So, one language can, having divided, give rise to several descendant languages ​​related to each other. Such languages ​​having a common ancestor are called group of related languages.

Related languages ​​belonging to the same group, as a rule, are similar to each other - of course, not always as much as, for example, the Russian and Belarusian languages, but, in any case, their similarity is usually visible, so to speak, “with the naked eye” . Any Spaniard (even if he is far from linguistics) will tell you that Spanish and Italian languages"very similar" and French, of course, is not so similar to Spanish, but in French he sometimes “understands almost everything.” This way, or something like this, speakers of related languages ​​of the same group will always evaluate the languages ​​of their linguistic “relatives”. A Russian will say approximately the same about the Bulgarian and Polish languages, a Dane - about the Swedish and Icelandic languages, a Bengali - about the Gujarati and Marathi languages ​​(all of them are common in different states of India, and Bengali, in addition, is also in Bangladesh; you, perhaps , have never heard such names, and yet in related languages Indo-Aryan group speaks almost eight hundred million people), an Estonian - about the Finnish and Karelian languages, etc.

Here, perhaps, some of you will be wondering whether all languages ​​of the world have such close relatives. It turns out that not everyone (although very many). Every language has some kind of ancestor, but just as people have families with one child, a language may not leave many descendants. In addition, other related languages ​​may disappear over time, so that our language will remain alone in this world, without close relatives (about distant ones - a separate conversation, more on that a little later). Such a language will form a group consisting of it alone. For example, modern Greek (it is called “Modern Greek”) forms Greek group, into which no one else is included except himself (unless, of course, we consider ancient Greek and modern Greek as two different languages, but we are still talking about modern languages).

Now imagine that we are studying two different groups of related languages. Well, for example, the one that linguists call Slavic , and the one that linguists call Baltic .

TO Slavic group In addition to Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, there are also Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and some others; all Slavs live in the west of Eastern Europe (or in the east of Western Europe - as one likes to think), and Russians also live in Siberia, the Urals, Central Asia - wherever Russia extends, and even beyond its borders.

The Baltic group now consists of only two languages ​​– Lithuanian and Latvian. They are also similar to each other: for example, “bear” in Lithuanian will be lokys(reads lokis), and in Latvian – lācis(reads lacis); True, it will be difficult for a Latvian and a Lithuanian to understand each other “on the spot.”

We know that all Slavic languages ​​have a common ancestor - the Proto-Slavic language. Once upon a time, the people who spoke it divided into several groups, and this is how modern Slavic languages ​​arose. Of course, the Lithuanian language also has a common ancestor with Latvian. This is a proto-Baltic language.

What happens if we try to compare the Proto-Slavic language with the Proto-Baltic language? It turns out that these two languages ​​will be very similar - much more than any Slavic language is similar to any Baltic. Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic languages ​​are similar to each other in the same way that languages ​​belonging to the same language group are similar.

This means that the Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic languages ​​are also related to each other, that they belong to the same group and they had a common ancestor - the Baltoslavic language.

True, we can no longer say this with complete confidence. After all, the further into the depths of centuries, the more scope there is for hypotheses that have not been definitively proven. There are linguists who think differently about the relationship between the Baltic and Slavic languages.

However, this is not important for us yet. But the important thing is this: among groups of related languages, there can certainly be those whose ancestor languages ​​are also related to each other.

These are the groups that form new ones large groups"distantly related" languages. In linguistics they are usually called families .

If we can almost always say with confidence about two languages ​​within the same group that they are very similar, then about two languages ​​belonging to the same family (but different groups) you can’t just say that anymore. Their relationship does not lie on the surface, because it is, so to speak, first cousins ​​or second cousins. Therefore, linguists prove it in a special way. Words from languages ​​belonging to different groups of the same family cannot be compared directly with each other - you must first understand what these words looked like in the ancestral languages ​​of each group, and then compare ancient words with each other. That is why you should not compare Persian words with English ones - you need to compare the ancestor of English and other Germanic languages ​​(this is the Proto-Germanic language) with the ancestor of Persian and other Iranian languages ​​(this is the Proto-Iranian language).

