Language families and languages - Language families and languages Most languages are known to belong to language families (called simply "families" for the rest of this article). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many of the features of the common ancestor of related languages by applying comparative method -- a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th-century linguists. It can demonstrate the family status of many of the groupings listed below. Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "tree".
Illyrian languages - Illyrian languages Illyrian languages are a group of Indo-European languages that were found in the western part of the Balkans. Around 230 BC the languages were Romanized. Afterwards they were suppressed by the Slavs in the 7th century. They are known by glossaries and names. Since very little is known about the Illyrian languages, when linguists encounter what they consider anomalies in their data, they humorously blame them on "Illyrian influences". Albanian is believed to be derivative from Illyrian languages. See also Language families and languages.
Indo-Iranian languages - Indo-Iranian languages Indo-Iranian languages are the eastern-most group of the living Indo-European languages. They are well represented among the oldest records of Indo-European languages. These originate around present-day Afghanistan and early on split as some people went west and some went east. Indo-Aryan languages: Sanskrit Assamese language Bengali language Gujarati language Hindi language Maithili language Marathi language Nepali language Oriya language Pali Punjabi language Romany language - the language of Gypsies Sindhi language Singhalese language Urdu Dardic languages: Dameli language Domaaki language Gawar-Bati language Kalasha language Kashmiri language Khowar language Kohistani language Ningalami language Pashayi language Phalura language Shina language Shumashti language Nuristani languages: Ashkun language Kamviri language Kati language (Bashgali) Prasuni language (Wasi-Weri) Tregami language Waigali language (Kalasha-Ala) Iranian languages: Persian language Avestan (extinct) Pahlavi - "Middle.
Indo-European languages - Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages include 150 languages spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. The hypothesis that this was so was first proposed by Sir William Jones, who noticed similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit and Persian. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz Bopp supported this theory. In the 19th century, scholars used to call the group "Indo-Germanic languages". However when it became apparent that the connection is relevant to most of Europe's languages, the name was expanded to Indo-European. An example of this was the strong similarity discovered between Sanskrit and olden spoken dialects of.
Italic languages - Italic languages The Italic family of the Indo-European language group had two branches: Oscan or Umbrian - extinct languages not to be confused with modern Umbrian dialect of Italian Latin - (SIL Code, LTN; ISO 639-1 code, la; ISO 639-2 code, lat) Latin replaced all the others, and from so-called Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged. See also Language families and languages.
European languages - European languages Most of the many indigenous languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. The scope of this article also includes languages spoken outside of continental Europe that belong to European language families (such as Afrikaans). Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Basque 2 Caucasian languages 3 Constructed languages 4 Finno-Ugric languages 5 Indo-European languages 5.1 Albanian 5.2 Armenian 5.3 Baltic languages 5.4 Celtic languages 5.4.1 Brythonic 5.4.2 Goidelic (Gaelic) 5.5 Germanic languages 5.5.3 North Germanic languages 5.5.4 West Germanic languages 5.5.5 East Germanic languages 5.6 Indo-Aryan languages 5.7 Italic languages 5.7.6 Romance languages 5.8 Slavic languages 5.8.7 West Slavic languages 5.8.8 East Slavic languages 5.8.9 South Slavic languages 6 Others of note Basque The Basque language of the northern Iberian Peninsula is a language isolate,.
Altaic languages - Altaic languages The Altaic family of languages include 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people, found mostly around central Asia, having been distributed by the many invasions out of that corridor. Turkic languages Mongolian language Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungus) The following languages have been postulated to belong to the Altaic group of languages; however, no empirical proof of any genetic relationship has been made so far: Japanese Korean Ainu The existence of the Altaic family is not accepted without question. The Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic families do have strong similarities in many ways, but some linguists suggest these are due to their forming a Sprachbund, with intensive borrowing from long contact. To a lesser extent they also resemble the Uralic languages (such as Finnish and Hungarian),.
Anatolian languages - Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are a group of languages, either Indo-European or (in some classifications) closely related to Indo-European, which were spoken in Asia Minor, including Hittite. Other Anatolian languages include Luwian, the language of the script commonly called "Hittite hieroglyphics." Lydian and Lycian are later Anatolian languages that are known from a number of inscriptions; no extended texts survive in them. In 1906 there were excavations in Central Asia Minor by German scientists. At Bogázköy they discovered the capital of the Hittitic Empire. It was prosperous from 1900 till 1200 BC. Thousands of claytablets were found, written in cuneiform. Most of them from 17th till 14th century BC. It was deciphered by Bedrich Hrozný (1916-1917), who discovered it was an Indo-European language. The Hittitic morphology.
