Language families and languages

Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor. This ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many of its features 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 listed below.

Largest families

According to the numbers in Ethnologuehttp://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp, the largest language families in terms of number of languages are:

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• Niger-Congo (1514 languages)
• Austronesian (1268 languages)
• Trans-New Guinea (564 languages)
• Indo-European (449 languages)
• Sino-Tibetan (403 languages)
• Afro-Asiatic (375 languages)
• Nilo-Saharan (204 languages)
• Pama-Nyungan (178 languages)
• Oto-Manguean (174 languages)
• Austro-Asiatic (169 languages)
• Sepik-Ramu (100 languages)
• Tai-Kadai (76 languages)
• Tupi (76 languages)
• Dravidian (73 languages)
• Mayan (69 languages)