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	{{short description\|Group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor}}		{{short description\|Group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor}}
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	[[File:Primary Human Languages Improved Version.png\|550px\|thumb\|Contemporary distribution (2005 map) of the world's major language families (in some cases geographic groups of families). This map includes only primary families i.e. branches are excluded.<br />''For greater detail, see [[:Template:Distribution of languages in the world\|Distribution of languages on Earth]].'']]		[[File:Primary Human Languages Improved Version.png\|550px\|thumb\|Contemporary distribution (2005 map) of the world's major language families (in some cases geographic groups of families). This map includes only primary families i.e. branches are excluded.<br />''For greater detail, see [[:Template:Distribution of languages in the world\|Distribution of languages on Earth]].'']]

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{{merge from|Genetic relationship (linguistics)|discuss=Talk:Language family#Merge proposal|date=July 2023}}
{{short description|Group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor}}
{{pp-pc|small=yes}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2017}}
[[File:Primary Human Languages Improved Version.png|550px|thumb|Contemporary distribution (2005 map) of the world's major language families (in some cases geographic groups of families). This map includes only primary families i.e. branches are excluded.<br />''For greater detail, see [[:Template:Distribution of languages in the world|Distribution of languages on Earth]].'']]

A '''language family''' is a group of [[language]]s related through [[Genetic relationship (linguistics)|descent]] from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the [[proto-language]] of that family. The term "family" reflects the [[tree model]] of language origination in [[historical linguistics]], which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological [[family tree]], or in a subsequent modification, to species in a [[phylogenetic tree]] of evolutionary [[taxonomy (biology)|taxonomy]]. Linguists therefore describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Bruce M. |last1=Rowe |first2=Diane P. |last2=Levine |title=A Concise Introduction to Linguistics |date=2015 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1317349280 |pages=340–341 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ePQ5CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA340 |access-date=26 January 2017}}</ref> The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different [[regional dialect]]s of the proto-language spoken by different [[speech community|speech communities]] undergoing different [[language change]]s and thus becoming distinct languages from each other.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Dimmendaal |first1=Gerrit J. |title=Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages |date=2011 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=978-9027287229 |page=336 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e-PxyCpnnzEC&pg=PA336 |access-date=26 January 2017}}</ref>

The language families with the most speakers are the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European family]], which includes many widely spoken languages native to Europe (such as [[English language|English]] and [[Spanish language|Spanish]]) and South Asia (such as [[Hindi]], [[Urdu]] and [[Bengali language|Bengali]]); and the [[Sino-Tibetan languages|Sino-Tibetan family]], mainly due to the many speakers of [[Mandarin Chinese]] in China.<ref name="largestfamilies">{{Cite web|url=https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/largest-families|title=What are the largest language families?|date=May 25, 2019|website=Ethnologue}}</ref> A language family may contain any number of languages: Some families, such as the [[Austronesian languages|Austronesian]] and [[Niger-Congo languages|Niger-Congo]] families, contain hundreds of different languages;<ref name="largestfamilies" /> while some languages, termed [[language isolate|isolate]]s, are not known to be related to any other languages and therefore constitute a family consisting of only one language.

Membership of languages in a language family is established by research in [[comparative linguistics]]. Genealogically related languages can be identified by their shared retentions; that is, they share systematic similarities that cannot be explained as due to chance, or to effects of [[language contact]] (such as [[loanword|borrowing]] or [[Language convergence|convergence]]), and therefore must be features inherited from their shared common ancestor. However, some sets of languages may in fact be derived from a common ancestor but have diverged enough from each other that their relationship is no longer detectable; and some languages have not been studied in enough detail to be classified, and therefore their family membership is unknown.