Asian languages - Asian languages There are a wide variety of languages spoken thoughout Asia, comprising a number of families and unrelated isolate languages. Sino-Tibetan languages Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese Indo-European languages are widely spoken in southern and western Asia, as well as Asian Russia: Indo-Iranian languages: Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Kurdish Slavic languages: Russian Semitic languages Turkic languages Tai-Kadai languages Austroasiatic languages The Altaic languages are a somewhat disputed grouping. Sometimes included are Korean and Japanese See also: East Asian language.
Austronesian languages - Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages are a family of languages widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. Malagasy is a geographic outlier, which is spoken on Madagascar. Austronesian has ten primary subgroups, nine of them found in Taiwan (the Formosan languages) and one ancestral to all other members of the family (Malayo-Polynesian languages). Austronesian is one of the largest language families in the world, both in terms of number of languages (1244 according to Ethnologue) and in terms of the geographical extent of the homelands of its languages (from Madagascar to Easter Island). The name comes from the Greek word Austronesia, meaning "southern islands". The Formosan languages are spoken on the island of Taiwan, and.
Baltic languages - Baltic languages The Baltic languages form one branch of the Indo-European language family. In this group there are two extant languages: Latvian and Lithuanian, and many extinct languages, including Old Prussian, Curonian. Prussian was spoken in Prussia, since 1945 Kaliningrad and northern Poland. With the ongoing Christianization and Germanisation Old Prussian language became extinct at the end of 17th century. Before the first conquest attempts a thousand years ago, the Balts lived protected at the Baltic Sea. Therefore the Baltic languages remained some of the oldest and least changed Indo-European languages. They did have trade connections for thousands of years along the ancient amber roads. Today the Latvian language is considered younger than East Lithuanian, although that greatly changed from its first recording in the 16th century..
Caucasian languages - Caucasian languages Caucasian languages includes 38 languages spoken by about five million people. It comprises several unrelated families of languages, spoken in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe. South Caucasian languages or Kartvelian languages e.g. Georgian, Svan, Laz, Mingrelian Northwest Caucasian languages or Abkhaz-Adygh languages e.g. Abkhaz, Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardian, Cherkess, Ubykh Northeast languages or Dagestan languages e.g. Akhvakh, Andi, Botlikh, Chamalal, Gigatl, Ghodoberi, Karata, Bagvalal, Tindi,Avar, Dido (Tsez), Hinukh (Ginukh), Hunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshi, Darwa, Kajtak, Kubachi, Lak, Aghul, Archi, Budukh, Khinalugh, Kryts, Lezgi, Rutul, Tabassaran, Tsakhur, Udi North Central languages or Nakh languages or Vaynakh languages e.g. Chechen, Ingush, Bats The last two groups sometimes are called Nakh-Dagestan languages. They have a number of common features in phonetics and grammar, for example, ergative case and sentence structure, but.
Categorical list of programming languages - Categorical list of programming languages This is a list of programming language grouped by category. See also Alphabetical list of programming languages Chronological list of programming languages Generational list of programming languages Assembly languages directly correspond to a machine language (see below) in order to allow machine code instructions to be written in a form understandable by humans. Assembly languages allow programmers to use symbolic addresses which are later converted to absolute addresses by the assembler. Most assemblers also allow for macros and symbolic constants as well. SSK (Sistema Simvolicheskogo Kodirovaniya, or "System of symbolic coding") for Minsk family of computers. AKI (AvtoKod Ingenera, i.e., "engineer's autocode") for Minsk family of computers was half-step away from assembly languages and doesn't really fit into any other categories in this article..
Celtic languages - Celtic languages Within Indo-European, the Celtic languages are most closely related to the Italic languages, with which they may form the Celto-Italic branch. Celtic is split into two branches: Continental -- Celtiberian, Galatian, Noric, Gaulish, Lepontic, and perhaps including one dialect of Breton, which would be the only living language in this branch. Insular, which is further split into: Q-Celtic -- Goidelic, including Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Manx P-Celtic -- Brythonic, including Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Cumbric and possibly Pictish The differences between P and Q languages are most easily seen in the word for son, mac in Q (hard K sound) and map in P languages. P-languages have a slightly simpler structure and may be younger than the Q-languages. Characteristics of Celtic Languages Although there are.
