Map of languages ​​of the Russian Federation. Geographical language: where does the world map in the mouth come from? Map of the distribution of languages ​​of Ukraine

There are about 3,000 languages ​​all over the world; no one has yet been able to calculate the exact number. Although, according to available UNESCO data, there are 2,796 languages ​​in the world. Seeing the exact figure, any linguist will smile, not because the exact number of languages ​​in the world was counted, but from what was counted. All over the world there are many mixed languages ​​and languages ​​that are extinct or languages ​​of small tribes that are not officially listed anywhere. In this regard, it is practically impossible to calculate the exact number of languages. But linguists managed to distribute all the languages ​​of the world into groups or families.

Many different languages ​​are similar to each other, for example, a citizen of Russia can communicate with a citizen of Belarus and Ukraine, or vice versa, and everyone will be able to understand each other. Basically, the languages ​​of those peoples whose lands border each other or by the ethnic origin of the countries are similar. As we know, 1000 years ago, in the territory where Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are now located, there were lands Kievan Rus. And the ancestors of the above countries communicated in the same Old Church Slavonic language. Until our time, the borders have changed, and in place of Kievan Rus, three new states grew up: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Map of the distribution of languages ​​of Ukraine

Chinese dialect map

Indigenous languages ​​of South America

Arabic dialects

Dialects of the Russian language

Map of African languages

German dialect map

Map of Finno-Ugric languages

Map of Slavic languages

Map of Indian languages

Families and groups of languages

Currently, linguists distinguish the following families and groups of languages:

- Indian group. This is the largest group in terms of number talking people, as Indian languages ​​are spoken by more than 1 billion people. This group includes the languages ​​of Central and North India, as well as Pakistan. You can also include the gypsies who moved to Europe from India in the 5th - 10th centuries into this group. n. e. Of the extinct languages, this group includes the ancient Indian language - Sanskrit. The famous epic poem was written in this language ancient india"Mahabharata"

- Iranian group. The languages ​​of this group are spoken in Iran (Persian) and Afghanistan (Afghan). In this group there is a dead Scythian language.

- Slavic group. This includes a large number of various languages, which are usually further divided into subgroups.

• eastern subgroup; Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian language
• Western subgroup; Polish, Slovak, Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian and Polabian which is a dead language
• southern subgroup; Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic which is also a dead language

- Baltic group. This group speaks Latvian and Lithuanian.

- German group. Almost all languages ​​belong to this group Western Europe; Scandinavian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic), English, German, Dutch and modern Jewish Yiddish. Among all the above languages ​​in this group, English is the most widely spoken and is spoken by more than 400 million people. USA - 215 million, UK 58 million, Canada 33.5 million, Australia - 20 million, Ireland - 4 million, South Africa - 4 million, New Zealand 3.6 million. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Regarding the Yiddish language, we can say that almost all Jews speak it. One of the languages ​​of the Germanic group, Boer, is widespread in South Africa thanks to immigrants from Holland.

- Roman group. French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese languages. This group also includes Provençal, Sardinian (island of Sardinia), Catalan (Eastern Spain) and Moldavian.

- Celtic group. The languages ​​of this group are spoken in Ireland and on the nearby islands, as well as on the Brittany peninsula of France (Breton language), in Wales (Welsh language). The dead languages ​​of this group include the language of the ancient Gauls, who lived on the territory of modern France.

In addition to the above groups, Greek, Albanian and Armenian languages ​​are separately distinguished, which are classified as Indo-European languages. Also included in this group are such dead languages ​​as Hittite (Asia Minor) and Tocharian (the territory of Central Asia).

Consider the origin of languages: at one time the number of languages ​​was small. These were the so-called “proto-languages”. Over time, proto-languages ​​began to spread across the Earth, each of them becoming the ancestor of its own language family. A language family is the largest unit of classification of a language (peoples and ethnic groups) based on their linguistic relationship.

Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages ​​that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages ​​belonging to the same language group retain many common roots and are similar grammatical structure, phonetic and lexical matches. There are now more than 7,000 languages ​​from more than 100 language families of languages.

