How many languages are there in the world?

According to statistics, there are more than 7000 languages in the world.

The world languages are divided into 9 language families, namely Sino-Tibetan (Southeast Asia), Indo-European (Europe, Asia and America), Ural (northern Ural Mountains), Altai (Balkans, North and Central Asia, Mongolia, Russian border, China), Semite (North Africa, West Asia), Caucasus (Caucasus Mountains) and Daropi.

1, Indo-European language family

Indo-European language family is the largest language family in the world.

2. Sino-Tibetan language family

Sino-Tibetan language family is distributed in China and Southeast Asia, and it is the second largest language family after Indo-European language family, with the largest number of users in the world and a population of over 65.438+0.5 billion.

3.Flash language series

Semite language family, the full name of Semite language family, is a major language family distributed in North Africa and West Asia.

4. Uralic language family

Ural language family is a language family distributed from Scandinavia to the Ural Mountains in northwest Asia.

5. Altaic language family

Altaic language family has a population of more than 250 million, mainly concentrated in the junction of humid and semi-humid cold temperate coniferous forests and grasslands in Central Asia, North Asia, West Asia, East Asia and Europe.

6. Eskimo-Aleutian language family

Eskimo-Aleutian language family is a language family distributed in Alaska, northern Canada, Nunavik, Nunavut, Greenland and Chukchi Peninsula in eastern Siberia. This language family is divided into two parts, namely Eskimo language family and Aleutian language family.

7. African languages

(1) Nigerian-Congolese family

(2) Ke Yi San family

(3) Nilo-Saharan language family

8. Malay-Polynesian language family

The main languages are: Margash, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog (Philippines), Alpine, Hawaiian, Maori (New Zealand) and Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia on the Pacific islands.

9. Other languages

There are also some language families, such as some Indian languages in Micronesia, Dravida and Oceania. Some languages in the world do not belong to any language family, such as Japanese, Sumerian, Basque, Ainu, Ryukyu, Chivsky in Blache and so on.

Extended data

Earlier, Quentin Atkinson, a New Zealand scholar, said that all human languages may have originated in southwest Africa, about 6.5438+0.5 million years ago when cave art began.

This judgment is based on the fact that African dialects often contain more phonemes, while languages in tropical islands of South America and the Pacific Ocean contain less phonemes. Some African dialects have more than 65,438+000 phonemes, while Hawaiian dialects have only 65,438+03 phonemes and English has 46 phonemes. The farther away from Africa, the fewer phonemes are used.

But then, some China scholars questioned this, suggesting that if there is a language diffusion center all over the world, it should not be in Africa, but most likely in Asia, to be precise, on the south bank of the Caspian Sea.

References:

People's Network-Where did the language come from?