Estimates of the number of language families in the world may vary widely. According to ''[[Ethnologue]]'' there are 7,151 [[living language|living human language]]s distributed in 142 different language families.<ref>{{cite web|title=How many languages are there in the world?|url=https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/how-many-languages |date=3 May 2016 |website=[[Ethnologue]] |language=en |access-date=26 March 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=What are the largest language families? |url=https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/largest-families |date=25 May 2019 |website=[[Ethnologue]] |language=en |access-date=3 March 2020}}</ref> [[Lyle Campbell]] (2019) identifies a total of 406 independent language families, including isolates.<ref name="Campbell 2019">{{cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Lyle |title=How Many Language Families are there in the World? |journal=Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo" |publisher=UPV/EHU Press |volume=52 |issue=1/2 |date=2019-01-08 |issn=2444-2992 |doi=10.1387/asju.20195 |page=133|s2cid=166394477 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

== Structure of a family ==
{{More citations needed section|date=May 2022}}
A language family is a [[monophyly|monophyletic]] unit; all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are included in the family. Thus, the term ''family'' is analogous to the biological term ''[[clade]]''. Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, sometimes referred to as "branches" or "subfamilies" of the family; for instance, the [[Germanic languages]] are a subfamily of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] family. Subfamilies share a more recent common ancestor than the common ancestor of the larger family; [[Proto-Germanic]], the common ancestor of the Germanic subfamily, was itself a descendant of [[Proto-Indo-European]], the common ancestor of the Indo-European family. Within a large family, subfamilies can be identified through "shared innovations": members of a subfamily will share features that represent retentions from their more recent common ancestor, but were not present in the overall proto-language of the larger family.

Some [[taxonomy (general)|taxonomists]] restrict the term ''family'' to a certain level, but there is little consensus in how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into ''groups'', and groups into ''complexes''. A top-level (i.e., the largest) family is often called a ''phylum'' or ''stock''. The closer the branches are to each other, the more closely the languages will be related. This means if a branch of a [[proto-language]] is four branches down and there is also a [[sister language]] to that fourth branch, then the two sister languages are more closely related to each other than to that common ancestral proto-language.

The term ''[[macrofamily]]'' or ''superfamily'' is sometimes applied{{by whom|date=April 2023}} to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted [[historical linguistics|historical linguistic]] methods.

There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henn |first1=B. M. |last2=Cavalli-Sforza |first2=L. L. |author-link2=Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza |last3=Feldman |first3=M. W. |author-link3=Marcus Feldman |title=The great human expansion |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=17 October 2012 |volume=109 |issue=44 |pages=17758–17764 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1212380109 |pmc=3497766 |bibcode=2012PNAS..10917758H |pmid=23077256 |jstor=41829755 |doi-access=free}}</ref>
that was verified statistically.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cavalli-Sforza |first=L. L. |author-link=Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza |last2=Minch |first2=E. |last3=Mountain |first3=J. L. |title=Coevolution of genes and languages revisited |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |date=15 June 1992 |volume=89 |issue=12 |pages=5620–5624 |pmid=1608971 |pmc=49344 |bibcode=1992PNAS...89.5620C |doi=10.1073/pnas.89.12.5620 |jstor=2359705 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Languages interpreted in terms of the putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (by spatial diffusion).<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gell-Mann |first1=M. |author-link=Murray Gell-Mann |last2=Ruhlen |first2=M. |author-link2=Merritt Ruhlen |title=The origin and evolution of word order |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=10 October 2011 |volume=108 |issue=42 |pages=17290–17295 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1113716108 |bibcode=2011PNAS..10817290G |jstor=41352497 |url=http://authors.library.caltech.edu/59840/1/17290.full.pdf |pmid=21987807 |pmc=3198322 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Dialect continua ===
{{main|Dialect continuum}}

Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take the form of [[dialect continuum|dialect continua]] in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no [[mutual intelligibility]] between them, as occurs in [[Arabic]], the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as a single language.

A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. [[Classification of the Japonic languages|Classifications of the Japonic family]], for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of [[Ryukyuan language|Ryukyuan]] as separate languages within a [[Japonic language family]] rather than dialects of Japanese, the [[Japanese language]] itself was considered a [[language isolate]] and therefore the only language in its family.