Linguists have identified more than one hundred major language families of languages.

Others

As can be seen from the list, ~45% of the world's population speaks languages ​​of the Indo-European family of languages.

Language groups of languages. Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages ​​that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages ​​of the same language group have many similarities in the roots of words, in grammatical structure

and phonetics. There is also a smaller division of groups into subgroups.

The Indo-European family of languages ​​is the most widespread language family in the world. The number of speakers of languages ​​of the Indo-European family exceeds 2.5 billion people who live on all inhabited continents of the Earth. The languages ​​of the Indo-European family arose as a result of the consistent collapse of the Indo-European proto-language, which began about 6 thousand years ago. Thus, all languages ​​of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language.

The classification of languages ​​explains the reason for the difficulty of learning foreign languages. To the carrier Slavic language, which belong to the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages, it is easier to learn a language of the Slavic group than a language of another group of the Indo-European family, such as the Romance languages ​​(French) or the Germanic group of languages ​​(English). It is even more difficult to learn a language from another language family, for example Chinese, which is not part of the Indo-European family, but belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

Choosing foreign language to study, they are guided by the practical, and more often the economic, side of the matter. To get a well-paid job, people choose first of all such popular languages ​​as English or German.

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Additional materials on language families.

Below are the main language families and the languages ​​included in them. The Indo-European language family is discussed above.

Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) language family.

Sino-Tibetan is one of the largest language families in the world. Includes more than 350 languages ​​spoken by more than 1200 million people. Sino-Tibetan languages ​​are divided into 2 groups, Chinese and Tibeto-Burman.
● The Chinese group is formed by Chinese and its numerous dialects, the number of native speakers is more than 1050 million people. Distributed in China and beyond. And Min languages with more than 70 million native speakers.
● The Tibeto-Burman group includes about 350 languages, with a number of speakers of about 60 million people. Distributed in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, southwestern China and northeastern India. Main languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers), Tibetan (more than 5 million), Karen languages ​​(more than 3 million), Manipuri (more than 1 million) and others.

The Altai (hypothetical) language family includes the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu language groups. sometimes include the Korean and Japanese-Ryukyuan language groups.
● Turkic language group- widespread in Asia and Eastern Europe. The number of speakers is more than 167.4 million people. They are divided into the following subgroups:
・ Bulgar subgroup: Chuvash (dead - Bulgar, Khazar).
・ Oguz subgroup: Turkmen, Gagauz, Turkish, Azerbaijani (dead - Oguz, Pecheneg).
・ Kypchak subgroup: Tatar, Bashkir, Karaite, Kumyk, Nogai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altai, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar. (dead - Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Golden Horde).
・ Karluk subgroup: Uzbek, Uyghur.
・ Eastern Hunnic subgroup: Yakut, Tuvan, Khakass, Shor, Karagas. (dead - Orkhon, ancient Uyghur.)
● The Mongolian language group includes several closely related languages Mongolia, China, Russia and Afghanistan. Includes modern Mongolian (5.7 million people), Khalkha-Mongolian (Khalkha), Buryat, Khamnigan, Kalmyk, Oirat, Shira-Yugur, Mongorian, Baoan-Dongxiang cluster, Mogul language - Afghanistan, Dagur (Dakhur) languages.
● Tungus-Manchu language group related languages ​​in Siberia (including Far East), Mongolia and northern China. The number of carriers is 40 - 120 thousand people. Includes two subgroups:
・ Tungus subgroup: Evenki, Evenki (Lamut), Negidal, Nanai, Udean, Ulch, Oroch, Udege.
・ Manchu subgroup: Manchu.

Languages ​​of the Austronesian language family are distributed in Taiwan, Indonesia, Java-Sumatra, Brunei, Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, Oceania, Kalimantan and Madagascar. This is one of the largest families (the number of languages ​​is over 1000, the number of speakers is over 300 million people). Divided into the following groups:
● Western Austronesian languages
● languages ​​of eastern Indonesia
● Oceanian languages

Afroasiatic (or Semitic-Hamitic) language family.

