世界语言 —— 谱系及语种全览

斐夷所非

已于 2024-08-30 09:59:00 修改

阅读量720

点赞数 11

分类专栏： linguistics 文章标签：语言学

于 2024-08-30 00:12:20 首次发布

本文链接：https://blog.csdn.net/u013669912/article/details/141599196

版权

linguistics 专栏收录该内容

2 篇文章 0 订阅

订阅专栏

注：机翻，未校。

Languages of the World 世界语言

William R. Leben
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.349
Published online: 26 February 2018

Summary 概括

About 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. The actual number depends on where the line is drawn between language and dialect—an arbitrary decision, because languages are always in flux. But specialists applying a reasonably uniform criterion across the globe count well over 2,000 languages in Asia and Africa, while Europe has just shy of 300. In between are the Pacific region, with over 1,300 languages, and the Americas, with just over 1,000. Languages spoken natively by over a million speakers number around 250, but the vast majority have very few speakers. Something like half are thought likely to disappear over the next few decades, as speakers of endangered languages turn to more widely spoken ones.
当今世界大约有 7,000 种语言。实际数字取决于语言和方言之间的界限——这是一个任意决定，因为语言总是在变化。但专家们在全球范围内采用相当统一的标准，发现亚洲和非洲有 2,000 多种语言，而欧洲只有不到 300 种。介于两者之间的是太平洋地区，有 1,300 多种语言，而美洲只有 1,000 多种语言。拥有超过 100 万使用者的母语语言大约有 250 种，但绝大多数的使用者都很少。据认为，随着濒临灭绝语言的使用者转向更广泛使用的语言，大约一半的语言可能会在未来几十年内消失。

The languages of the world are grouped into perhaps 430 language families, based on their origin, as determined by comparing similarities among languages and deducing how they evolved from earlier ones. As with languages, there’s quite a lot of disagreement about the number of language families, reflecting our meager knowledge of many present-day languages and even sparser knowledge of their history. The figure 430 comes from Glottolog.org, which actually lists them all. While the world’s language families may well go back to a smaller number of original languages, even to a single mother tongue, scholars disagree on how far back current methods permit us to trace the history of languages.
世界上的语言根据其起源被分为大约 430 个语系，这是通过比较语言之间的相似性并推断它们是如何从早期语言演变而来的。与语言一样，对于语系的数量也存在很多分歧，这反映出我们对许多当今语言的了解甚少，甚至对其历史的了解也更少。430这个数字来自Glottolog.org，它实际上列出了所有这些。虽然世界上的语系很可能可以追溯到少数原始语言，甚至单一母语，但学者们对于当前方法允许我们追溯语言历史多远的问题存在分歧。

While it is normal for languages to borrow from other languages, occasionally a totally new language is created by mixing elements of two distinct languages to such a degree that we would not want to identify one of the source languages as the mother tongue. This is what led to the development of Media Lengua, a language of Ecuador formed through contact among speakers of Spanish and speakers of Quechua. In this language, practically all the word stems are from Spanish, while all of the endings are from Quechua. Just a handful of languages have come into being in this way, but less extreme forms of language mixture have resulted in over a hundred pidgins and creoles currently spoken in many parts of the world. Most arose during Europe’s colonial era, when European colonists used their language to communicate with local inhabitants, who in turn blended vocabulary from the European language with grammar largely from their native language.
虽然语言借用其他语言是很正常的，但偶尔会通过混合两种不同语言的元素来创建一种全新的语言，其程度达到我们不希望将其中一种源语言识别为母语的程度。这导致了 Media Lengua 的发展，这是厄瓜多尔的一种语言，是通过西班牙语使用者和盖丘亚语使用者之间的接触而形成的。在这种语言中，几乎所有单词都源自西班牙语，而所有词尾都来自盖丘亚语。只有少数语言是以这种方式形成的，但不太极端的语言混合形式已经产生了目前世界许多地方使用的一百多种洋泾浜语和克里奥尔语。大多数出现在欧洲殖民时代，当时欧洲殖民者使用他们的语言与当地居民交流，而当地居民又将欧洲语言的词汇与主要来自母语的语法融合在一起。

Also among the languages of the world are about 300 sign languages used mainly in communicating among and with the deaf. The structure of sign languages typically has little historical connection to the structure of nearby spoken languages.
世界上的语言中还有大约 300 种手语，主要用于聋人之间以及与聋人之间的交流。手语的结构通常与附近口语的结构没有什么历史联系。

Some languages have been constructed expressly, often by a single individual, to meet communication demands among speakers with no common language. Esperanto, designed to serve as a universal language and used as a second language by some two million, according to some estimates, is the prime example, but it is only one among several hundred would-be international auxiliary languages.
有些语言通常是由一个人明确构建的，以满足没有共同语言的说话者之间的交流需求。世界语是最好的例子，它旨在作为一种通用语言，据一些估计，约有 200 万人将世界语用作第二语言，但它只是数百种潜在国际辅助语言中的一种。

This essay surveys the languages of the world continent by continent, ending with descriptions of sign languages and of pidgins and creoles. A set of references grouped by section appears at the very end. The main source for data on language classification, numbers of languages, and speakers is the 19th edition of Ethnologue (see Resources), except where a different source is cited.
本文按大陆调查了世界上的语言，最后描述了手语、洋泾浜语和克里奥尔语。一组按部分分组的参考文献出现在最后。有关语言分类、语言数量和使用者的数据的主要来源是 Ethnologue 第 19 版（请参阅参考资料），除非引用了不同的来源。

Keywords 关键词

languages 语言
language family 语系
language history 语言史
language classification
语言分类
sign language 手语
pidgin 洋泾浜语
creole 克里奥尔语

Subjects 科目

Pragmatics 语用学
Psycholinguistics 心理语言学

1. Europe 1. 欧洲

1.1 Indo-European 1.1 印欧语系

Most of Europe’s languages belong to the Indo-European family, which has the following branches: Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Greek, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, Anatolian, and Tocharian.
欧洲大部分语言属于印欧语系，该语系有以下分支：凯尔特语、日耳曼语、意大利语、希腊语、阿尔巴尼亚语、波罗的海斯拉夫语、亚美尼亚语、印度-伊朗语、安纳托利亚语和吐火罗语。

1.1.1 Celtic 1.1.1 凯尔特人

Celtic, which extended across much of Europe as far east as present-day Turkey 2,000 years ago, has undergone gradual contraction since the ascendance of the Romans in Europe, and with the spread of English and French the Celtic languages have long been confined to parts of Britain, Ireland, and western France. The two main branches of modern Celtic are Brythonic and Goidelic. In the Brythonic branch are Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; the Goidelic branch includes Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx.
凯尔特语在2000年前扩展到欧洲大部分地区，远至今天的土耳其，自从罗马人在欧洲崛起以来，凯尔特语逐渐萎缩，随着英语和法语的传播，凯尔特语长期以来被限制在部分地区。英国、爱尔兰和法国西部。现代凯尔特语的两个主要分支是布立吞语和戈伊德语。布立吞语支有威尔士语、康沃尔语和布列塔尼语；戈伊德语支包括爱尔兰语、苏格兰盖尔语和马恩岛语。

Gaulish, a third branch, went extinct but has recently undergone restoration attempts, as have Manx and Cornish, which also were extinct. In fact, all present-day Celtic languages have seen revitalization efforts. This is happening even with Welsh—hardly an endangered language with 562,000 speakers in the 2011 census. Currently, Wales has school programs aimed at getting a greater proportion of ethnic Welsh, who number nearly 2,400,000, to learn to speak the language. The same is happening with Breton, spoken by over 200,000 in Brittany in northwestern France, but “no longer exclusively, predominately, or even commonly used by the population in any city, town, or village in Brittany,” according to Adkins (2013). As in Wales, school programs in Brittany since at least the 1970s have aimed to get young people speaking a variety of their ethnic tongue.
第三个分支高卢语已经灭绝，但最近进行了恢复尝试，马恩岛语和康沃尔语也是如此，它们也已经灭绝。事实上，当今所有凯尔特语言都经历了复兴的努力。即使是威尔士语也出现了这种情况——2011 年的人口普查显示，威尔士语并不是一种濒临灭绝的语言，有 562,000 人使用威尔士语。目前，威尔士设有学校项目，旨在让更多威尔士族（近 2,400,000 人）学习说该语言。同样的情况也发生在法国西北部布列塔尼地区，有超过 20 万人口使用布列塔尼语，但据阿德金斯 (Adkins) 称，“布列塔尼语不再是布列塔尼任何城市、城镇或村庄的唯一、主要甚至普遍使用的语言”（2013 年）。与威尔士一样，布列塔尼的学校课程至少从 20 世纪 70 年代起就致力于让年轻人讲多种民族语言。

1.1.2 Germanic 1.1.2 日耳曼语

Germanic’s two branches, North and West, were once grouped into a superbranch called Northwest Germanic, once paired with the Gothic branch that went extinct, largely in the Middle Ages, though isolated traces of Crimean Gothic remained until the late 18th century. The North Germanic languages are Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. West Germanic includes English, German, Dutch, and Frisian. Two of these are paired with a sister language that is also spoken by significant numbers: Dutch with Afrikaans, and German with Yiddish.
日耳曼语的两个分支，北部和西部，曾经被归为一个超级分支，称为西北日耳曼语，曾经与哥特语分支配对，后者主要在中世纪灭绝，尽管克里米亚哥特式的孤立痕迹一直保留到18世纪末。北日耳曼语系有瑞典语、丹麦语、挪威语、冰岛语和法罗语。西日耳曼语包括英语、德语、荷兰语和弗里斯兰语。其中两种语言与一种同样被大量使用的姊妹语言配对：荷兰语与南非荷兰语，德语与意第绪语。