=== Isolates ===
{{main|Language isolate}}
Most of the world's languages are known to be related to others. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called [[language isolate]]s, essentially language families consisting of a single language. There are an estimated 129 language isolates known today.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|last=Campbell |first=Lyle |date=24 August 2010 |title=Language Isolates and Their History, or, What's Weird, Anyway? |url=http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/BLS/article/view/3900 |journal=Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society |language=en |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=16–31 |doi=10.3765/bls.v36i1.3900 |issn=2377-1666 |doi-access=free}}</ref> An example is [[Basque language|Basque]]. In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives or had relatives at some point in their history but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them.

It is commonly misunderstood that language isolates are classified as such because there is not sufficient data on or documentation of the language. This is false{{npov inline|date=April 2023}} because a language isolate is classified based on the fact that enough is known about the isolate to compare it genetically to other languages but no common ancestry or relationship is found with any other known language.<ref name=":0" />

A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as [[Albanian language|Albanian]] and [[Armenian language|Armenian]] within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of the word "isolate" in such cases is usually clarified with a [[Grammatical modifier|modifier]]. For instance, Albanian and Armenian may be referred to as an "Indo-European isolate". By contrast, so far as is known, the [[Basque language]] is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other modern language despite numerous attempts. Another well-known isolate is [[Mapudungun]], the Mapuche language from the [[Araucanian languages|Araucanían language family]] in Chile.{{Clarify|reason=Seems contradictory. If the language is a member of a family with another member (Huilliche), how is it an isolate?|date=March 2023}} A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The [[Aquitanian language]], spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to the ancestor of Basque. In the latter case, Basque and Aquitanian would form a small family together. Ancestors are not considered to be distinct members of a family.{{citation needed|date=April 2023}}

=== Proto-languages ===
{{main|Proto-language}}
A proto-language can be thought of as a mother language (not to be confused with a [[mother tongue]], which is one that a specific person has been exposed to from birth<ref>{{cite book|last=Bloomfield |first=Leonard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfrd-On5iFwC |title=Language |year=1994 |isbn=81-208-1196-8}}</ref>),{{necessary?|date=April 2023}} being the root from which all languages in the family stem. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the [[comparative method]], a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist [[August Schleicher]]. This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the [[list of language families]]. For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called ''[[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]]''. Proto-Indo-European is not attested by written records and so is conjectured to have been spoken before the invention of writing.

== Other classifications of languages ==
{{More citations needed section|date=May 2022}}

=== Sprachbund ===
{{Main|Sprachbund}}

A [[sprachbund]] is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the [[Indian subcontinent]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Joseph |first=Brian |date=2017 |title=The Balkan Sprachbund |url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/e-learning/LSAInstitute--BalkanSprachbundSlides.pdf|access-date=2 October 2020 |website=linguisticsociety.org}}</ref>

Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with the language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by [[Italic languages]] ([[Latin]], [[Oscan language|Oscan]], [[Umbrian language|Umbrian]], etc.) might well be "[[areal feature]]s". However, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the [[West Germanic languages]] greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not a linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic, [[Baltic languages|Baltic]] and [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family.

=== Contact languages ===
{{main|Mixed language|Creole language|Pidgin}}
The concept of language families is based on the historical observation that languages develop [[dialect]]s, which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed.<ref name="ListNelson-Sathi2014">{{cite journal|last1=List |first1=Johann-Mattis |last2=Nelson-Sathi |first2=Shijulal |last3=Geisler |first3=Hans |last4=Martin |first4=William |title=Networks of lexical borrowing and lateral gene transfer in language and genome evolution |journal=[[BioEssays]] |volume=36 |issue=2 |year=2014 |pages=141–150 |issn=0265-9247 |doi=10.1002/bies.201300096 |pmid=24375688 |pmc=3910147}}</ref> It is more like the evolution of microbes, with extensive [[lateral gene transfer]]. Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through [[language contact]], which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be [[creole language|creoles]] or [[mixed language]]s. In addition, a number of [[sign language]]s have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another, even if this family's relation to other families is not known.

