Chapter 5.2 Language
Distribution of Languages
Indo-European Family
- Most widely spoken family
- English belongs to this family
Altaic Family
- Spoken across a 5,000 mile band of Asia between Turkey and China
- Turkish is the most widely used Altaic language
Sino-Tibetan Family
- Encompasses the languages of China
Japanese
- Isolated language
- Unrelated to any other language family
- Written in part to Chinese characters
Austro-Asiatic Family
- Based in southeast Asia
- Vietnamese is the most spoken Austro-Asiatic language
- Vietnamese alphabet was devised in the 17th century by Roman Catholic missionaries
Austronesian Family
- Language is mostly spoken in Indonesia
- Malagasy is spoken by people in Madagascar
- Shows people from Indonesia moved to Madagascar
Dravidian Family
- Language is spoken in India and northern Siri Lanka
- Between 35 and 70 million speak four languages un this family
- Origin is unknown
Niger-Congo Family
- More than 1000 distinct languages have been documented in Africa
- Only five languages are spoken by more than 10 million people
Afro-Asiatic Family
- Includes Arabic and Hebrew
- Arabic is the official language in two dozen countries in the Middle East
- Hebrew was an extinct language until it was revived in the late 20th century
Gallery
Indo-European Language Tree
Languages within the Indo-European tree
All Indo-European Languages
Articles
Videos
Latin and Its Indo-European Language Family
How languages evolve - Alex Gendler