Now there are at least twenty different language families on earth. Of course, the question arises as to whether entire families of languages ​​can already be related to each other. That is, is it possible to compare the proto-languages ​​from which these families arose with each other? Indeed, some linguists are trying to do this. They succeed macrofamily , which include families of related (in their opinion) languages. But these macro-families must have arisen from a proto-language that is tens of thousands of years old. It is difficult to say how reliable the hypotheses that relate to such antiquity are: after all, in that era in Europe, for example, people still wore skins and used stone axes. But some of the results obtained from the study of distant relationships of languages ​​are very interesting.

However, let's return to a more studied area - to existing families languages ​​(by the way, almost none of them have been studied thoroughly, and many have been studied very superficially). The most famous family of languages ​​is probably - Indo-European . It is so named because it covers the languages ​​spoken throughout Europe and large parts of Asia - all the way to India. Slavic languages also included in Indo-European family.

It is assumed that there was once a single Indo-European proto-language, which later broke up into many descendant languages, and they gave rise to different language groups inside Indo-European family. There is still much that is unclear in the history of the Indo-European languages, although perhaps no other family of languages ​​is better studied.

Linguists began studying Indo-European languages ​​back in the 18th century, when the Englishman Sir William Jones noticed that the ancient Indian language Sanskrit (which played in India approximately the same role as Latin in Europe - the language of religion, philosophy, literature, communication between different peoples) contains many words that are strikingly similar to Latin and ancient Greek. There were so many coincidences and they were so obvious that this similarity, of course, could not be accidental. There was only one thing left to do - to assume that Sanskrit, and ancient Greek, and Latin, and the language of the ancient Germans, and the language of the ancient Slavs, and many other languages ​​that display the same similarities - that they all have one common ancestor, one language, from which they all happened at some point. This is how the science of the kinship of languages ​​arose - comparative linguistics , or comparative studies .

Since the time of Jones, of course, many discoveries have been made, and much more has become known about the Indo-European languages ​​themselves. The Indo-European family now includes seven large groups and some individual languages ​​that have no close relatives. Here's what these groups are (we'll list only those languages ​​spoken in the modern era).

First of all, these are already known to us Slavic And Baltic languages . Other important independent groups form: in Europe – Germanic (German, Dutch, English, etc.), Romanesque (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.) and (alas, close to extinction) Celtic languages; in South Asia – Iranian And Indo-Aryan languages.

In addition, the Indo-European languages, which do not have close relatives and each form their own separate group, include Albanian, Armenian And Greek languages.

Peoples speaking these languages ​​now occupy vast areas on several continents. The Indo-European family is one of the largest in the world, and its languages ​​are remarkably diverse. But we have not listed all of them. And they said nothing at all about dead languages ​​- for example, about the mysterious Hittite a language whose texts are several centuries older than even Sanskrit. This is the oldest Indo-European language known to us, and it was spoken in Asia Minor, in the territory of modern Turkey and Syria, starting at least from the 18th century BC. e.

But there are many other language families. For example, Afro-Asian family includes the most different languages North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean - from ancient Egyptian to Arabic, the Berber languages ​​of North Africa and even the Hausa language, spoken in the heart of Tropical Africa - in Nigeria, Niger and neighboring countries. Big Altai family languages ​​includes a group Turkic languages ​​(Turkish, Tatar, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Chuvash and many others), widespread throughout Asia - from Yakutia to Turkey, as well as the Mongolian language and maybe even Japanese and Korean languages ​​(although not all linguists are yet with this agree).

Ural family languages ​​includes two groups, of which you probably know large languages Finno-Ugric groups. It includes Finnish and Hungarian (one of the few non-Indo-European languages ​​in Western Europe); at Finnish language there are many close relatives, including primarily the Estonian and Karelian languages, as well as the Sami language in the very north of Europe and the languages ​​of the peoples living along the banks of the Volga, Kama and Pechora - Mari, Mordovian, Komi, Udmurt. But the Hungarian language has very unexpected relatives. These are the languages ​​of the Khanty and Mansi, living in Siberia, near the Ob River. Once upon a time they and the Hungarians formed a single people, but that’s how far they have diverged over the last two millennia.

But that’s not all. Let's name only the largest language families peace. Nations speaking tongues Austronesian family, live in Indonesia, the Philippines, Madagascar, the Polynesian islands Pacific Ocean. Languages Sino-Tibetan families are common, as you might guess, in China and in the mountains of Tibet (of course, the most famous of them is the Chinese language, which surpasses all other languages ​​in the world in the number of speakers). The majority of the population of Tropical Africa speaks the family languages niger-congo (for example, peoples Bantu , inhabiting almost the entire territory of Africa south of the equator). And how many other different language families are there in the Caucasus, Siberia, South and North America, and Australia! However, it’s better to put an end to this now. More details about the languages ​​of different continents will be discussed later.