1.1.3 Italic 1.1.3 斜体

This is the ancestral branch of the modern Romance languages, all descended from a colloquial form of Latin. About 2,500 years ago, the Italic branch included not just Latin but also Oscan, Umbrian, and Faliscan, but these languages have no modern descendants. The modern descendants of Latin include French, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Sardinian, Romansch, Ladin, Friulian, Occitan, and Judeo-Spanish.
这是现代罗曼语言的祖先分支，全部都源自拉丁语的口语形式。大约2500年前，斜体分支不仅包括拉丁语，还包括奥斯坎语、翁布里亚语和法利斯坎语，但这些语言没有现代的后代。拉丁语的现代后裔包括法语、加泰罗尼亚语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、意大利语、罗马尼亚语、撒丁语、罗曼什语、拉丁语、弗留利语、奥克西唐语和犹太-西班牙语。

1.1.4 Greek and Albanian 1.1.4 希腊语和阿尔巴尼亚语

Modern Greek is the only descendant of this branch, also called Hellenic. Albanian, similarly, is the only descendant of the Albanian branch.
现代希腊语是这个分支的唯一后裔，也称为希腊语。同样，阿尔巴尼亚语是阿尔巴尼亚语支的唯一后裔。

1.1.5 Balto-Slavic 1.1.5 巴尔托斯拉夫语

This group has Baltic and Slavic subbranches. The official languages of Baltic countries Lithuania and Latvia make up the Baltic subbranch. Slavic has three divisions: Eastern (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian), Southern (Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovenian, and Bulgarian), and Western (Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian).
该集团有波罗的海和斯拉夫分支。波罗的海国家立陶宛和拉脱维亚的官方语言组成波罗的海支系。斯拉夫语分为三个分支：东部（俄语、乌克兰语和白俄罗斯语）、南部（塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语、马其顿语、斯洛文尼亚语和保加利亚语）和西部（波兰语、捷克语、斯洛伐克语和索布语）。

1.1.6 Indo-Iranian 1.1.6 印度-伊朗

The languages of this branch are spoken in Asia. See section 3.1.
该分支的语言在亚洲使用。参见第 3.1 节。

1.1.7 Armenian 1.1.7 亚美尼亚语

Armenia is here considered a language of Europe, though a good case could be made for including it in Asia. Like Greek and Albanian, the Armenian branch has just one language, with a major division between Eastern and Western dialects. The standard language of Armenia is in the Eastern Armenian group, which also includes the dialects of Armenian communities in Iran, Russia, Georgia, and their environs. Texts from Armenian Cilicia from the 11th to the 14th centuries ce are the first to show a differentiated Western dialect. Many dialects of Western Armenian were obliterated by the Armenian genocide, but the Western Armenian standard and its dialects are found in Turkey (especially Istanbul), the Levant, and émigré communities in the West. Armenian is of special interest to linguists because of retentions from Indo-European, notably all seven of its noun cases and the irregular retention of initial laryngeals.
亚美尼亚语在这里被认为是欧洲的语言，尽管可以将其纳入亚洲。与希腊语和阿尔巴尼亚语一样，亚美尼亚语支只有一种语言，主要分为东西方方言。亚美尼亚的标准语言属于东亚美尼亚语族，其中还包括伊朗、俄罗斯、格鲁吉亚及其周边地区的亚美尼亚社区的方言。公元 11 世纪至 14 世纪亚美尼亚奇里乞亚的文本首次显示了差异化的西方方言。亚美尼亚西部的许多方言都因亚美尼亚种族灭绝而消失，但亚美尼亚西部标准及其方言在土耳其（特别是伊斯坦布尔）、黎凡特和西方的移民社区中仍能找到。亚美尼亚语对语言学家特别感兴趣，因为它保留了印欧语系的所有七个名词格以及词首喉音的不规则保留。

1.1.8 Anatolian and Tocharian 1.1.8 安纳托利亚语和吐火罗语

The languages of this branch were spoken in Asia. See section 3.1.1.
该分支的语言在亚洲使用。参见第 3.1.1 节。

1.2 Uralic 1.2 乌拉尔语

Three important languages in this family are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. These three are traditionally grouped into a branch called Finno-Ugric. But while Finnish and Estonian are closely related members of the Finnic branch of Uralic, Hungarian’s membership in a sister branch to Finnic is under challenge; Ethnologue has dropped Finno-Ugric from its listing and now casts Hungarian as a separate Uralic entity. See Salminen (2002) for arguments. The remaining languages of Uralic are smaller ones found in northern parts of Europe and Asia.
这个家族中的三种重要语言是芬兰语、爱沙尼亚语和匈牙利语。这三种语言传统上被分为一个分支，称为芬兰-乌戈尔语。但是，虽然芬兰语和爱沙尼亚语是乌拉尔语芬兰语分支的密切相关成员，但匈牙利语作为芬兰语姊妹分支的成员身份却面临着挑战。Ethnologue 已将芬兰-乌戈尔语从列表中剔除，现在将匈牙利语列为独立的乌拉尔语实体。参见 Salminen (2002) 的论点。乌拉尔语的其余语言是在欧洲和亚洲北部地区发现的较小语言。

1.3 Caucasus Area 1.3 高加索地区

The area of the Caucasus Mountains and its environs between the Caspian and Black Seas includes Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan and parts of neighboring countries. This relatively small region may have up to around 40 highly diverse languages, falling into three families, Nakho-Dagestanian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, and Kartvelian. The most important Nakho-Dagestanian language is Chechen. Abkhaz-Adyghean is made up of Abkhaz and Adyghe and is best known among linguists for systems with 60 or more contrasting consonants but very few vowels. The major Kartvelian language is Georgian, with four million speakers. Ethnologue combines Nakho-Dagestanian and Abkhaz-Adyghean into a single family, North Caucasian. Nakho-Dagestanian and Abkhaz-Adyghean are also known by the respective names Northwest (or simply West) Caucasian and Northeast (or East) Caucasian.
高加索山脉及其周边地区位于里海和黑海之间，包括格鲁吉亚、亚美尼亚和阿塞拜疆以及部分邻国。这个相对较小的地区可能拥有大约 40 种高度多样化的语言，分为三个语系：纳科-达吉斯坦语、阿布哈索-阿迪格语和卡特维利安语。最重要的纳科-达吉斯坦语言是车臣语。阿布哈兹-阿迪格语由阿布哈兹语和阿迪格语组成，在语言学家中最著名的是具有 60 个或更多对比辅音但元音很少的系统。卡特维利语的主要语言是格鲁吉亚语，有四百万人使用。民族语言将纳科-达吉斯坦语和阿布哈兹-阿迪格语合并为一个语系，即北高加索语系。纳科-达吉斯坦语和阿布哈兹-阿迪格语也分别被称为西北（或简称西）高加索语和东北（或东）高加索语。

1.4 Basque 1.4 巴斯克语

Basque is an isolate spoken in the Western Pyrenees by about half a million, some in France but most in Spain. Its history in this location is widely thought to go back several millennia, antedating the more recent Indo-European migrations to the region. There have attempts to identify Basque with a wide variety of groups, including Kartvelian, Afro-Asiatic, and Iberian, but without attracting much support. Recent DNA evidence reinforces the notion of Basque descent from an ancient population of farmers and hunters (Günther et al., 2015).
巴斯克语是西比利牛斯山脉地区的一种孤立语言，约有五十万人使用巴斯克语，其中一些在法国，但大多数在西班牙。人们普遍认为，这里的历史可以追溯到几千年前，早于最近印欧人迁徙到该地区的时间。有人试图将巴斯克语与包括卡特维利亚语、亚非语和伊比利亚语在内的各种族群等同起来，但没有得到太多支持。最近的 DNA 证据强化了巴斯克人源自古代农民和猎人群体的观念（Günther 等，2015）。

1.5 Turkish 1.5 土耳其语

Turkish, a language of Europe and Asia, belongs to the Turkic group, described in the section on Asia.
土耳其语是欧洲和亚洲的一种语言，属于突厥语族，如亚洲部分所述。

2. Africa 2. 非洲

Africa’s extraordinary linguistic diversity is threatened by the possible extinction of half or more of its languages, which some predict by the end of the century due to competition from other languages. The current count exceeds 2,000 languages, grouped into just a few families.
非洲非凡的语言多样性受到一半或更多语言可能灭绝的威胁，一些人预测到本世纪末，由于其他语言的竞争，这种情况可能会消失。目前的语言数量超过 2,000 种，仅分为几个语系。

The most revolutionary aspects of Greenberg’s (1955, 1963) classification of African language families largely stand, though with many adjustments by later experts in the different languages. Many other questions still remain open. For example, Greenberg recognized Khoisan as a family, but later scholars have tended to set a higher bar for establishing genetic relationships, leading most to reject it as a family and to defer judgment on particular groupings into branches. The unity of Nilo-Saharan is also called into question, and despite detailed comparative work by Bender (1996–1997) and Ehret (2001), some reject Nilo-Saharan as a valid genetic unit. For Niger-Congo, the status of some member branches—Kordofanian, Mande, Dogon, and Ijoid—has been challenged, though Niger-Congo itself is widely recognized as a valid family.
格林伯格（Greenberg，1955，1963）对非洲语系的分类中最具革命性的方面基本上保持不变，尽管后来不同语言的专家进行了许多调整。许多其他问题仍然悬而未决。例如，格林伯格承认科伊桑是一个家族，但后来的学者倾向于为建立亲缘关系设定更高的标准，导致大多数人拒绝将其视为一个家族，并推迟对特定分支的判断。尼罗-撒哈拉语的统一性也受到质疑，尽管本德（1996-1997）和埃雷特（2001）进行了详细的比较工作，但一些人拒绝将尼罗-撒哈拉语作为有效的遗传单位。对于尼日尔-刚果来说，尽管尼日尔-刚果本身被广泛认为是一个有效的家族，但一些成员分支——科尔多法尼亚族、曼德族、多贡族和艾约德族——的地位受到了挑战。

