A language family spanning North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East. Includes Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic), Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic branches.
austroasiatic
Austroasiatic
A language family of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern India. Includes Vietnamese, Khmer, and the Munda languages.
austronesian
Austronesian
A language family spread across Maritime Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Madagascar. Includes Malay, Javanese, Tagalog, and Maori.
aymaran
Aymaran
A language family of the Andes in South America, centered on Bolivia and Peru.
constructed
Constructed
Languages deliberately created rather than having evolved naturally. Includes international auxiliary languages such as Esperanto.
creole
Creole
Stable natural languages that developed from the mixing of parent languages, often arising in contact situations such as trade or colonization.
dravidian
Dravidian
A language family of southern India and Sri Lanka. Major members include Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.
hmong-mien
Hmong-Mien
A language family of southern China and mainland Southeast Asia. Includes Hmong and Mien varieties.
indo-european
Indo-European
The largest language family by number of speakers, spanning most of Europe, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. Includes Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Aryan, and Iranian branches.
japonic
Japonic
A small language family consisting of Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Japanese archipelago.
kartvelian
Kartvelian
A language family of the South Caucasus. Includes Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan.
koreanic
Koreanic
A small language family consisting of Korean and the Jeju language of the Korean Peninsula.
language-isolate
Language Isolate
A language that has no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other language. Examples include Basque and, by some classifications, Korean.
mongolic
Mongolic
A language family of Central and East Asia, centered on Mongolia. Includes Mongolian and Buryat.
niger-congo
Niger-Congo
The largest language family by number of languages, covering most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Includes the vast Bantu subfamily (Swahili, Zulu, Shona).
nilo-saharan
Nilo-Saharan
A proposed language family covering parts of central and eastern Africa. Includes Luo, Kanuri, and Songhai.
quechuan
Quechuan
A language family of the Andes in South America. Quechua was the language of the Inca Empire and is still spoken by millions.
sino-tibetan
Sino-Tibetan
The second-largest language family, centered in East and Southeast Asia. Includes Chinese varieties, Tibetan, and Burmese.
tai-kadai
Tai-Kadai
A language family of mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. Includes Thai, Lao, and Shan.
tupian
Tupian
A language family of South America. Guarani, an official language of Paraguay, is its most widely spoken member.
turkic
Turkic
A language family spanning Central Asia, Siberia, and Turkey. Includes Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, and Turkmen.
uralic
Uralic
A language family of northern Eurasia. Includes Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and the Sami languages.