● Semitic group
・Northern subgroup: Aisorian.
・ Southern group: Arabic; Amharic, etc.
・ dead: Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew (Hebrew).
・ Hebrew (the official language of Israel has been revived).
● Cushitic group: Galla, Somalia, Beja.
● Berber group: Tuareg, Kabyle, etc.
● Chadian group: Hausa, Gwandarai, etc.
● Egyptian group (dead): Ancient Egyptian, Coptic.

Includes the languages ​​of the pre-Indo-European population of the Hindustan Peninsula:
● Dravidian group: Tamil, Malalayam, Kannara.
● Andhra Group: Telugu.
● Central Indian group: Gondi.
● Brahui language (Pakistan).

The Japanese-Ryukyu (Japanese) family of languages ​​are common in the Japanese archipelago and the Ryukyu Islands. Japanese is an isolated language that is sometimes classified in the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・ Japanese and dialects.

The Korean language family is represented by one single language - Korean. Korean is an isolated language that is sometimes classified in the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・Japanese language and dialects.
・Ryukyuan languages ​​(Amami-Okinawa, Sakishima and Yonagun language).

Tai-Kadai (Thai-Kadai, Dong-Tai, Paratai) family of languages, distributed on the Indochina Peninsula and in adjacent areas of Southern China.
●Li languages ​​(Hlai (Li) and Jiamao) Thai languages
・northern subgroup: northern dialects of the Zhuang language, Bui, Sek.
・central subgroup: Tai (Tho), Nung, southern dialects of the Zhuang language.
・Southwestern subgroup: Thai (Siamese), Laotian, Shan, Khamti, Ahom language, languages ​​of black and white Tai, Yuan, Ly, Kheung.
●Dun-Shui languages: dun, shui, mak, then.
●Be
●Kadai languages: Lakua, Lati, Gelao languages ​​(northern and southern).
●Li languages ​​(Hlai (Li) and Jiamao)

The Uralic language family includes two groups - Finno-Ugric and Samoyed.
●Finno-Ugric group:
・Baltic-Finnish subgroup: Finnish, Izhorian, Karelian, Vepsian languages, Estonian, Votic, Livonian languages.
・Volga subgroup: Mordovian language, Mari language.
・Perm subgroup: Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Yazva languages.
・Ugric subgroup: Khanty and Mansi, as well as Hungarian languages.
・Sami subgroup: languages ​​spoken by the Sami.
●The Samoyedic languages ​​are traditionally divided into 2 subgroups:
・northern subgroup: Nenets, Nganasan, Enets languages.
・southern subgroup: Selkup language.

The approximate number of languages ​​on the globe can be determined at 7 thousand - this is exactly a million times less than the approximate number of people living on Earth now. Modern linguistic diversity is a pyramid, at the top of which there are about a dozen giant languages ​​(they are also often called world languages languages), and at the base there are many small languages, with only a few hundred or even dozens of speakers. However, even if a language has several thousand speakers, it is still a small language: in fact, it is no more than the population of one large village. Here we must understand that a small number of native speakers is not just a characteristic of a language, it is a clear indicator of its disadvantage.

World languages ​​are considered to be those whose number of speakers ranges from 100 million to a billion. There is also one language with more than a billion speakers - this giant language, Chinese, is far ahead of all others. But we must not forget that the very name “Chinese language” is quite arbitrary and it also hides a very complex reality. This name is actually applied to the conglomerate different languages, often incomprehensible, which, in addition to cultural and civilizational community and common state, is also united by a common written language, a common literary standard, but the latter is based on the northern Beijing norm. The global role of Chinese in the modern world remains relatively modest. It is important, for example, that relatively few people speak Chinese as a second language and there has not yet been a significant expansion of Chinese outside of China - in this respect, Chinese is noticeably different from other world languages, which it is ahead of in number, and above all from English.