The Afro-Asiatic family is well established, though there are debates about subgrouping. For example, do Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic together form a separate branch, as Bender (1996–1997) contends? Within Cushitic, Greenberg’s classification included Omotic, which many now regard as a distinct branch, while Glottolog fails to recognize Omotic as an established group at all. Within Niger-Congo, there are a number of unanswered questions, many revolving around the constituency of its most complex branch, Benue-Congo, which uncontroversially includes all the Bantu languages and many more. Among the changes, the Kwa languages are now reduced to what Greenberg called Western Kwa, and the remaining languages have been moved from Greenberg’s Kwa into distinct branches, though experts still differ on their precise classification. For details and references, see Bendor-Samuel and Hartell (1989) and the references in Nordhoff et al. (2013).
亚非语系已经很成熟，但关于亚组的划分还存在争议。例如，闪米特语、柏柏尔语和库希特语是否如本德（Bender，1996-1997）所主张的那样共同构成一个独立的分支？在库希特语中，格林伯格的分类包括 Omotic，许多人现在将其视为一个独特的分支，而 Glottolog 根本不承认 Omotic 是一个既定的群体。在尼日尔-刚果境内，有许多悬而未决的问题，其中许多问题都围绕着其最复杂的分支贝努埃-刚果的选区，该分支毫无争议地包括所有班图语等。在这些变化中，夸语现在被简化为格林伯格所说的西夸语，其余语言已从格林伯格的夸语转移到不同的分支，尽管专家们对它们的精确分类仍然存在分歧。有关详细信息和参考文献，请参阅 Bendor-Samuel 和 Hartell (1989) 以及 Nordhoff 等人中的参考文献。（2013）。

2.1 Afro-Asiatic 2.1 亚非语系

This is the northernmost family, with a few hundred languages spanning all of North Africa and the Middle East, as well as two smaller areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The six branches of Afro-Asiatic are Semitic, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Egyptian. The Semitic branch has 78 languages, including Arabic, the first language of up to 300 million throughout North Africa and widely spoken in the Middle East. Among the world’s languages, Arabic ranks fourth in the number of speakers. Other important Semitic languages are Hebrew, which shares official status in Israel with Arabic, and several Ethiopic languages. Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia and the first language of 21 million, is a South Ethiopic language. In the North Ethiopic branch is Tigrigna, an official language of Eritrea spoken by 7 million.
这是最北端的语系，拥有数百种语言，横跨整个北非和中东，以及撒哈拉以南非洲的两个较小地区。亚非语系有六个分支：闪米特语系、柏柏尔语系、乍得语系、库希特语系、奥莫提语系和埃及语系。闪米特语支有 78 种语言，其中阿拉伯语是整个北非 3 亿人口的第一语言，并在中东广泛使用。在世界语言中，阿拉伯语的使用人数排名第四。其他重要的闪族语言包括希伯来语（在以色列与阿拉伯语享有相同的官方地位）和几种埃塞俄比亚语言。阿姆哈拉语是埃塞俄比亚的官方语言，也是 2100 万人口的第一语言，属于南埃塞俄比亚语言。埃塞俄比亚北部支系提格里尼亚语是厄立特里亚的官方语言，有 700 万人使用。

The term Afro-Asiatic was used by Joseph Greenberg to replace the designation Hamito-Semitic, which posited a division between the Semitic branch (named for Biblical figure Shem) and a putative branch named for Biblical figure Ham. The notion that Hamitic languages formed a unified branch seemingly reflected factors like speakers’ typical occupations and a lighter skin color than black Africans to the south. Greenberg argued that extraneous factors like these had no place in language classification, which should be based solely on linguistic data. Comparing languages from the different groups classed as Hamitic, Greenberg concluded that the evidence did not support their grouping into a single branch.
约瑟夫·格林伯格（Joseph Greenberg）使用“亚非语”一词来取代“哈米托闪米特语”这一名称，后者在闪米特语支（以圣经人物闪命名）和一个以圣经人物汉姆命名的假定分支之间进行了划分。含米特语形成一个统一分支的观点似乎反映了说话者的典型职业以及比南部非洲黑人肤色更浅等因素。格林伯格认为，诸如此类的无关因素在语言分类中没有地位，语言分类应该仅基于语言数据。通过比较含米特语不同群体的语言，格林伯格得出结论，证据并不支持将它们归为一个分支。

The Berber branch of Afro-Asiatic is spoken in the foothills of the Atlas Mountain in Morocco and Algeria and, spottily, in neighboring countries. Cushitic gets its name from Cush, the son of Ham. The several dozen languages of this group are spoken mainly in Ethiopia and Somalia, with a few in Kenya and Tanzania. Chadic languages are mainly spoken in the countries surrounding Lake Chad and are dominant in northern Nigeria, numbering close to 200 in all. By far the most widely spoken is Hausa, with 25 million native speakers. The languages of the Omotic branch, numbering over two dozen, are all spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Egyptian branch, thanks to hieroglyphs, can be traced back before 3,000 bce. Ancient Egyptian was the ancestor of Coptic, spoken in Egypt, but over time was replaced by Arabic until Coptic died out, roughly 400 years ago. Since then Coptic has survived as a liturgical language.
亚非语的柏柏尔语支在摩洛哥和阿尔及利亚的阿特拉斯山脚下使用，在邻国也有偶尔使用。库希特语得名于含的儿子古实。该族的几十种语言主要在埃塞俄比亚和索马里使用，也有少数在肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚使用。乍得语主要在乍得湖周边国家使用，在尼日利亚北部占主导地位，共有近200种。到目前为止，使用最广泛的是豪萨语，有 2500 万母语人士。奥莫提语支的语言有二十多种，都在埃塞俄比亚西南部使用。由于象形文字，埃及分支可以追溯到公元前 3000 年之前。古埃及语是科普特语的祖先，在埃及使用，但随着时间的推移被阿拉伯语取代，直到大约 400 年前科普特语消亡。从那时起，科普特语作为一种礼拜语言得以保留。

2.2 Nilo-Saharan 2.2 尼罗-撒哈拉

The approximately 200 languages occupy a band extending from the Nile region to the Sahara desert. For a relatively small family, they are quite diverse typologically, leaving some doubt as to whether the Nilotic and Saharan branches really deserve to be grouped into a family. Reflecting this, Glottolog divides them into two separate families, Nilotic and Saharan.
大约 200 种语言占据了从尼罗河地区一直延伸到撒哈拉沙漠的地带。对于一个相对较小的科，它们在类型上相当多样化，这让人怀疑尼罗河分支和撒哈拉分支是否真的值得归为一个科。Glottolog 反映了这一点，将它们分为两个独立的科：尼罗河科和撒哈拉科。

2.3 Niger-Congo 2.3 尼日尔-刚果

The great majority of languages in sub-Saharan Africa are members of the Niger-Congo family. Its 1,538 languages make it the world’s largest language family, and only the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language families have more speakers than Niger-Congo. Ideas about the respective genetic affiliations of well-known groups within Niger-Congo have changed substantially over the last half-century. This has been the case with Kwa, Mande, Gur, Atlantic, and Benue-Congo, among others. To date, the truly remarkable event in the classification of this family remains Greenberg’s (1955, 1963) demonstration that Bantu—a group of 538 languages covering most of Central and Southern Africa—was, along with other languages called Bantoid, a subgroup within a group now called East Benue-Congo, most of whose other languages are spoken in Nigeria and Cameroon. This discovery—which took ten years before gaining the wide acceptance it has today—not only challenged earlier assumptions about linguistic classification but also opened the door to hypotheses about Bantu origins. The currently accepted view is that Bantu originated in southeastern Nigeria and expanded east and south from there.
撒哈拉以南非洲的绝大多数语言都属于尼日尔-刚果语系。它拥有 1,538 种语言，是世界上最大的语系，只有印欧语系和汉藏语系的使用人数比尼日尔-刚果语系还要多。在过去的半个世纪中，关于尼日尔-刚果境内知名群体各自遗传归属的想法发生了很大变化。夸瓦、曼德、古尔、大西洋和贝努埃刚果等地的情况就是如此。迄今为止，该语系分类中真正引人注目的事件仍然是格林伯格（Greenberg，1955，1963）的论证，即班图语（覆盖中非和南部非洲大部分地区的 538 种语言）与其他称为班图语（Bantoid）的语言一样，是一个亚组。现在称为东贝努埃刚果的群体，其大多数其他语言在尼日利亚和喀麦隆使用。这一发现花了十年时间才获得今天的广泛接受，不仅挑战了早期关于语言分类的假设，而且为有关班图语起源的假设打开了大门。目前公认的观点是班图语起源于尼日利亚东南部，并从那里向东和向南扩展。

2.4 Khoisan 2.4 科伊桑人

Among the languages of the world, some are poorly studied and go back so far in time that it is hard to trace their genetic origins. This is the case with Khoisan, which is generally not recognized as an established family but as a set of 27 languages—some with just a handful of speakers—that are likely not to belong to the other three established families of African languages. Ermisch (2008) presents what is known, along with the residual problems.
在世界上的语言中，有些语言的研究很少，而且历史悠久，很难追溯它们的遗传起源。科伊桑语就是这种情况，它通常不被认为是一个既定的语系，而是被认为是 27 种语言的集合（其中一些语言只有少数人使用），这些语言很可能不属于非洲语言的其他三个既定语系。Ermisch (2008) 介绍了已知的内容以及遗留问题。

2.5 Austronesian 2.5 南岛语系

Off the southeastern coast of Africa is the island of Madagascar, home to Malagasy, a Malayo-Polynesian language brought over by the island’s earliest settlers maybe 1,500 years ago. For more on Malayo-Polynesian, see the subsection on Austronesian in the section on Oceania.
马达加斯加岛位于非洲东南海岸附近，是马达加斯加语的故乡，马达加斯加语是一种马来-波利尼西亚语言，由岛上最早的定居者大约 1,500 年前带入。有关马来-波利尼西亚语的更多信息，请参阅大洋洲部分中的南岛语小节。