So, as you can see, a linguist has a lot to do. Until now, in some remote corners of our planet, new languages ​​that have never been studied by anyone continue to be discovered.

We already know that the languages ​​of the world, in general, are very different from each other. But how do they differ? And how can they be compared to each other?

We will talk about this in the second part of our book.

semi-terminological combination, denoting primarily the so-called natural idioethnic languages, i.e. the native languages ​​of the peoples, or, more precisely, ethnic groups that inhabit or have ever inhabited the globe. Such languages ​​are acquired naturally in the process of an individual’s speech development and serve the sphere of natural everyday communication, and also, possibly, some other spheres. Examples of idioethnic languages ​​Russian, English, Arabic, Chinese, Tatar, etc.; Creole languages ​​such as Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea; various sign languages ​​for the hearing impaired. It is necessary to distinguish from such languages ​​a number of languages ​​that serve spheres that are outside the boundaries of everyday communication (say, only the sphere of interethnic communication, such as pidgins or artificial languages ​​such as Esperanto, or only liturgical practice), which are not native to anyone and are usually acquired in adulthood. age, often through formal training. Nevertheless, such “not completely natural” languages ​​(some were once natural idioethnic languages, for example Coptic, now used only in worship; others obviously never had the same status as Esperanto; and for others, the question of their naturalness remains unclear such as, say, Sanskrit or Old Church Slavonic) are usually also subsumed under the category of “languages ​​of the world.” Excluded from this category are sign languages, which are also used by normally hearing people for one reason or another; artificial languages ​​such as languages ​​of mathematical logic, programming or knowledge representation; fictional languages ​​like Klingon (from the Star Trek series) or numerous languages ​​and dialects invented by J. Tolkien, who was not only a writer, but also a professional philologist; jargons, including professional and argot. See also SEMIOTICS; DISCOURSE; GESTURAL COMMUNICATION; SIGN LANGUAGE(S); ARGO.

Most researchers believe that language arose about half a million years ago, although there are also estimates that attribute this event to both a later (but no later than 200 thousand years ago) and earlier (up to 1 million years) time. Exactly how this happened remains unclear.

All languages ​​of the globe are approximately equal in structural complexity. There are no “primitive” languages, since each language is ideally suited to express the culture of the people speaking it. It is difficult to say how many languages ​​there are currently. This is primarily due to the fact that there are no strict criteria that would allow us to decide in any case whether we are dealing with two different idioethnic languages ​​or with some varieties of the same idioethnic language, called dialects, dialects or adverbs (and the last three terms are sometimes distinguished and sometimes used as synonyms). It is also not so easy to answer the question of whether a language remains identical to itself throughout its history and what changes give grounds to talk about the emergence of a new language. Finally, there is no certainty that all languages ​​that actually exist on the planet are known to science. According to minimum estimates, the number of idioethnic languages ​​in the world is 2.5-3 thousand; the maximum estimate gives several times this number of languages.

Principles for describing the languages ​​of the world. M., 1976
Theoretical foundations of the classification of world languages. M., 1980
Languages ​​and dialects of the world. Prospectus and dictionary. M., 1982
Ivanov Vyach. Sun. Languages ​​of the world. Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1990
Potapov V.V. A short linguistic guide: languages ​​and scripts. M., 1997
Reformatsky A.A. Introduction to Linguistics, ed. 5 (Chapter VI. Classification of languages). M., 1999
Languages ​​of the world(ongoing multi-volume edition)

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Languages ​​and language families

Gave birth to many languages ​​of the Old World Nostratic a linguistic community dated by researchers to approximately the 11th–9th millennium BC. and localized by them in North-East Africa and South-West Asia. From its composition, the languages ​​of five families emerged, spreading over a large territory of the Old World: Indo-European, Altai, Ural-Yukaghir, Kartvelian and Dravidian.

Indo-European the family occupies a special place among them, since its languages ​​are not only widespread over a vast territory of the Old World, but predominate in the number of speakers in the American and Australian-Oceanic regions. It consists of the following groups, subgroups and languages.