English Language There are 400 million native speakers of English, significantly fewer than Chinese, and even slightly less than Spanish, so from a formal point of view, it is the third largest language on our planet. But it is absolutely clear that English is now the main world language. Firstly, the number of people who use English as a second language is growing very rapidly. Everyday life. We are talking about situations where a person uses English constantly in his daily life. There are many such countries, and here English demonstrates very powerful dynamics, and its role as a world language has been constantly growing since the second half of the 20th century. And, secondly, it is English that now claims to be the universal language of international communication.

5. Other world languages

Next on the list of world languages ​​are mainly those that are spoken by a lot of people, and often these are the languages ​​of European metropolises, such a language being, of course, Spanish. The number of speakers - primarily in South and Central America and Africa - is very large and, according to some estimates, reaches almost half a billion. In addition, Spanish has taken quite strong roots in the southern United States: in the United States, Spanish is the only language that shows good momentum and is becoming the language of the second largest national minority, so Spanish is certainly a language that has prospects in the future.

The next group is the languages ​​of Asia, primarily Hindi, Bengali and Indonesian. These are the languages ​​of huge communities in regions with rapidly growing populations, but again it should be borne in mind that all of these are conglomerates of very different dialects, dialects and even individual local languages, united by one name.

Next comes Russian, which still retains its position in this series of world languages, and we must not forget that Russian as a second language is also used by significant groups of people; here Russian is somewhat similar to English, with the only difference being that for English number Such people are growing, but for Russians, unfortunately, they are decreasing. Nevertheless, Russian still holds its position among world languages.

And at the end of this list we will find Portuguese (at the expense of Brazil and Africa) and Japanese, the number of speakers and the role of which in the world is growing very quickly. As you can see, the inclusion of a language in the number of world languages ​​correlates either with the role of the language in the modern world, or simply with the population size, so to speak, with arithmetic parameters. But in the case of Japanese, we see such a successful interaction of both factors.

Directly behind them are languages ​​such as French and German, the number of their native speakers is just shy of 100 million. But even if we do not attach decisive importance to the figure of 100 million, even if we lower the threshold, say, to 10 million speakers, there will still be only a few dozen such large vital languages ​​in the world.

Thus, the language map modern world very heterogeneous: and if at one pole we have huge world languages, then at the other there are many such small languages, most of which are doomed to disappear in the coming decades. Most of these languages ​​are unwritten, we do not know or know very little about their history, we It was difficult to record many of them, especially when it comes to New Guinea, the Amazon basin, and tropical Africa.

True modern linguistics is a linguistics that seeks to observe and describe the totality of human languages. On this path, of course, very interesting and unexpected discoveries still await us - if only we manage to preserve for our descendants at least close to the current level of linguistic diversity of humanity

A linguistic picture of the world, historically formed in the everyday consciousness of a given linguistic community and reflected in the language as a set of ideas about the world, a certain way of conceptualizing reality. With this complex and cumbersome definition, I want to present several language maps of the world:

Each natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving and organizing the world. The values ​​expressed in it add up to a certain unified system views, a kind of collective philosophy that is imposed as mandatory on all native speakers. Peculiar given language the way of conceptualizing reality is partly universal, partly nationally specific, so that speakers of different languages ​​can see the world slightly differently, through the prism of their languages. On the other hand, the linguistic picture of the world is “naive” in the sense that in many significant respects it differs from the “scientific” picture. At the same time, the naive ideas reflected in the language are by no means primitive: in many cases they are no less complex and interesting than scientific ones.
Participants in the Bab.la project created a world map that shows the main languages ​​of the world, their coverage area, and the number of people using them. This language map shows the most spoken language on each continent, and in the world! With the help of this map, you can clearly see linguistic diversity, and, accordingly, imagine the multidimensional and multifaceted world of human thoughts and philosophies.

The genealogical (genetic) classification of languages ​​is based on the relationships of kinship between languages ​​- the commonality of some languages ​​by origin.