3. Asia 3.亚洲

Asia is home to 60% of the world’s population and nearly 30% of the world’s languages. These are grouped into just a handful of major families, leaving out several important isolates, and due to long periods of contact, there’s less diversity than one might expect. The downside is that the contact situation has made it difficult to classify genetic relationships with certainty in some important cases. And it’s worth mentioning some areal features for various subregions.
亚洲拥有世界60%的人口和世界近30%的语言。它们仅被分为少数几个主要家族，遗漏了几个重要的分离株，并且由于长时间的接触，多样性比人们想象的要少。缺点是接触情况使得在一些重要病例中很难确定地对亲缘关系进行分类。值得一提的是各个次区域的一些区域特征。

3.1 Indo-European 3.1 印欧语系

The Indo-European languages of Europe were discussed in section 2. This section describes the Indo-European languages of Asia.
第 2 节讨论了欧洲的印欧语系。本节介绍亚洲的印欧语系。

3.1.1 Anatolian and Tocharian 3.1.1 安纳托利亚语和吐火罗语

Both of these branches are long extinct. Anatolian’s replacement by Greek is linked to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The Tocharian branch became extinct with the expansion of Turkic Uyghur tribes in the 9th century ce. Tocharian manuscripts from a few centuries prior to extinction, uncovered in the early 20th century, provided information that led scholars to reassess key assumptions about Proto-Indo-European and its descendants. Anatolian inscriptions from a much earlier era, about two millennia prior, similarly reshaped what had been known. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1990) offer a highly readable synthesis and summary of research presented in Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1990).
这两个分支都早已灭绝。安纳托利亚语被希腊语取代与亚历山大大帝的征服有关。公元九世纪，吐火罗支系随着突厥维吾尔部落的扩张而灭绝。20 世纪初发现的灭绝前几个世纪的吐火罗语手稿提供的信息使学者们重新评估有关原始印欧语及其后代的关键假设。更早的时代（大约两千年前）的安纳托利亚铭文同样重塑了已知的事物。Gamkrelidze 和 Ivanov (1990) 对 Gamkrelidze 和 Ivanov (1990) 中提出的研究进行了高度可读的综合和总结。

3.1.2 Indo-Iranian 3.1.2 印度-伊朗

Indo-Iranian has two large branches, Indo-Aryan and Iranian. Among the over two hundred Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi and Urdu are official languages of India and Pakistan, respectively, and many consider them dialects of a single language. Kachru’s (2008) linguistic sketch describes Hindi and Urdu as closely related, mentioning the special case of Hindustani, an essentially colloquial language that has been called a co-dialect of Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani is the language once promoted by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress as a tool of national unity. For the Hindustani controversy, see Kachru (2008).
印度-伊朗语有两大分支：印度-雅利安语和伊朗语。在两百多种印度-雅利安语言中，印地语和乌尔都语分别是印度和巴基斯坦的官方语言，许多人认为它们是单一语言的方言。Kachru（2008）的语言概述将印地语和乌尔都语描述为密切相关，并提到了印度斯坦语的特殊情况，印度斯坦语是一种本质上是口语的语言，被称为印地语和乌尔都语的共同方言。印度斯坦语是甘地和印度国大党曾经提倡的民族团结工具。关于印度斯坦争议，请参阅 Kachru (2008)。

The largest language of the Iranian component of Indo-Iranian is Persian, with estimates exceeding 50 million native speakers in Iran. Written records of Old Persian go back to the 6th century bce. Other important languages in the Iranian branch are Pashto, mainly spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Kurdish, mainly spoken in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
印度-伊朗语伊朗语支中最大的语言是波斯语，估计伊朗以波斯语为母语的人数超过 5000 万。古波斯语的文字记录可以追溯到公元前六世纪。伊朗语支中的其他重要语言有普什图语（主要在阿富汗和巴基斯坦使用）和库尔德语（主要在土耳其、伊拉克和伊朗使用）。

3.2 Turkic 3.2 突厥语

The approximately 40 languages of this family extend from Macedonia to Siberia, Central Asia, and western China. Despite the vastness of this area, the languages themselves are typologically quite similar: agglutinative, with vowel harmony involving both backness and rounding.
该语系大约有 40 种语言，从马其顿延伸到西伯利亚、中亚和中国西部。尽管这个区域广阔，但这些语言本身在类型上非常相似：粘着语，元音和谐涉及后移和圆整。

3.3 Mongolic 3.3 蒙古语

The Mongolic languages are a group of about a dozen spoken in Mongolia and in adjacent areas of the Russian Federation and China. Mongolian, with over six million speakers, is by far the largest language in the family and the official language both of Mongolia and of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China.
蒙古语是蒙古语以及俄罗斯联邦和中国邻近地区使用的大约十几种语言的总称。蒙古语有超过 600 万使用者，是迄今为止最大的语言家族，也是蒙古国和中国内蒙古自治区的官方语言。

3.4 Tungusic 3.4 通古斯岩

The 11 languages of this family are scattered through Siberia, the Far East of Russia, and northwestern China, but most are endangered and some are nearly extinct. That includes Manchu, the language of the founders of the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China for nearly three centuries up to 1912. The 2016 edition of Ethnologue lists only 20 speakers for Manchu, though over ten million are ethnically Manchu.
该族的11种语言散布于西伯利亚、俄罗斯远东地区和中国西北部，但大多数都濒临灭绝，有的几近灭绝。其中包括满语，这是清朝创始人的语言，截至 1912 年，清朝统治中国近三个世纪。2016 年版的《民族语言》仅列出了 20 名讲满语的人，但满族人口超过 1000 万。

3.5 Altaic Area 3.5 北极地区

The Altaic area extends from Turkey across the Altai Mountain area of Central and East Asia to Siberia. Altaic has been regarded by some as a family comprising Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, and for a few even including as distant members Japonic and Korean. Versions of the Altaic hypothesis still have adherents, even though this notion has been cast into doubt as criteria have been challenged and evidence has been rejected as based largely on shared typological similarities, a position summarized in Unger (1990). Despite this, adherents continue to make a case, among them Miller (1991), Georg et al. (1999), and Robbeets (2005). The more conservative consensus is that many resemblances among languages in this linguistic area could have come from language contact rather than a shared ancestor. This view is reflected in Ethnologue and Glottolog, among others.
阿尔泰地区从土耳其延伸至中亚和东亚的阿尔泰山地区至西伯利亚。有些人认为阿尔泰语系是由突厥语系、蒙古语系和通古斯语系组成的一个语系，有些人甚至将日本语和朝鲜语视为遥远的成员。阿尔泰假说的各个版本仍然有追随者，尽管这一概念已经受到质疑，因为标准受到挑战，证据被拒绝，因为主要基于共同的类型学相似性，这一立场在 Unger (1990) 中总结。尽管如此，追随者仍继续提出论点，其中包括 Miller (1991)、Georg 等人。（1999）和罗贝茨（2005）。更保守的共识是，该语言领域的语言之间的许多相似之处可能来自语言接触，而不是来自共同的祖先。这一观点在《Ethnologue》和《Glottolog》等书中得到了体现。

3.6 Dravidian 3.6 德拉威语

Dravidian languages are spoken primarily in southern India, though some are also found further north in the Indian subcontinent. The major literary languages are Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu, each one the first language of tens of millions. More is known about the history of Dravidian than about many other language families, thanks to the long literary periods of the four major languages.
德拉威语主要在印度南部使用，但在印度次大陆北部也有一些语言。主要的文学语言是泰米尔语、马拉雅拉姆语、卡纳达语和泰卢固语，每种语言都是数千万人口的第一语言。由于四种主要语言的悠久文学历史，人们对德拉威语历史的了解比对许多其他语系的了解要多。

Questions have been raised about Dravidian similarities to Uralic and Altaic, among several others. Austerlitz (1971) dismissed these, and Krishnamurti (2003), briefly surveying archeological and DNA literature along with linguistic evidence in his foundational work on Dravidian, seconds the conclusion that the linguistic arguments behind the proposed genetic relationships are tenuous and speculative.
人们对德拉威语与乌拉尔语和阿尔泰语等的相似之处提出了疑问。Austerlitz (1971) 驳回了这些观点，而 Krishnamurti (2003) 在其关于德拉威语的基础著作中简要调查了考古学和 DNA 文献以及语言学证据，重申了这样的结论：所提出的遗传关系背后的语言论据是脆弱且推测性的。

Dravidian morphology is mainly agglutinative but lacks the long strings of affixes found in other agglutinative languages. The typical word order is SOV. Dravidian’s three-way contrast in coronal stops (dental, alveolar, and retroflex) can be traced back to proto-Dravidian. Sanskrit, an Indo-Aryan language, owes its retroflex consonants to Dravidian, from which they are thought to have spread by diffusion.
德拉威语形态主要是粘着语，但缺乏其他粘着语言中的长串词缀。典型的词序是 SOV。达罗毗荼语在冠状止点（齿、牙槽和卷舌）的三向对比可以追溯到原始德拉威语。梵语是印度-雅利安语系的一种语言，其卷舌辅音源自德拉威语，人们认为它们是通过扩散而传播开来的。

3.7 Sino-Tibetan 汉藏语 3.7

The languages of this family are spoken in China, the Himalayas, and Burma. The division into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman branches is customary, as espoused by Matisoff (2003), though a few experts, including van Driem (2007), still question the grouping of Sinitic as a separate sister branch to Tibeto-Burman, along with many particulars. Tibeto-Burman, with well over 400 languages, is especially problematic because of the inaccessibility of many languages in the Himalayas, not to mention that van Driem (2015, p. 141) finds them “endangered with imminent extinction.” Overall, the lower-level groupings within Tibeto-Burman are more certain than the higher-level ones, leading van Driem (2001) to posit a “Fallen Leaves” model that recognizes clumps of closely related languages without identifying where on the family tree they fell from. Still, Ethnologue offers a full family tree. Sino-Tibetan was at one time thought to include languages farther south, such as the Tai-Kadai languages and the Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) languages, but the similarities among these languages are probably better attributed to areal diffusion, including massive lexical borrowing from Chinese.
该语系的语言在中国、喜马拉雅山和缅甸使用。正如马蒂索夫（Matisoff，2003）所主张的那样，将汉语支和藏缅语支划分为惯例，尽管包括范德里姆（van Driem，2007）在内的一些专家仍然质疑将汉语支作为藏缅语支的单独姐妹支，以及许多细节。拥有 400 多种语言的藏缅语尤其成问题，因为许多语言在喜马拉雅山地区无法使用，更不用说 van Driem（2015 年，第 141 页）发现它们“濒临灭绝”。总体而言，藏缅语中较低级别的分组比较高级别的分组更加确定，这导致 van Driem (2001) 提出了一个“落叶”模型，该模型可以识别密切相关的语言群，而无需确定它们在族谱上的位置。跌落自。尽管如此，Ethnologue 仍然提供了完整的家谱。汉藏语一度被认为包括更南边的语言，例如壮侗语和苗瑶语，但这些语言之间的相似性可能更好地归因于区域传播，包括大量词汇借用汉语。