Tocharian languages - Tocharian languages Tocharian is one of the most obscure branches of the Indo-European language group. The two languages -- Tocharian A (Turfanian or East Tocharian) and Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian) -- that made up this group have both been long extinct. Both languages were once spoken in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia, now the Xinjiang province of China. The speakers of these languages have been identified with the 'Tocharians' mentioned in Greek sources. The name "Tocharian" itself is speculative. Chinese records of the time also mention this group, as nomadic 'barbarians'. Tocharian is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 7th and 8th centuries CE (with a few earlier ones) that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinese paper, which had been.
Tungusic languages - Tungusic languages Together with the Turkic and Mongolic language families, the Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungus languages) constitute the Altaic family of languages. The Tungusic languages are divided into a northern and a southern group. The northern group comprises: Tungus (Evenki) of central Siberia and Lamut (Even) of eastern Siberia The southern group comprises: Manchu language of Manchuria, which is the only Tungusic language with a literary form since the 17th century and a written history. Manchu includes the Sibe dialect still spoken today. the Amur dialects, including Nanai or Goldi, Oroch, etc..
Slavic languages - Slavic languages The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) are the languages of the Slavic peoples. They are a group of Indo-European languages spoken in most of Eastern Europe, much of the Balkans, parts of Central Europe, and the northern part of Asia. Scholars divide the Slavic languages into three branches: South Slavic, which is further split into Western and Eastern subgroups. The Western subgroup is composed of the Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian, languages spoken in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and adjacent regions. The Eastern subgroup consists of Bulgarian in Bulgaria and adjacent areas, and Macedonian in Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. West Slavic, which includes Czech in the Czech Republic and Slovak in Slovakia, Upper and Lower Sorbian in Germany, and.
South Caucasian languages - South Caucasian languages The South Caucasian languages or Kartvelian languages are a family of languages, spoken mainly in Georgia South Caucasian languages include: Georgian (Kartuli ena) - official language of Georgia, more than 4 million native speakers Mingrelian - appr. 300,000 native speakers Laz - estimates vary from 50,000-250,000 speakers. Mainly spoken in the Black Sea littoral area of Northeast Turkey. Svan - appr. 35,000 native speakers in the northern mountainous region of Georgia There is some ongoing work on the possible genetic relationship between speakers of South Caucasian languages and the Basque language, and some recent theories propose a phyletic link between Proto-South Caucasian and Proto-Indo-European. The Proto-Indo-European connection is quite promising, but most evidence for uniting the South Caucasian languages with Basque is based on surface.
Native American languages - Native American languages Native American languages Eskimo-Aleutian languages Yup'ik language Inuit languages Inupiaq Inuktitut Salishan languages Na-Dené languages Athapaskan-Eyak Ahtna language: 80 speakers, (M. Krauss, 1995) Beaver language Chipewyan language Eyak language: 1 speaker, (N. Barnes, 1996) Northern Haida language: 15 fluent speakers, (M. Krauss, 1995) Han language: 7 or 8 fluent speakers, (M. Krauss, 1995) Holikachuk language: 12 fluent speakers, (M. Krauss, 1995) Koyukon language: 300 speakers (M. Krauss, 1995) Tanaina language: 75 or fewer speakers (M. Krauss, 1997) Lower Tanana language: 30 or fewer speakers (M. Krauss, 1995) Upper Tanana language: 105 or fewer speakers (M. Krauss, 1995) Tolowa language: 5 speakers (SIL, 1977) Apachean languages Jicarilla Apache language: 812 speakers, (1990 census) Kiowa Apache language: 18 speakers, (1990 census) Lipan Apache language: 2 or 3.
Northwest Caucasian languages - Northwest Caucasian languages The Northwest Caucasian languages or Abkhaz-Adyg languages are a family of languages spoken in the Caucasian part of Russia, in Turkey and in Abkhazia. The entire group is characterised by paucity of phonemic vowels, rich consonantal systems with many forms of secondary articulation, and high levels of agglutinativity. Current theory holds that the richness of consonantal phoneme systems in the Northwest Caucasian languages is the result of a process called syllable-periphery assignment. The basis behind this theory is that, during language evolution, vowel features such as labialisation, pharyngealisation or frontness are removed from the vowels in a root and reassigned instead to the consonants which surround them. This theory also explains why there are so few vowels in Northwest Caucasian languages. There are five languages.