Slavic the group, in turn, is divided into subgroups: East Slavic - Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian languages; West Slavic - Polish, Czech, Slovak and two Lusatian (Sorbians are a Slavic people of the north-eastern part of Germany) languages; South Slavic – Serbo-Croatian (native to Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Bosnians), Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian.

German a group in which, as in the Slavic, one can distinguish “uninational” languages, i.e. those that are native to one ethnic group, and “multinational” ones that “serve” several nations. The first include: Swedish, Norwegian, Frisian (Friesians are an ethnic group living in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany), Faroese (Faroese are the people of the Faroe Islands), Icelandic languages, to the second: German, which is native to the Germans, Austrians, Liechtensteins, German-Swiss, Alsatians, peculiar variants German language are Luxembourgish and Yiddish - the native language of a significant part of Ashkenazi Jews; English - for the English, most Scots and Irish, part of the Gibraltarians, Anglo-Canadians, Anglo-Australians, Anglo-New Zealanders, Anglo-Africans, US Americans and a number of West Indian peoples - Grenadians, Jamaicans, Barbadians, Trinidadians, Guyanese; Dutch – for the Dutch, Flemish, Surinamese and Afrikaners (Boers) of South Africa; Danish – for the Danes and some Norwegians.

Romanskaya a group that arose on the basis of the so-called Vulgar Latin, now classified as “dead” languages, includes languages ​​that are native to one ethnic group - Romanian, Catalan, Galician, Romansh, Sardinian, Occitan, Corsican, and to several ethnic groups: Italian – for Italians, Sanmaris, Italian-Swiss; French - for the French, Monegasques/Monegasques, Franco-Swiss, Walloons, French Canadians, in the West Indies - Guadeloupians, Martinicans, Guianians and Haitians; Portuguese – for Portuguese and Brazilians; Spanish - for the Spaniards, some Gibraltarians, and in Latin America for the majority of ethnic groups - Mexicans, Peruvians, Chileans, Argentines, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc. (the exceptions are Brazilians and some peoples of the West Indies). Spanish is a “record holder” for the number of ethnic groups speaking it.

Celtic a group once widespread in Europe, now represented only by Irish, Breton (an ethnicity in France), Gaelic (part of the Scots) and Welsh (Welsh).

Albanian group – Albanian language.

Greek group - the Greek language, spoken by the Greeks themselves, Greek Cypriots, and the so-called Karakachan Greeks of mountainous Greece.

Baltic group – Lithuanian, Latvian languages.

Armenian group – Armenian language.

Iranian group - Afghan/Pashtun, Persian/Farsi, Dari/Farsi-Kabuli, Kurdish, Tajik, etc., from the languages ​​of the peoples of Russia - Ossetian and Tat.

Indo-Aryan the group includes the languages ​​of the northern part of the Hindustan Peninsula - Hindustani, Bengali, Bihari, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Assamese, Nepali, Sinhalese, etc. Russian Federation this group is represented by the Romani language.

Nuristan group – Nuristani language.

Altai The language family is represented by three groups - Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu, including the Korean branch.

Turkic group – Turkish (Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Greek Urums), Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, Uzbek, Uyghur, Gagauz, etc. In the Russian Federation in the European part – Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash languages. In the North Caucasus - Karachay-Balkar, Nogai and Kumyk. In Siberia - Altai, Khakass, Tuvan, Yakut, Dolgan, Shor, Tofalar languages.

Mongolian group - Mongolian language, in the Russian Federation: Buryat - in Siberia and Kalmyk - in the European part.

Tungus-Manchu group - Manchurian, in the Russian Federation - Nanai, Evenki, Even, Ulch, Udege, Oroch, Orok (Uilta), Negidal languages.

Ural-Yukaghir the family consists of three groups of languages ​​- Finno-Ugric, Samoyed and Yukaghir.

Finno-Ugric group includes languages Finnish subgroups – Finnish, Estonian, Livonian (people in Latvia). In the Russian Federation - Udmurt, Komi and Komi-Permyak, Sami, Vepsian, Izhora, as well as languages ​​of bilingual ethnic groups: Moksha and Erzya - native to the Mordovians, Mountain Mari and Meadow-Eastern - for the Mari, Livvikov and Ludikov - for the Karelians; And Ugric subgroups are Hungarian, and in the Russian Federation - Khanty and Mansi languages.

Samoyed the group consists of Nenets, Enets, Selkup and Nganasan languages.