3.7.1 Chinese 3.7.1 中文

Member languages of the Chinese (or Sinitic) branch are sometimes called dialects, especially in China, but this stretches the normal meaning of the term “dialect” too far, since the 14 languages that make up Chinese are far from mutually intelligible, even though they share the same writing system and many grammatical properties. Each of the Chinese languages of course has dialects. Ethnologue lists five major dialects for Mandarin (which also goes by the name Guanhua): Huabei Guanhua (Northern Mandarin), Xibei Guanhua (Northwestern Mandarin), Xinan Guanhua (Southwestern Mandarin), Jinghuai Guanhua (Eastern Mandarin), and Jiangxia Guanhua (Lower Yangtze Mandarin). Other sources divide the dialects differently, due not only to differences of linguistic and geographical criteria but also to centuries of diffusion of linguistic features. For discussion, see Kurpaska (2010) and Yan (2006). With over a billion speakers total, Mandarin’s dialects have many subdialects as well.
汉语（或华语）分支的成员语言有时被称为方言，尤其是在中国，但这将“方言”一词的正常含义延伸得太远了，因为组成汉语的 14 种语言远不能相互理解，尽管它们具有相同的书写系统和许多语法属性。当然，每种汉语都有方言。Ethnologue 列出了普通话（也称为官话）的五个主要方言：华北官话（北方官话）、西北官话（西北官话）、西南官话（西南官话）、京淮官话（东部官话）和江夏官话（下域官话）。长江普通话）。其他来源对方言的划分也不同，这不仅是由于语言和地理标准的差异，而且还因为语言特征几个世纪以来的传播。有关讨论，请参见 Kurpaska (2010) 和 Yan (2006)。普通话的使用者总数超过十亿，普通话的方言也有许多子方言。

Linguistic diffusion is the general pattern in the historical development of Chinese, due to over a dozen massive population movements going back to the 7th century bce and continuing to the present, each migration involving hundreds of thousands and often millions of people. Complicating these scenarios is the fact that in most cases, the migrations were to areas already settled by speakers of Chinese or other languages, often resulting in language mixture. The history of these migrations and their linguistic effects is traced by LaPolla (2001).
语言传播是汉语历史发展的普遍模式，自公元前七世纪以来，已有十几次大规模的人口流动，并持续至今，每次人口流动涉及数十万人，往往涉及数百万人。使这些情况变得复杂的是，在大多数情况下，移民是到已经有说中文或其他语言的人定居的地区，往往导致语言混合。LaPolla (2001) 追溯了这些迁徙的历史及其语言影响。

3.7.2 Tibeto-Burman 3.7.2 藏缅语

As already noted, most of the languages of this branch are endangered. As a group, they have many linguistic traits in common, including SOV order and agglutinative verb structure. Two word-order exceptions are the Karenic languages (Myanmar) and Bai (China), which have the SVO order characteristic of Sinitic, though unlike Sinitic, Karen and Bai are also relatively agglutinative. Karen and Bai both stand out enough from the rest of Tibeto-Burman to inspire attempts to classify them outside of Tibeto-Burman proper. Benedict’s (1976) proposed sister to Sinitic, labeled Tibeto-Karenic, with Tibeto-Burman as a daughter, has been ruled out, while more recently several scholars have taken up the case for linking Bai with Sinitic. See Wang (2005) for a brief survey with references.
正如已经指出的，该分支的大多数语言都濒临灭绝。作为一个群体，它们有许多共同的语言特征，包括 SOV 顺序和粘着动词结构。两个词序例外是克伦语（缅甸）和白语（中国），它们具有汉语的 SVO 顺序特征，但与汉语不同的是，克伦语和白语也相对粘着。克伦族和白族与其他藏缅语族相比都非常突出，因此有人试图将他们划归藏缅族之外。本尼迪克特 (Benedict, 1976) 提议的“西尼提克姐妹”，被称为藏族-克伦尼克语，藏缅语为女儿，已被排除，而最近一些学者已经开始将白族与西尼提克联系起来。请参阅 Wang (2005) 的简要调查和参考文献。

3.8 Austro-Asiatic 3.8 南亚语系

The Austro-Asiatic family extends across south Asia from India to Vietnam. The Munda branch is found in northeastern India, surrounded by Indo-European and Dravidian languages that have influenced its languages greatly over the ages. Typologically they are agglutinative, with SOV word order, making them typologically very different from the rest of the family. Austro-Asiatic includes two important national languages, Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian). These two languages were grouped, along with many others, into a branch called Mon-Khmer, a grouping still accepted by Ethnologue but challenged by Sidwell (2009).
南亚语系横跨南亚，从印度到越南。蒙达语支位于印度东北部，周围环绕着印欧语和德拉威语，这些语言多年来对其语言产生了很大的影响。从类型上看，它们是粘着的，具有 SOV 词序，使它们在类型上与该家族的其他成员非常不同。南亚语系包括两种重要的民族语言：越南语和高棉语（柬埔寨语）。这两种语言与许多其他语言一起被归为一个名为孟高棉语的分支，该分支仍然被 Ethnologue 所接受，但受到 Sidwell (2009) 的挑战。

Vietnamese has borrowed massively from Chinese and was originally written with Chinese characters. Vietnamese and a few others in this family have developed phonological tones, and still others are thought to be in the process of developing them.
越南语大量借用了汉语，最初是用汉字书写的。越南语和这个语系中的其他一些语言已经发展出了语音音调，而且还有一些人被认为正在发展它们的过程中。

3.9 Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) and Tai-Kadai

These two families were once regarded as branches of Sino-Tibetan, and the languages of both families show many influences from Chinese. The Hmong*-*Mien (Miao-Yao) languages are spoken in scattered areas across southern China and nearby countries of Southeast Asia. The Tai-Kadai languages extend from China south to Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam and include the national languages Thai and Lao. Both families share a number of typological traits: most of their languages are SVO with isolating morphology and contrastive tone that is associated with creaky or breathy voice quality.
这两个语系都曾被视为汉藏语系的分支，两个语系的语言都受到汉语的影响。苗族语言在中国南部和东南亚附近国家的分散地区使用。侗族语言从中国向南延伸到泰国、老挝、缅甸和越南，包括泰语和老挝语。这两个语系有许多共同的类型特征：他们的大多数语言都是 SVO，具有孤立的形态和与嘎吱作响或呼吸声质量相关的对比音调。

3.10 Paleosiberian Area 3.10 古西伯利亚地区

The name Paleosiberian applies to a set of four languages or language groups of Siberia with no established genetic relationship but sharing some typological features—agglutinative word structure and, with exceptions, SOV word order.
古西伯利亚语这个名称适用于西伯利亚的四种语言或语言群，它们没有确定的亲缘关系，但具有一些类型学特征——粘着词结构，以及（有例外）SOV 词序。

One of these is Ket, unrelated to any extant language and reduced to about 200 speakers, but once a member of the Yeniseian family and unlike the rest of Paleosiberian in several respects. It is tonal and has a highly agglutinative verbal system with complex agreement patterns—features that make it look like Na-Dene in North America. The case for a genetic relationship between the two has been made by Vajda (2010, 2011). For arguments pro and con, see Kari and Potter (2010), Campbell (2011), and Kiparsky (2014, pp. 65–67). Implications of this finding for Beringian migrations are pursued by Sicoli and Holton (2014).
其中之一是凯特语，它与任何现存的语言都无关，使用人数减少到约 200 人，但它曾经是叶尼塞语系的成员，在几个方面与古西伯利亚的其他语言不同。它是声调的，有一个高度粘着的语言系统，具有复杂的协议模式——这些特征使它看起来像北美的 Na-Dene。Vajda (2010, 2011) 证明了两者之间存在遗传关系。对于赞成和反对的论点，请参阅 Kari 和 Potter (2010)、Campbell (2011) 和 Kiparsky (2014，第 65-67 页)。Sicoli 和 Holton (2014) 探讨了这一发现对白令海峡迁徙的影响。

Also in the Paleosiberian area are the Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Yukaghir families and Nivkh, a language with perhaps 200 speakers.
古西伯利亚地区还有楚科奇-堪察加语系和尤卡吉尔语系以及尼夫赫语（一种大约有 200 人使用的语言）。

3.11 Korean and Japanese 3.11 韩语和日语

Two of the major languages of East Asia, Korean and Japanese, are widely considered isolates, or nearly so in the case of Japanese, by far the dominant language in Japonic, a family of twelve languages. The remaining 11 languages of Japonic are the Ryukyuan group of the Ryukyu Islands. Some versions of the Altaic hypothesis include Korean and Japanese in a family with Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic. Another isolate of Asia is Burushaski (northeastern Pakistan).
东亚的两种主要语言，韩语和日语，被广泛认为是孤立的，或者对于日语来说，几乎如此，日语是日本语（十二种语言）中迄今为止占主导地位的语言。日本语的其余11种语言是琉球群岛的琉球语族。阿尔泰语系假说的一些版本将朝鲜语和日语与突厥语、蒙古语和通古斯语同属于一个语系。亚洲的另一个孤立地区是布鲁夏斯基（Burushaski）（巴基斯坦东北部）。

