Nepal, Bhutan; Karen languages (over 3 million) in Myanmar near the border with Thailand: Hani (1.25 million) in Yunnan; Manipuri, or Meithei (over 1 million); Bodo, or Kachari (750 thousand), and Garo (up to 700 thousand) in India; Jingpo, or Kachin (about 600 thousand), in Myanmar and Yunnan; fox (up to 600 thousand) in Yunnan; Tamang (about 550 thousand), Newar (over 450 thousand) and Gurung (about 450 thousand) in Nepal. The Tibeto-Burman branch includes the endangered language of the Tujia people (up to 3 million people) in Hunan (PRC), but by now most of the Tujia have switched to Chinese.
Sino-Tibetan languages are syllabic, isolating languages with a greater or lesser tendency to agglutination. The basic phonetic unit is the syllable, and the boundaries of syllables, as a rule, are also the boundaries of morphemes or words. The sounds within a syllable are arranged in a strictly defined order (usually a noisy consonant, sonant, intermediate vowel, main vowel, consonant; all elements except the main vowel may be absent). Combinations of consonants are not found in all languages and are possible only at the beginning of a syllable. The number of consonants occurring at the end of a syllable is significantly less than the number of possible initial consonants (usually no more than 6-8); some languages only allow open syllables or have only one final nasal consonant. Many languages have tone. In languages whose history is well known, one can observe a gradual simplification of consonantism and a complication of the system of vowels and tones.
A morpheme usually corresponds to a syllable; the root is usually immutable. However, many languages violate these principles. Thus, in the Burmese language it is possible to alternate consonants in the root; in classical Tibetan there were non-syllabic prefixes and suffixes that expressed, in particular, the grammatical categories of the verb. The predominant method of word formation is the addition of roots. Isolating a word often presents a difficult problem: it is difficult to distinguish a compound word from a phrase, an affix from a function word. Adjectives in Sino-Tibetan languages are grammatically closer to verbs than to names; sometimes they are included as part of the verb category as "verbs of quality". Conversion is widespread.
3. FInno-Ugric family
The Finno-Ugric (or Finno-Ugric) family is divided into four groups: the Baltic-Finnish (these are Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Vepsian, Izhoran), Permian (Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permyak languages), Volga, to which they belong Mari and Mordovian languages, and a group of Ugric languages, covering the Hungarian, Mansi and Khanty languages. The separate language of the Sami living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula is closest to the Baltic-Finnish languages. The most common Finno-Ugric language is Hungarian, and in neighboring countries it is Estonian.
All Finno-Ugric languages have common features and a common basic vocabulary. These features originate in the hypothetical Proto-Finno-Ugric language. About 200 basic words of this language were proposed, including word roots for concepts such as names of kinship relationships, body parts, and basic numerals. This general vocabulary includes, according to Lyle Campbell, no less than 55 words related to fishing, 33 to hunting, 12 to deer, 17 to plants, 31 to technology, 26 to construction, 11 to clothing, 18 - to climate, 4 - to society, 11 - to religion, as well as three words related to trade.
Most Finno-Ugric languages are agglutinative languages, the common features of which are the modification of words by adding suffixes (instead of prepositions) and syntactic coordination of suffixes. In addition, the Finno-Ugric languages do not have a gender category. Therefore, there is only one pronoun with the meaning “he”, “she” and “it”, for example, hän in Finnish, tämd in Votic, tema in Estonian, x in Hungarian, síi? in the Komi language, Tudo in the Mari language, So in the Udmurt language.
In many Finno-Ugric languages, possessive adjectives and pronouns such as “my” or “your” are rarely used. Possession is expressed by inclination. For this purpose, suffixes are used, sometimes together with a pronoun in the genitive case: “my dog” in Finnish minun koirani (literally “me-my dog”), from the word koira - dog.
4. Turkic family
The Turkic family unites more than 20 languages, including:
1) Turkish (formerly Ottoman); writing since 1929 based on the Latin alphabet; until then, for several centuries - based on the Arabic alphabet.
2) Azerbaijani.
3) Turkmen.
4) Gagauz.
5) Crimean Tatar.
6) Karachay-Balkar.
7) Kumyk - was used as a common language for the Caucasian peoples of Dagestan.
8) Nogai.
9) Karaite.
10) Tatar, with three dialects - middle, western (Mishar) and eastern (Siberian).
11) Bashkir.
12) Altai (Oirot).
13) Shorsky with the Kondoma and Mrass dialects3.
14) Khakass (with dialects Sogai, Beltir, Kachin, Koibal, Kyzyl, Shor).
15) Tuvan.
16) Yakut.
17) Dolgansky.
18) Kazakh.
19) Kyrgyz.
20) Uzbek.
21) Karakalpak.
22) Uyghur (new Uyghur).
23) Chuvash, a descendant of the language of the Kama Bulgars, written from the very beginning based on the Russian alphabet.
24) Orkhon - according to the Orkhon-Yenisei runic inscriptions, the language (or languages) of a powerful state of the 7th-8th centuries. n. e. in Northern Mongolia on the river. Orkhon. The name is conditional.
25) Pechenezh - the language of the steppe nomads of the 9th-11th centuries. AD
26) Polovtsian (Cuman) - according to the Polovtsian-Latin dictionary compiled by Italians, the language of the steppe nomads of the 11th-14th centuries.
27) Ancient Uyghur - the language of a huge state in Central Asia in the 9th-11th centuries. n. e. with writing based on a modified Aramaic alphabet.
28) Chagatai - literary language of the 15th-16th centuries. AD in Central Asia; Arabic graphics.