Genealogical classification of languages ​​is a classification based on the genetic principle, i.e., grouping languages ​​related by origin into language families. G.K.I. became possible only after the emergence of the concept of linguistic kinship and the establishment of the principle of historicism in linguistic research (19th century). It develops as a result of studying languages ​​using the comparative historical method.

A set of techniques and procedures for the historical and genetic study of language families and groups, as well as individual languages, used in comparative historical linguistics to establish historical patterns of language development. S.‑i. m. is the most important tool for understanding the history of languages. With the help of S.-i. The diachronic evolution of genetically close languages ​​is traced based on evidence of their common origin.

The main goal of S.‑i. m. is the reconstruction of the model of proto-linguistic states (see Proto-language) of individual families and groups of related languages ​​of the world, their subsequent development and division into independent languages, as well as the construction of comparative historical descriptions (grammars and dictionaries) of languages ​​included in one or another genetic community.

Comparison as a universal method of linguistic research in S.-i. m. is dominant. Most effective in establishing patterns historical development related language systems S.-i. m. detects at the phonetic-phonological and morphological levels. The direction of research in this case can be either retrospective, i.e., going from a historically documented state to the original one, or prospective - from the initial state to a later one.

The relatedness of languages ​​is a consequence of the fact that such languages ​​originate from one base language (proto-language) through its disintegration due to the fragmentation of the native community. Thus, a comparative historical study of a certain language is possible only against the background of studying historical fate people who are native speakers of a given language.

Typological classifications of languages ​​(isolating, agglutinative, inflectional, incorporating languages; synthetic and analytical types of languages)

According to the morphological classification, all languages ​​of the world are divided into four types. - - The first type consists of inflectional or fusional languages. These include Slavic, Baltic, Italic, some Indian and Iranian languages. Languages ​​of this type are characterized by a developed system of inflection and the ability to convey the entire range of grammatical meanings with one indicator. So, for example, in the Russian word “at home” the ending of the word “-a” is both a masculine sign and plural And nominative case.

Languages ​​of the second type are called agglutinative. These include Turkic, Tungus-Manchu, Finno-Ugric, Kartvelian, Andamanese and some other languages. Languages ​​of this type are characterized, like inflectional languages, by a developed system of inflection, but, unlike inflectional languages, in agglutinative languages ​​every grammatical meaning has its own indicator. Agglutinative languages ​​are characterized by the presence of a common type of declension for all nouns and a common type of conjugation for all verbs. In inflected languages, on the contrary, we are faced with great variety types of declension and conjugation.

The third type consists of incorporating or polysynthetic languages. These include the languages ​​of the Chukotka-Kamchatka family, some Indian languages North America. Languages ​​of this type are characterized by combining a whole sentence into one large compound word. In this case, grammatical indicators formulate not individual words, but the entire word-sentence as a whole.

The fourth type isolating languages ​​- languages ​​with a low morpheme-to-word ratio. Words in a maximally isolating language will consist of only one morpheme - the root, without forming either compound words or combinations with suffixes, prefixes, etc. In this respect, isolating languages ​​are the opposite of synthetic languages, in which words can consist of several morphemes.

Typology of languages ​​as a special branch of linguistics. Comparative typology of foreign and native languages as one of the sections of a private typology of languages. Relationship between typology and other linguistic disciplines

LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, section general linguistics, a line of research that aims to establish similarities and differences between languages ​​that do not depend on genetic relatedness or the influence of some languages ​​on others. Typology usually seeks to isolate and consider the most important linguistic characteristics that presumably determine other aspects of the structure of the language (such as, for example, the way of connecting meaningful parts of a word or the so-called structure of a sentence). Research in the field of linguistic typology is based on material from representative samples from many languages ​​of the world; conclusions drawn from the study of the sample, with certain reservations, can be extended to all the many languages ​​of the Earth. Typology has a special interest in “exotic” or little-studied languages, such as those common in Southeast Asia, Africa, Oceania or the American Indians, but the material of the most widespread, prestigious and well-studied languages ​​can equally be the subject of typological study.