4. Oceania 4. 大洋洲

Oceania, which includes Australia and most of the island territories of the central and southern Pacific and Indian oceans, is home to the Austronesian family and to two very large language groups, the Australian and the Papuan groups.
大洋洲包括澳大利亚以及中太平洋、南太平洋和印度洋的大部分岛屿领土，是南岛语系和两个非常大的语言族群——澳大利亚语族和巴布亚语族的所在地。

4.1 Austronesian 4.1 南岛语系

The 1,250+ languages of this family are distributed across Oceania from Madagascar to Easter Island and total well over 350 million speakers. All but 25 of these languages are Malayo-Polynesian; the rest are aboriginal languages of Taiwan.
该语系有 1,250 多种语言，分布在从马达加斯加到复活节岛的大洋洲各地，使用者总数超过 3.5 亿。除 25 种语言外，所有这些语言都是马来-波利尼西亚语；其余为台湾原住民语言。

The dominant category, Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, has well over half of the languages classified as Malayo-Polynesian but only a few million speakers total, and it is not generally accepted as a valid linguistic grouping. The remaining Malayo-Polynesian languages are found in 17 smaller groups, some of whose languages are widely spoken and highly important politically. Among these are:
中东部马来-波利尼西亚语占主导地位，占马来-波利尼西亚语的一半以上，但使用者总数只有几百万，而且它不被普遍认为是一个有效的语言群体。其余的马来-波利尼西亚语言分为 17 个较小的语族，其中一些语言被广泛使用，并且在政治上非常重要。其中包括：

-

Javanese, the language of nearly 90 million, centered in Java, Indonesia.
爪哇语，有近 9000 万人口使用，集中在印度尼西亚爪哇岛。

-

Filipino, an official language of the Philippines used by close to 50 million, including L2 speakers, as the national language of Philippines. The variety associated with native speakers, who number over 20 million, is called Tagalog.
菲律宾语是菲律宾的官方语言，使用者接近 5000 万，包括第二语言（L2）使用者，它是菲律宾的国家语言。与母语使用者相关的变体被称为他加禄语（Tagalog），其使用者超过2000万。

-

Sundanese, the language of about 34 million in Java.
巽他语，大约有 3400 万爪哇人使用的语言。

-

Malay, an official language of Malaysia along with Mandarin and English, is the language of more than 50 million.
马来语与普通话和英语一样是马来西亚的官方语言，使用者超过 5000 万。

-

Malagasy, spoken by 18 million.
马达加斯加语，有 1800 万人口使用。

Blust (2013) offers a recent and comprehensive account of the linguistic and anthropological aspects of this family, including internal linguistic groupings, the linguistic structure of its languages, sociolinguistic considerations, and archeological evidence backing up the linguistic groupings. Adelaar and Himmelmann (2005) cover a similar range of topics.
Blust（2013）对这个家族的语言和人类学方面进行了最新的全面描述，包括内部语言分组、语言的语言结构、社会语言学考虑以及支持语言分组的考古证据。Adelaar 和 Himmelmann (2005) 涵盖了类似的主题范围。

4.2 Papuan Languages 4.2 巴布亚语言

Estimates run to as many as a thousand languages in an area about a quarter of the size of India, making New Guinea the most linguistically diverse region in the world (Foley, 2000, p. 357). Major groupings have been proposed by Greenberg (1971), Wurm (1982), and Ross (2005). Greenberg put all the languages into a single family and included some others from outside New Guinea, but the evidence for this has not generally been deemed credible. Wurm (1982) posited 10 Papuan phyla plus isolates, based entirely on lexicostatistic and typological evidence that others found unconvincing (Foley, 1986). A more recent grouping by Ross (2005), based essentially on evidence from pronouns, has also failed to find wide acceptance. One is left for now with Foley’s (1986) classification, with several dozen families and a similar number of isolates. Correlated with this is extreme typological variation across the families, with morphological types ranging from isolating to polysynthetic. Foley’s Papuan families average about 25 members in size, with the exception of Trans-New Guinea, with 482 member languages in Ethnologue, a figure that experts agree is subject to much revision because the family’s boundaries with others remain unclear. The uncertainty is reflected in Glottalog, which lists only Nuclear Trans New Guinea, with 315 languages.
据估计，在印度四分之一的面积内，有多达一千种语言，使新几内亚成为世界上语言最多样化的地区（Foley，2000，第 357 页）。主要的分组是由 Greenberg (1971)、Wurm (1982) 和 Ross (2005) 提出的。格林伯格将所有语言归入一个语系，并包括新几内亚以外的其他一些语言，但这一证据通常不被认为是可信的。Wurm (1982) 完全基于其他人认为不令人信服的词汇统计和类型学证据，假设了 10 个巴布亚门和分离株（Foley, 1986）。Ross (2005) 最近的一个主要基于代词证据的分组也未能得到广泛接受。目前只剩下 Foley（1986）的分类，有几十个科和类似数量的分离株。与此相关的是各个科之间的极端类型变异，其形态类型范围从分离到多合成。弗利的巴布亚家庭平均人数约为 25 名成员，跨新几内亚除外，在 Ethnologue 中有 482 种成员语言，专家们一致认为这一数字需要进行大量修改，因为该家庭与其他家庭的界限仍不清楚。这种不确定性反映在 Glottalog 中，其中仅列出了 Nuclear Trans 新几内亚，有 315 种语言。

4.3 Australia 4.3 澳大利亚

This continent has been inhabited for 50,000 years, but the time frame for language classification is limited to the last 5,000 or so. As a result, we know very little about the historical connections among Australia’s languages. Worse, the number of vigorous Aboriginal languages today is a fraction of what it was before Europeans settled there in the 18th century. Of the 250-odd languages of Australia in 1788, more than half are extinct, and of the remainder, fewer than two dozen are used and learned by the youngest generation.
这片大陆已经有人居住了5万年，但语言分类的时间范围仅限于最近5000年左右。因此，我们对澳大利亚语言之间的历史联系知之甚少。更糟糕的是，今天活跃的原住民语言的数量只是 18 世纪欧洲人在那里定居之前的一小部分。1788 年，澳大利亚有 250 多种语言，其中一半以上已经灭绝，剩下的只有不到两打被最年轻的一代使用和学习。

Beginning with Hale (1966), many sources divide the continent’s original languages into two groups, Pama-Nynngan and Non-Pama-Nynngan, but even this rudimentary grouping is complicated by large-scale phonological and grammatical diffusion. Dixon, author of many standard reference works on Australian languages, among them Dixon (2002), diverges markedly from the others by simply dividing the languages into 50 groups representing different areas, though among them some genetic clusters may be found. For Dixon, Pama-Nyungan “cannot be supported as a genetic group. Nor is it a useful typological grouping.” (Dixon, 2002, p. 53). The problem with applying standard methods toward reconstructing a language tree for Australia, as Dixon sees it, is that Australia is unique, in part to due widespread diffusion, whereby a language “will tend to become more like its neighbors” (Dixon, 2002, p. 448). For alternative studies from a vantage point that differs markedly, see Bowern and Koch (2004).
从 Hale（1966）开始，许多资料来源将非洲大陆的原始语言分为两类：Pama-Nynngan 语和非 Pama-Nynngan 语，但即使是这种基本的分组也因大规模的语音和语法传播而变得复杂。Dixon 是许多澳大利亚语言标准参考书的作者，其中包括 Dixon (2002)，他与其他语言明显不同，他简单地将语言分为代表不同地区的 50 个组，尽管其中可能会发现一些遗传簇。对于 Dixon 来说，Pama-Nyungan“不能被支持为一个遗传群体。它也不是一个有用的类型学分组。” （迪克森，2002 年，第 53 页）。正如 Dixon 所见，应用标准方法重建澳大利亚语言树的问题在于澳大利亚是独一无二的，部分原因是由于广泛的传播，一种语言“往往会变得更像它的邻居”（Dixon，2002，第 448 页）。对于从显着不同的有利角度进行的替代研究，请参见 Bowern 和 Koch (2004)。

Phonologically, Australian languages tend to be simple in some ways—usually with three-vowel systems—and complex in others, with as many as four contrasting articulations among the coronal consonants. Morphologically, Pama-Nyungan languages have noun class systems and verbal concord prefixes, and some have extensive noun incorporation constructions. Outside Pama-Nyungan, morphology, especially in nouns, is of a more simple agglutinative type, with suffixes but no prefixes. Most Australian languages have split ergativity, a common pattern being ergative-absolutive alignment for nouns but nominative-accusative alignment for pronouns. Word order tends to be very free, but there is evidence that clauses are best analyzed as verb-final; see Mushin and Baker (2008).
从语音上看，澳大利亚语言在某些方面往往很简单（通常采用三元音系统），而在其他方面则很复杂，冠辅音之间有多达四个对比发音。从形态上看，Pama-Nyungan 语言具有名词类系统和动词一致前缀，有些还具有广泛的名词合并结构。在 Pama-Nyungan 之外，形态，尤其是名词，是一种更简单的粘着类型，有后缀但没有前缀。大多数澳大利亚语言都有分裂作格，常见的模式是名词的作格-绝对对齐，但代词的主格-宾格对齐。词序往往非常自由，但有证据表明，最好将从句作为动词结尾进行分析；参见 Mushin 和 Baker (2008)。

5. The Americas 5. 美洲

The past and present states of indigenous languages in the Americas are entirely different as a result of colonization by Europeans. North America is estimated to have been host at one time to nearly 300 distinct languages (Mithun, 1999, p. 1). Since then, over a hundred have gone extinct, and practically all of the rest are endangered. The 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report found 169 Native North American languages to be spoken in the home, with a total speaking population of less than half a million. By far the largest is Navajo, with nearly 170,000.
由于欧洲人的殖民统治，美洲土著语言的过去和现在的状态完全不同。据估计，北美洲曾一度拥有近 300 种不同的语言（Mithun，1999，第 1 页）。从那时起，已有一百多个物种灭绝，其余的几乎全部都濒临灭绝。2010 年美国人口普查局报告发现，在家中使用 169 种北美原住民语言，但使用该语言的总人口不到 50 万。迄今为止最大的是纳瓦霍族，有近 170,000 人。

