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Language family. A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy.
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between ...
Language classification. In linguistics, language classification is the grouping of related languages into the same category. There are two main kinds of language classification: genealogical and typological classification. [1]
Map of major Dravidian languages. Distribution of the Indo-European language family branches across Eurasia. Area of the Papuan languages. Map of the Australian languages. Distribution of language families and isolates north of Mexico at first contact. The major South American language families. Ethnolinguistic groups of mainland Southeast Asia.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family.They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages.They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, [a] the Horn of Africa, [b] [c] Malta, [d] and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia.
A group of Alemannic German dialects commonly referred to as Alsatian [17] [18] is spoken in Alsace, part of modern France. Dutch is an official language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao, the Netherlands, Sint Maarten, and Suriname. [19] The Netherlands also colonized Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as an official language after Indonesian ...
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. [ 1] Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to ...
Sociolinguistics. Dialect (from Latin dialectus, dialectos, from the Ancient Greek word διάλεκτος, diálektos 'discourse', from διά, diá 'through' and λέγω, légō 'I speak') refers to two distinctly different types of linguistic relationships. The more common usage of the term in English refers to a variety of a language that ...