Yukagirskaya the group is represented by only one language – Yukaghir.

North Caucasian the family consists of the Nakho-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups.

Nakho-Dagestan the group includes Nakh a subgroup consisting of Chechen and Ingush languages, and Dagestan a subgroup consisting, according to linguists, of approximately fifty languages ​​- Avar, Lezgin, Dargin, Lak, Tabasaran, etc.

Included Abkhaz-Adyghe groups included Abkhazian a subgroup including the Abkhazian and Abaza languages, and Adyghe a subgroup consisting of the Adyghe and Kabardino-Circassian languages.

All of the above families include, among other things, the languages ​​of peoples whose ethnic territory is part of the Russian Federation. In addition, peoples who speak this language live here. Chukotka-Kamchatka languages ​​that do not go back to the Nostratic community - Chukchi, Koryak and Itelmen, Eskimo-Aleut - Eskimo and Aleutian.

Peoples speaking languages ​​of other families live mainly outside its borders.

Sino-Tibetan The family is one of the largest in the world in terms of the number of speakers of its languages, primarily due to the largest people in the world - the Chinese, whose population is 1.3 billion people. She

divided into Chinese, Central and Western Himalayan groups. Chinese The group is represented by the Chinese language, in which there are quite a lot of mutually intelligible dialects; in addition to the Chinese, this language is spoken by the Hui (Dungans). IN central group includes the languages ​​Burmese, Tibetan, Itzu, etc., in Western Himalayan - Kanauri and Lahuli.

Languages Dravidian families are common in the south of the Hindustan Peninsula. It consists of several groups, among which the most significant in terms of the number of speakers of these languages ​​are: southern with languages ​​Tamil, Malayali, Kannar, etc.; southeast with Telugu language. In addition, the Dravidian family includes Gondwanan and other groups.

Kartvelskaya the family includes the Georgian language, which, in addition to Georgians, is also spoken by Adjarians, and the closely related Mingrelian, Chan and Svan languages.

Austroasiatic The family is distributed throughout Southeast and partly East and South Asia. It includes groups: Viet Muong, in which the most significant in terms of the number of speakers is Vietnamese language; southeastern (Mon-Khmer) with Khmer, Khasi and other languages, as well as groups Munda, Miao-Yao, northern (palaung-wa ) And Malaccan.

Austronesian the family is distributed mainly on the islands of Southeast Asia and a large part of Oceania. In terms of the number of speakers, the most numerous of its groups are Western Autronesian with the languages ​​of Javanese, Bisaya, Sunda and others in Southeast Asia and the languages ​​of the Chamorro and Belau/Palau peoples in Oceania on the islands of Micronesia. Languages in the East Austronesian (Oceanian) groups are distributed mainly in Oceania: in Melanesia - among the peoples of Tolai, Keapara, etc.; in Micronesia - among the Tungar, Truk and other peoples; in Polynesia - among the Maoris, Samoans and some others. In addition, this family includes Central Austronesian And Taiwanese groups.

Languages Parathai families are distributed mainly in mainland Southeast Asia, as well as in the south of East Asia, the most representative of which is Thai a group with Siamese, Lao, Zhuang and a number of other languages, this family also includes group languages Kam-suyskaya, li And gelao.

In Australia and Oceania, researchers, in addition to the languages ​​of the Austronesian family, also distinguish Australian And Papuan languages. They have been studied rather poorly: Australian - due to the disappearance of a significant part of the aborigines, Papuan - due to the inaccessibility of the interior of New Guinea. It has been established that these languages ​​are significant amount language families. So, within the Australian languages, and about two hundred of them are known, united in a phylum, the following communities are distinguished (corresponding approximately to families such as pama-nyunga, tiwi, deraga etc.), in Papuan languages, of which there are more than a thousand - Trans-New Guinea, West Papuan and a number of other families.

Afroasiatic (Semitic-Hamitic ) the family is distributed in North Africa and South-West Asia. It consists of Semitic a group that includes the Arabic language, however, from the point of view of modern linguistics, divided into several dozen already independent languages ​​(including literary ones) - Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, etc. This group also includes: Hebrew - language Jewish ethnicity; Maltese - the inhabitants of the European state of Malta and Assyrian - the language of the Aisors, descendants of the population of Ancient Assyria, currently scattered across many countries, their largest numbers are noted in Iraq and Turkey. Other languages ​​of this group are widespread in northeast Africa (Amharic, Tigre, etc.).