Central and South America are home to a few much larger languages, spoken by several million. Still, language endangerment is also the rule there. Of perhaps 1,700 pre-Columbian languages, fewer than 700 remain (Campbell, 1997) and of these, most are spoken by populations of several thousand or fewer.
中美洲和南美洲是几种规模更大的语言的发源地，有数百万人使用。尽管如此，语言濒危也是那里的规则。在哥伦布发现美洲之前的大约 1,700 种语言中，现存的语言不到 700 种（Campbell，1997），其中大多数的人口只有几千人或更少。

The languages of the Americas are often divided into three geographical areas: North America, Mesomerica, and South America. Greenberg’s (1987) classification grouped the languages into three “super-families” that he called Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. Of these, the most controversial is Amerind, a grouping widely contested for reasons summarized by Campbell (2012, p. 19), drawing on Paul Rivet’s classification of South American languages in the first half of the 20th century: “Greenberg’s subgroups have been met with skepticism for a number of reasons, including the underanalyzed nature of the presented data, the perpetuation of old misunderstandings [. . .], and the fact that recent findings may suggest entirely different groupings.”
美洲的语言通常分为三个地理区域：北美洲、中美洲和南美洲。Greenberg（1987）的分类将这些语言分为三个“超级语系”，他称之为爱斯基摩-阿留申语、Na-Dene 语和美洲语语族。其中，最具争议的是 Amerind，这是一个受到广泛争议的分组，其原因由 Campbell（2012 年，第 19 页）借鉴 Paul Rivet 在 20 世纪上半叶对南美语言的分类得出：“格林伯格的子群已得到满足由于多种原因而受到怀疑，包括所提供数据的分析不足、旧有误解的延续[。。.]，而且最近的研究结果可能表明完全不同的分组。”

5.1 North America 5.1 北美

The approximately 300 surviving languages of native North America are grouped by Golla et al. (2007) into 14 major families and 19 minor families, with an additional 25 isolates. The major families are Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, Algic, Wakashan, Salishan, Utian, Plateau, Cochimi-Yuman, Uto-Aztecan, Kiowa-Tanoan, Siouan-Catawba, Caddoan, Muskogean, and Iroquoian. These and the remaining groupings in Golla et al. (2007) represent a compromise rather than a consensus, and it is unclear whether any individual, including the authors themselves, accepts them in toto.
Golla 等人对北美本土现存的大约 300 种语言进行了分组。(2007) 分为 14 个主要科和 19 个次要科，另外还有 25 个分离株。主要家族有爱斯基摩-阿留申族、纳德内族、阿尔吉族、瓦卡山族、萨利山族、乌田族、高原族、科奇米-尤曼族、乌托-阿兹台克族、基奥瓦-塔努安族、苏安-卡托巴族、卡多安族、马斯科吉安族和易洛魁族。这些以及 Golla 等人中的其余分组。(2007) 代表的是妥协而不是共识，目前还不清楚是否有任何个人，包括作者本人，完全接受它们。

5.1.1 Eskimo-Aleut 5.1.1 爱斯基摩-阿留申省

The Aleut branch has just one language, variously called Aleut or Unangax̂ and spoken by 155 in the Aleutian and Pribilof islands (Alaska) and the Commander Islands (Siberia). Eskimo has two branches, Inuit and Yupik. Because the term Eskimo is deemed offensive by many, especially in Canada and Greenland, Yupik-Inuit is sometimes used instead.
阿留申语支只有一种语言，分别称为阿留申语或乌南加克斯语，阿留申群岛和普里比洛夫群岛（阿拉斯加）以及科曼德群岛（西伯利亚）有 155 人使用该语言。爱斯基摩人有两个分支，因纽特人和尤皮克人。由于“爱斯基摩人”一词被许多人认为具有冒犯性，尤其是在加拿大和格陵兰岛，因此有时会使用“尤皮克-因纽特人”一词来代替。

5.1.2 Na-Dene 5.1.2 钠烯

The name Na-Dene is perhaps on its way to being phased out, having been replaced in Ethnologue by Eyak-Athabaskan and in Glottolog by Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit. Along with two small languages of Alaska, the family includes Athabaskan, a group of 42 languages widely distributed across the western United States and western Canada. At one time Na-Dene was thought to include Haida (Sapir, 1915), but this view has been abandoned by most (Schoonmaker et al., 1997).
Na-Dene 这个名字可能正在被淘汰，在 Ethnologue 中被 Eyak-Athabaskan 取代，在 Glottolog 中被 Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit 取代。除了阿拉斯加的两种小语言外，该语系还包括阿萨巴斯卡语，这是一组广泛分布在美国西部和加拿大西部的 42 种语言。一度认为 Na-Dene 包括海达 (Sapir, 1915)，但这一观点已被大多数人放弃 (Schoonmaker et al., 1997)。

The largest Athabaskan language is Navajo, a member of the Apachean group. Its morphology is widely studied for its complex prefix system, which might lead it to be classified as agglutinative, were it not for complex, overlapping dependencies that are more characteristic of fusional languages. Like many Athabaskan languages, Navajo is tonal, yet proto-Athabaskan lacked tone, and tone seems to have developed independently in many Athabaskan languages from constricted vowels (Campbell, 1997, p. 113).
最大的阿萨巴斯卡语是纳瓦霍语，阿帕奇语族的成员。它的形态因其复杂的前缀系统而被广泛研究，如果不是融合语言更具特征的复杂、重叠的依赖关系，这可能会导致它被归类为粘着语。与许多阿萨巴斯卡语言一样，纳瓦霍语也是声调的，但原始阿萨巴斯卡语缺乏声调，并且在许多阿萨巴斯卡语言中，声调似乎是从缩元音独立发展而来的（Campbell，1997，第 113 页）。

5.1.3 Algic 5.1.3 阿尔吉克

This family has some three dozen forty languages, all but two in the Algonquian branch, distributed across a wide expanse of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. The two outliers are in California, Yurok and the now-extinct Wiyot. Algonquian languages extend from eastern Canada and the eastern United States to the Rocky Mountains. The largest languages of this group are Cree, spoken by well over 100,000 and spanning a vast area of Canada from Labrador to Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and Ojibwa, with more than 50,000 speakers, extending across southern Canada and from Ontario to the Rocky Mountains and south into the United States, especially Minnesota.
这个语系有大约三打四十种语言，除了两种语言外，所有语言都属于阿尔冈昆语支，分布在加拿大东部和美国东北部的广阔地区。这两个异常点位于加利福尼亚州的尤罗克（Yurok）和现已灭绝的维约特（Wiyot）。阿尔冈昆语从加拿大东部和美国东部一直延伸到落基山脉。该族群中最大的语言是克里语，有超过 100,000 人使用，覆盖从拉布拉多到艾伯塔省和西北地区的加拿大广大地区；以及奥吉布瓦语，有超过 50,000 人使用，覆盖加拿大南部，从安大略省到落基山脉并向南进入美国，尤其是明尼苏达州。

5.1.4 Wakashan 5.1.4 卡尚人

Wakashan, a family of seven languages in British Columbia, was assigned by Edward Sapir (in a 1929 Encyclopedia Britannica entry) to a putative stock called Mosan that also included the Salishan family (section 5.1.5). Sapir’s conjecture was based on a long list of shared grammatical similarities. But Beck (2000), echoing Campbell (1997), finds little lexical similarity and concludes that that one is dealing with a Sprachbund (Thomason & Kaufman, 1992), a set of languages whose common features have arisen from contact rather than from shared genetic origins.
瓦卡山语系是不列颠哥伦比亚省的一个有七种语言的语系，爱德华·萨皮尔（Edward Sapir）（在 1929 年大英百科全书的条目中）将其指定为一个名为 Mosan 的推定语系，该语系也包括萨利山语系（第 5.1.5 节）。萨皮尔的猜想是基于一长串共同的语法相似点。但是 Beck（2000）与 Campbell（1997）相呼应，发现词汇上几乎没有相似之处，并得出结论认为，人们正在处理的是 Sprachbund（Thomason & Kaufman，1992），这是一组语言，其共同特征源于接触而不是共享遗传。起源。

5.1.5 Salishan 5.1.5 萨利山

The 26 languages of this family are spoken in the coastal regions and in the region immediately to the east in British Columbia and in nearby areas in the United States. One of typological distinctions of Salishan languages is an extremely rich set of consonant contrasts—up to six pharyngeal consonants, contrasting velars and uvulars, and a full set of ejectives.
该家族的 26 种语言在沿海地区、不列颠哥伦比亚省东部地区以及美国附近地区使用。萨利山语言的类型学特征之一是极其丰富的辅音对比——多达六个咽辅音、对比软腭音和小舌音，以及一整套喷射音。

5.1.6 Utian 5.1.6 乌田

Approximately a dozen languages in the Utian family of central and northern California are divided into two branches, Miwok and Costanoan.
加利福尼亚州中部和北部的乌蒂安语系中大约有十几种语言分为两个分支：米沃克语和科斯塔诺语。

5.1.7 Plateau 5.1.7 高原

Also known as Plateau Penutian, this group of four languages in the Pacific Northwest includes Klamath and Nez Percé.
太平洋西北地区的这四种语言也被称为 Plateau Penutian，包括克拉马斯语和内兹佩尔塞语。

5.1.8 Cochimi-Yuman 5.1.8 科奇米-尤曼

Also called Yuman, this group of eight small languages, which also includes the extinct Cochimi, is spoken in Arizona and neighboring parts of California and Mexico.
这八种小语言也称为尤曼语，其中还包括已经灭绝的科奇米语，在亚利桑那州以及加利福尼亚州和墨西哥的邻近地区使用。

5.1.9 Uto-Aztecan 5.1.9 犹他-阿兹特克人

About 60 languages make up this family. The 13 languages of the Northern branch are spoken in the western United States. Among them is Hopi, spoken by 6,700 in and around northeastern Arizona. The Southern branch has 48 languages, almost all of them in Mexico.
这个家族大约有 60 种语言。北方支系的 13 种语言在美国西部使用。其中包括霍皮语，亚利桑那州东北部及周边地区有 6,700 人使用该语言。南部分支有 48 种语言，几乎全部在墨西哥。

