What are the language families?

Answer 1

Language families, are a system of languages that have a common origin. Some language families, such as the Romance and Slavic families were once languages themselves. Here is the list of several major world language families. Which why many different languages have same words, same spelling and meaning known as a "cognate".

The Romantic-Latin Family

This a language family that basically everybody knows. They are, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Moldovan. There are two reasons as to why they are referred to as "Romance" languages. The first is, the linguistic reason and it is because these languages were once dialects of the Latin language, the language that the Romans spoke hence the term, "ROMAN"ce. Not to mention, that Spain, Portugal and Italy were all once part of the Roman Empire making those three the most related and sister-like languages. French, Romanian and Moldovan on the other hand simply went their seperate ways. The other reason is because, it IS as they are called, "Romantic" meaning associated with love and drama and emotions. You see Spanish and French people are heavily known for making love movies, and you'll even see love commercials in Spanish and French they are known as "love" languages. Italian, is known as the "sexy" and "funny" language people speak it to impress girls. Portuguese is known as the "sweet" language. There a popular song called, "Dragostea Din Tei" (Numa Numa) by O-Zone, a Romanian band and the song is in Romanian. The Latin-Romance family has had large influences on English, which is a Germanic language.

The Slavic Family

The Slavic family of languages are a broad one from the Russian-Eruasian region. They most spoken and popular ones are Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian and Polish. Other major Slavic languages are Croatian, Bosnian, Montengerin, Rusyn, Czech, Slovakian and Macedonian. The Slavic family, are known as the "manly" languages. Since languages like Russian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian make you sound more masculine because there a certain voice you make for speaking Russian. Church Slavonic, is a liturgical language (equivalent to Arabic and Islam) that is for people who follow the Eastern Orthodox religion. It is tought all over Slavic countries like Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria that are Eastern Orthodox followers.

The Indo-Aryan Family

The Indo-Aryan family of languages are those belong to the Indian subcontinent and South Asia. The countries of India, Bengladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. There is no such thing as "Indian" language. For the Indo-Aryan family are those that descended from the Sanskrit ancient language. The Indo-Aryan family includes major languages like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Nepali, Sinhala and Tamil. People from Pakistan, were once Indo-Aryan speakers, but due to this entire enmity between Indians/Bengalis and Pakistanis; they no longer speak an Indo-Aryan language.

Germanic Family

The Germanic family, are the languages that are from western and central Europe. They originate from the Germanic tribes that spoke similar dialects, although there is no "Germanic" language. But the Germanic family includes the languages of German, English, Dutch, Swedish and Norewegian. Modern-day English has so many cognates with Latin-Romance languages, many times it even uses Latin-Romance rules. But English is not a Latin-Romantic language it is a Germanic language that came from Anglo-Saxon, or "ancient English". Most of English today, has 2/3 Latin-Romance stock while only 1/3 remains same of its Germanic brothers like German.

Austronesian/Austro-Asian Families

The Autronesian and Austro-Asian languages, are those spoken in Southeast Asia and Oceania. They are also known as the "sailing" languages, because "austro" means "sailor". And all of Southeast Asia and Oceania, consists of islands and peninsulas. The original people who inhabited Southeast Asia were also skilled seafarers and sailors. The Austro-Asian family of lanuages are the ones spoken in the peninsulas of Southeast Asia. They are Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Lao and Burmese. The Austronesian family of languages are the ones spoke in Southeast Asia and Oceania since they are all islands. They are Indonesian, Malay, Taiwanese, Filipino, Papuan, Javanese, Hawaiian and Samoan. This also includes all dialects spoken in the Southeast Asian and Oceanic regions.

Semitic Family

The Semitic family of languages, are those who's origins center around the Biblical times. The language that the ancient Jews spoke. They are Hebrew and Arabic. These two languages, are related and contain a lot of close words. Like "shalom" in Hebrew and "salam" in Arabic which means "peace" or "salutations". The Jewish prophets Moses and Abraham spoke both Arabic and Hebrew as their active toungues.

Sino-Tibetan

The Sino-Tibetan languages are from East Asia. Some Sino-Tibetan languages are also spoken in Southeast Asia. The Sino-Tibetan languages are Chinese Mandarin, Tibetan, Hokkien, Dzongkha, Chinese Cantonese, Hui, Tanka, Min Zhong, and Bai. There are hundreds of other dialects under this family, those listed are nothing close to even "most". Remember, China is a large country. The larger the country, the more dialects and languages. The Sino-Tibetan has influenced Austro-Asian languages like Thai and Vietnamese.

Japonic Family

The Japonic family is one of those country-strict ones. The Japonic family of languages are only found in Japan. The Japanese language is a world major language and is part of the Japonic family. Since Japan is an island country, clans speak their own Japonic dialects and languages. Other languages that belong in the Japonic family are Ryukyuan, Gaya and Okinawan.

Mongolic Family

This family of languages, are those spoken by the Mongols from East Asia and Central Asia. They are Mongolian, Buryat, Daurand Mogholi.

Turkic Family

The Turkic family, are those spoken by the Central Asian countries. A lot of Turkic languages are spoken by people from former Soviet states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Turkic languages are Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgys, Turkish, Turkmen and Tajik.

Single-language Families

These families are ones, that contain their own language. The Greek language is part of the Hellenestic family, and is the only member of the Hellenestic languages. Ancient Greek dialects also belong in this family as the ancietn Greeks were not unified, but their languages are unknown and unrecorded today. The Hungarian language belongs to the Uralic family. Hungarian, is the only member of the Uralic family.

Answer 2

Some of the major language families include Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Austronesian, Dravidian, and Altaic. These families group languages that share a common ancestor and have similarities in structure and vocabulary. Linguists use language families to study language relationships and linguistic diversity.