29) Bulgar - the language of the Bulgar kingdom at the mouth of the Kama; The Bulgar language formed the basis of the Chuvash language, part of the Bulgars moved to the Balkan Peninsula and, mixing with the Slavs, became a component (superstrate) of the Bulgarian language.
30) Khazar - the language of a large state of the 7th-10th centuries. AD, in the region of the lower reaches of the Volga and Don, close to the Bulgarian.
5. Semitic-Hamitic(Afroasiatic) family
Afroasiatic languages are a macrofamily (superfamily) of languages, which includes six families of languages that have signs of a common origin (the presence of related root and grammatical morphemes).
Afroasiatic languages include both living and dead languages. The former are currently distributed over a vast area, occupying the territory of Western Asia (from Mesopotamia to the coast of the Mediterranean and Red Seas) and vast territories of East and North Africa - right up to the Atlantic coast. Separate groups of representatives of Afroasiatic languages are also found outside the main territory of their distribution.
The total number of speakers currently, according to various estimates, ranges between 270 million and 300 million people. The Afroasiatic macrofamily includes the following language families (or branches):
Berber-Libyan languages. Living languages of this family are distributed in North Africa west of Egypt and Libya to Mauritania, as well as in the oases of the Sahara, as far as Nigeria and Senegal. The Berber tribes of the Tuareg (Sahara) use their own script, called Tifinagh, which dates back to the ancient Libyan script. Libyan writing is represented by short rock inscriptions discovered in the Sahara and Libyan Desert; the earliest of them date back to the 2nd century BC. e.
Ancient Egyptian language with its later descendant, the Coptic language, is a dead language. It was distributed throughout the middle and lower Nile valley (modern Egypt). The first written monuments of ancient Egypt date back to the end of the 4th - beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. It existed as a living and spoken language until the 5th century AD. e. Monuments of the Coptic language have been known since the 3rd century AD. e.; by the 14th century it fell out of use, surviving as the cult language of the Coptic Christian church. In everyday life, Copts, who number about 6 million people at the end of 1999, use Arabic and are now considered an ethno-confessional group of Egyptian Arabs.
Cushitic languages of which only living ones are known, distributed in Northeast Africa: in the northeast of Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, northern Kenya and western Tanzania. According to data from the late 1980s, the number of speakers is about 25.7 million.
Omoto languages. Living unwritten languages, common in southwestern Ethiopia. The number of speakers according to the late 1980s is about 1.6 million people. They began to stand out as an independent branch of the Afro-Asian macrofamily only recently (G. Fleming, M. Bender, I. M. Dyakonov). Some scientists attribute the Omot languages to the Western Cushitic group, which separated from Prakushitic earlier than the others.
Semitic languages. The most numerous of the Afroasiatic language families; is represented by modern living languages (Arabic, Maltese, New Aramaic dialects, Hebrew, Ethiosemitic - Amharic, Tigre, Tigrai, etc.), widespread in the Arab East, Israel, Ethiopia and North Africa, and islands in other countries of Asia and Africa. The number of speakers varies according to different sources, amounting to approximately 200 million.
Chadian languages alive; This family includes more than 150 modern languages and dialect groups. Distributed in Central and Western Sudan, in the Lake Chad region, Nigeria, Cameroon. The Hausa speakers are the most numerous, numbering about 30-40 million; For most of them, Hausa is not their native language, but a language of international communication.
conclusions
This work characterizes the main language families, considers language groups, features of the linguistic structure of languages, including phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary. Of course, languages differ both in prevalence and social functions, as well as in their phonetic structure and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics.
Emphasis should be placed on the enormous role played in modern linguistics by various classifications of the world's languages. This is not only a compact fixation of the many internal connections of the latter discovered by science, but also a certain guideline in their consistent study.
It should be noted that some languages are outside the general classification and are not included in any of the families; Japanese also belongs to them. Many languages are so poorly studied that they do not fall under any of the classifications. This is explained not only by the large number of languages spoken on the globe, but also by the fact that a linguist studying existing (and existing) languages has to deal with factual data that is very dissimilar and very different in its very essence.
List of used literature
1. Arakin V. D. History of the English language / V. D. Arakin. - M.: Fizmatlit, 2001. - 360 p.
2. Armenian language. Materials from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_language
3. Baltic languages [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://www.languages-study.com/baltic.html
4. Vendina T. I. Introduction to linguistics: textbook. manual for teachers universities/ T.I. Vendina. - M.: Higher school, 2003. - 288 p.
5. Golovin B.N. Introduction to linguistics / N. B. Golovin. - M.: Higher school, 1973. - 320 p.
6. Dyakonov I. M. Semitic-Hamitic languages / I. M. Dyakonov. - M., 1965. -189 p.
7. Kodukhov V.I. Introduction to linguistics / V.I. Kodukhov. - M.: Education, 1979. - 351 p.
8. Lewis G. Brief comparative grammar of the Celtic languages [Electronic resource] / G. Lewis, H. Pedersen. - Access mode: http://bookre.org/reader?file=629546
9. Melnichuk O. S. Introduction to the historical-historical interpretation of words of the Yan language / O. S. Melnichuk. -K., 1966. - 596 p.
10. Reformatsky A. A. Introduction to linguistics / ed. V.A. Vinogradova. - M.: Aspect Press, 1998. - 536 p.
11. Edelman D.I. Indo-Iranian languages. Languages of the world: Dardic and Nuristan languages / D. I. Edelman. - M. 1999. - 230 p.
12. Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages. - M.: Nauka, 1980. - T. 7. - 380 p.
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