The languages ​​of the remaining groups of the Afroasiatic family are spoken only by the peoples of the African continent: Cushitic (Oromo, Somalia, Beja, etc.); Berber (Tuareg, Zenaga, etc.) and Chadian (Hausa, Bura, Bade, etc.).

Niger-Kordofanian The family, whose people live mainly in Western Sudan and Western Tropical Africa, consists of two groups. Group n iger-congo includes a number of subgroups - Benue-Congo, Kwa, Western Atlantic etc., according to the number of speakers, the languages ​​of such peoples as Fulbe, Yoruba, Igbo, Rwanda are distinguished. It should be especially noted that the languages ​​of this group are spoken by the pygmies of Central Africa; some features of their culture indicate that in ancient times they spoke other, “own” languages. Kordofan the group is small both in the number of languages ​​and in the number of speakers; these are the peoples of Koalib, Tumtum, etc.

Nilo-Saharan The family is distributed primarily in eastern Africa. Most of its languages ​​are included in Shari-Nile a group consisting of a number of subgroups - East Sudanese, Central Sudanese etc., other groups of this family - Saharan, Songhai, Fur, Maba and Koma. The most common Nilo-Saharan languages ​​belong to the Luo, Dinka, Kanuri and other peoples.

Khoisan the family is widespread in southern Africa and, in terms of the number of speakers, is mainly represented South African Khoisan group - Hottentot and Bushman languages, its other groups - Sandawe And Hadza/Hazapi include one people with similar names.

On the American continent, the vast majority of the population now speaks languages ​​of the Indo-European family, which spread here as a result of the colonization of the region in the post-Columbian era.

As for the aboriginal population, they are characterized by the already mentioned Eskimo-Aleutian languages ​​in the northern part of the continent and Indian - in the rest. The classification of Indian languages ​​is a complex problem, and so far no one has been created that would be accepted, if not by all, then by the majority of researchers. Nowadays, the following classification by J. Greenberg, which identifies nine families within Indian languages, is considered the most generally accepted.

Ando-equatorial the family (according to many researchers it should be divided into the Andean and Equatorial families) includes the languages ​​of such peoples as Quechua, Paraguayans, Aymara, Araucanians, etc. In the languages ​​of the family penuti they say (Maya, Kaqchikel, Kekchi, Tsimshiap, etc.), Azteco-Tanoan (Aztecs, Shoshone, Hopi, Zunya, etc.), macrooto manga (Zapotec, Mixtec, Pame, etc.), macro chibcha (Chibcha-Muisca, Lenka, Kuna, etc.), Same-Pano-Caribbean (Zhe, Pano, Caribbean, Toba, etc.), Hoka Sioux (Sioux, Cherokee, Iroquois, Dakota, etc.), Algonquin-Mosan (Algonquin, Cree, Ojibwe, etc.), on-the-day (Navajo, Athapaskan, Apache, Tlingit, etc.), tarrasque - Tarascans.

Isolated languages

Languages ​​that bear no resemblance to any other languages ​​are found almost exclusively on the Asian continent. Ainsky The language belongs to the Ainu of Hokkaido Island (Japan), there are approximately 20 thousand of them, although only a few hundred representatives of this people speak it. Japanese The language is also one of the isolated ones; the Japanese population is 126 million people. Nivkh the language of the Nivkhs of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin Island numbering 4.5 thousand people. represents a “splinter” of the so-called Paleo-Asian peoples who once lived here, displaced or assimilated by newcomers from the south. Ket the language belongs to the Kets of the Upper and Middle Yenisei, numbering about 1 thousand people. In the highlands North India on Burish The language is spoken by Burishkas/Burushaskis, there are about 50 thousand of them. The only non-Asian isolated language is Basque, belonging to the Basques of the north of the Iberian Peninsula, whose population is 1.2 million people. This is the only people of Western Europe that survived here after the settlement of the Indo-Europeans. In addition, sometimes isolated languages ​​are considered Korean language, the number of Koreans is approximately 62 million people, but many researchers include one hundred in the Altai language family.

In conclusion, it should be noted that in hard-to-reach regions, in particular in the Amazon basin, in West and Central Africa and New Guinea, linguists have noted cases of discovering isolated languages, but their poor study does not allow us to confidently confirm the validity of such conclusions.