Language contact can lead to the development of new languages from the mixture of two or more languages for the purposes of interactions between two groups who speak different languages. Languages that arise in order for two groups to communicate with each other to engage in commercial trade or that appeared as a result of colonialism are called [[pidgins|pidgin]]. Pidgins are an example of linguistic and cultural expansion caused by language contact. However, language contact can also lead to cultural divisions. In some cases, two different language speaking groups can feel territorial towards their language and do not want any changes to be made to it. This causes language boundaries and groups in contact are not willing to make any compromises to accommodate the other language.<ref>{{cite web|title=Languages in Contact {{!}} Linguistic Society of America |url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/languages-contact |access-date=2 October 2020 |website=www.linguisticsociety.org}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{infobox language/quilt}}
{{Colbegin}}
* [[Constructed language]]
* [[Endangered language]]
* [[Extinct language]]
* [[Language death]]
* [[List of revived languages]]
* [[Global language system]]
* [[ISO 639-5]]
* [[Linguist List]]
* [[List of language families]]
* [[List of languages by number of native speakers]]
* [[Origin of language]]
* [[Proto-language]]
* [[Proto-Human language]]
* [[Tree model]]
* [[Unclassified language]]
* [[Father Tongue hypothesis]]
* [[Farming/language dispersal hypothesis]]
{{Colend}}
{{clear}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book|last=Boas |first=Franz |year=1911 |title=Handbook of American Indian languages |volume=1 |series=Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40 |location=Washington |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]], Bureau of American Ethnology |isbn=0-8032-5017-7}}
* Boas, Franz. (1922). ''Handbook of American Indian languages'' (Vol. 2). Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40. Washington, D.C.: Government Print Office (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology).
* Boas, Franz. (1933). ''Handbook of American Indian languages'' (Vol. 3). Native American legal materials collection, title 1227. Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin.
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-509427-1}}.
* Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). ''The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment''. Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). ''Languages''. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. {{ISBN|0-16-048774-9}}.
* Goddard, Ives. (1999). ''Native languages and language families of North America'' (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). [Map]. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institution). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). {{ISBN|0-8032-9271-6}}.
* Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). ''Ethnologue: Languages of the world'' (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. {{ISBN|1-55671-159-X}}. (Online version: [http://www.ethnologue.com Ethnologue: Languages of the World]).
* Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966). ''The Languages of Africa'' (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University.
* Harrison, K. David. (2007) ''When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge''. New York and London: Oxford University Press.
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-23228-7}} (hbk); {{ISBN|0-521-29875-X}}.
* Ross, Malcolm. (2005). "[http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/mdr/Papuan%20Pasts%20paper.pdf Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040608222723/http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/mdr/Papuan%20Pasts%20paper.pdf |date=8 June 2004 }}". In: [[Andrew Pawley]], Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, ''Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples'' (PDF)
* Ruhlen, Merritt. (1987). ''A guide to the world's languages''. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
* Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). ''Handbook of North American Indians'' (Vol. 1–20). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published).
* Voegelin, C. F. & Voegelin, F. M. (1977). ''Classification and index of the world's languages''. New York: Elsevier.
{{refend}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.muturzikin.com/countries.htm Linguistic maps] (from Muturzikin)
* [https://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue]
* [http://multitree.org/ The Multitree Project]
* [http://www.proel.org/index.php?pagina=mundo Lenguas del mundo] (World Languages)
* [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Swadesh_lists Comparative Swadesh list tables of various language families] (from Wiktionary)
* [http://www.ezglot.com/most-similar-languages.php Most similar languages]

{{Language families}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Language Family}}
[[Category:Historical linguistics]]
[[Category:Language families| ]]

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