5.1.10 Kiowa-Tanoan 5.1.10 基奥瓦-塔诺安

Speakers of the five languages making up this family live in the southwestern United States.
该家族五种语言的使用者居住在美国西南部。

5.1.11 Siouan-Catawba 5.1.11 苏-卡托巴

This family, also called Siouan, includes Catawba, a language of South Carolina, which lost its last native speaker in the 20th century but is being revived as a second language by ethnic Catawbas. Total speakers for the Siouan family number under 35,000, but among its 14 languages is Dakota, the third largest indigenous language of North America and nearly tied for second place with Yupik, with close to 19,000 speakers. Dakota is spoken in North and South Dakota and neighboring areas.
这个语系也称为苏语，包括卡托巴语（Catawba），这是南卡罗来纳州的一种语言，该语言在 20 世纪失去了最后一个母语人士，但现在被卡托巴族人复兴为第二语言。苏语系的使用者总数不到 35,000 人，但在其 14 种语言中，达科他语是北美第三大土著语言，几乎与尤皮克语并列第二，有近 19,000 人使用。达科他州在北达科他州、南达科他州及邻近地区使用。

5.1.12 Caddoan 5.1.12 卡多安

This group of five languages, each with just a handful of speakers, may possibly form a super-family with Iroquoian and Siouan, based on comparative work (Chafe, 1976), but the relationship is not considered established (Mithun, 1999, p. 305).
根据比较研究（Chafe，1976），这五种语言，每种语言只有少数人使用，可能与易洛魁语和苏安语组成一个超级语系（Chafe，1976），但这种关系并不被认为是建立的（Mithun，1999，第 17 页）。305）。

5.1.13 Muskogean 5.1.13 马斯科吉安

Traces of this family of six languages, roughly estimated at around 150,000 speakers, are still found in the southeastern United States, but forced relocations by the U.S. government in the 1830s drove many Muskogean tribes from their homeland. Included were the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, now situated in Oklahoma.
这个六种语言的踪迹，粗略估计约有 150,000 人使用，在美国东南部仍然可以找到，但美国政府在 1830 年代强制搬迁，迫使许多马斯科吉部落离开了他们的家园。其中包括乔克托族和契卡索族，现在位于俄克拉荷马州。

5.1.14 Iroquoian 5.1.14 易洛魁人

Seven members of this family are severely endangered. Of the remaining two, Mohawk is estimated to have 540 speakers in the Canadian provinces Ontario and Quebec, and Cherokee has over 11,500 speakers in the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau Report, mainly in Oklahoma but also near their pre-relocation lands in North Carolina.
这个家庭的七名成员受到严重威胁。在剩下的两个国家中，根据 2010 年美国人口普查局的报告，加拿大安大略省和魁北克省估计有 540 名讲莫霍克语的人，而在 2010 年美国人口普查局的报告中，切罗基语有超过 11,500 人，主要集中在俄克拉荷马州，但也在他们搬迁前的北卡罗来纳州土地附近。

5.2 Mexico and Central America 5.2 墨西哥和中美洲

5.2.1 Uto-Aztecan 5.2.1 犹他-阿兹特克人

The Southern branch of this family includes 28 varieties of Nahuatl in Mexico and one in El Salvador that altogether number 1.5 million, according to the 2010 census. Nahuatl traces its origins to the Aztecs who dominated the area for many centuries.
根据 2010 年的人口普查，该家族的南部分支包括墨西哥的 28 个纳瓦特尔语品种和萨尔瓦多的一个纳瓦特尔语品种，总数为 150 万。纳瓦特尔语的起源可以追溯到统治该地区多个世纪的阿兹特克人。

5.2.2 Mayan 5.2.2 玛雅

The approximately 30 languages comprising Mayan are spoken mainly in Guatemala and Mexico, as well as in Belize and Honduras. Estimates of the number of speakers of Mayan languages run to six million, with well over half that number in Guatemala. The most important Mayan languages of Guatemala are K’iche’, with 2,330,000 speakers; Q’eqchi’ with 800,000; Mam with 530,000; and Kaqchikel with 450,000. In Mexico, Yucatec Maya is spoken by more than 700,000, and a few others are spoken by well over a hundred thousand. The languages are still centered around the original Maya homeland in Guatemala and on the Yucatan Peninsula.
玛雅语大约有 30 种语言，主要在危地马拉和墨西哥以及伯利兹和洪都拉斯使用。据估计，说玛雅语言的人数达到六百万，其中一半以上在危地马拉。危地马拉最重要的玛雅语言是 K’iche’，有 2,330,000 人使用； Q’eqchi’ 800,000；妈妈有53万； Kaqchikel 为 450,000。在墨西哥，尤卡坦玛雅语的使用人数超过 70 万，其他几种玛雅语的使用人数也远远超过十万。这些语言仍然以玛雅人的原始故乡危地马拉和尤卡坦半岛为中心。

Among the noteworthy achievements of early Maya civilization were temples, pyramids, and the only writing system developed in the Americas before the coming of the European explorers. Decipherment of the writing system has offered a direct glimpse into the Mayan protolanguage and makes a fascinating story, recounted by Coe (1999).
早期玛雅文明的显着成就包括寺庙、金字塔以及欧洲探险家到来之前在美洲开发的唯一书写系统。Coe (1999) 讲述了书写系统的破译，使人们能够直接了解玛雅原始语言，并创造出一个引人入胜的故事。

5.2.3 Otomanguean 5.2.3 奥托曼格安

This is a large family of 177 languages spoken in central and southern Mexico. In the Eastern Otomanguean branch are the Mixtecan languages, including Trique and 52 varieties of Mixtec listed in Ethnologue, and 63 Zapotecan languages, including Chatino and 57 varieties of Zapotec listed in Ethnologue. Recent census estimates for both Mixtec and Zapotec are in the area of 500,000 speakers. The Western Otomanguean branch numbers 37 languages, among them 14 distinct varieties of Chinantec and nine varieties of Otomi. The 2010 census gives 130,000 native speakers for Chinantec and 290,000 for Otomi.
这是一个由 177 种语言组成的大家族，在墨西哥中部和南部使用。东奥托曼格语分支包括米斯特克语，包括 Trique 和 Ethnologue 中列出的 52 个 Mixtec 变体，以及 63 种萨波特克语，包括 Ethnologue 中列出的 Chatino 和 57 个 Zapotec 变体。最近的人口普查估计 Mixtec 和 Zapotec 的使用者数量约为 500,000 人。西奥托曼格语支有 37 种语言，其中有 14 种不同的 Chinaantec 语言和 9 种 Otomi 语言。2010 年人口普查显示，Chinantec 的母语人数为 130,000，Otomi 的母语人数为 290,000。

5.2.4 Totonacan 5.2.4 托托纳坎

This is a family of 12 small languages spoken in and around Puebla State in Mexico. The largest is Sierra Totonacan.
这是一个由 12 种小语种组成的语言家族，在墨西哥普埃布拉州及其周边地区使用。最大的是托托纳坎山脉。

5.2.5 Mixe-Zoquean 5.2.5 Mixe-Zoquean

This family groups the ten Mixean languages with the seven Zoquean languages. All are spoken on the narrow strip of southern Mexico between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.
该语系将十种米克西亚语言与七种佐克语言归为一类。所有这些语言都在墨西哥湾和太平洋之间的墨西哥南部狭窄地带使用。

5.3 South America 5.3 南美洲

With 55 language isolates and 53 families of two or more languages, South America has about a quarter of the language families of the world (Campbell, 2012, p. 59). While most are endangered and a large number nearly extinct, there are some very healthy exceptions, including Quechua, Tupi Guaraní, and Aymara, all discussed in this section. Especially since 1960, efforts have been under way to reverse some of the declines in language populations of earlier eras. Particularly active in this area is the Andean region, where several bilingual school programs have incorporated Quechua and Aymara into the curriculum. The past 25 years have also seen a surge in interest by linguists in documenting and analyzing the tremendously diverse languages of this continent.
南美洲拥有 55 个孤立语言和 53 个两种或以上语言的语系，约占世界语系的四分之一（Campbell，2012 年，第 59 页）。虽然大多数都濒临灭绝，并且大量濒临灭绝，但也有一些非常健康的例外，包括盖丘亚语、图皮瓜拉尼语和艾马拉语，所有这些都将在本节中讨论。特别是自 1960 年以来，人们一直在努力扭转早期语言人口下降的趋势。安第斯地区在这一领域尤其活跃，该地区的一些双语学校项目已将盖丘亚语和艾马拉语纳入课程中。过去 25 年里，语言学家对记录和分析这片大陆上极其多样化的语言的兴趣也随之高涨。

Among the 108 language families Campbell (2012) finds in South America, larger groupings still remain to be firmly established. Of the hypotheses advanced to date, including Greenberg’s (1987) classification that puts them all in Amerind, none have been proved to general satisfaction.
Campbell（2012）在南美洲发现的 108 个语系中，更大的语系仍有待牢固建立。迄今为止提出的假设，包括 Greenberg（1987）将它们全部归入 Amerind 的分类，都没有得到普遍满意的证明。

5.3.1 Intermediate Area: Between Central America and South America 5.3.1 中间区域：中美洲和南美洲之间

The area between the site of the Mayan civilization to the north and the Inca civilization to the south covers the northwestern part of South America, extending into Central America. Among the language families here are Chocoan, spoken in Columbia and Panama; Barbcacoan, spoken in Colombia and Ecuador; and Chibchan, spoken from Honduras to Venezuela. Chibchan may be related to Misumalpan, spoken in Honduras and Nicaragua.
北至玛雅文明遗址，南至印加文明遗址，覆盖南美洲西北部，延伸至中美洲。这里的语系包括哥伦比亚语和巴拿马语的 Chocoan 语系；巴布卡科语，在哥伦比亚和厄瓜多尔使用；和 Chibchan，从洪都拉斯到委内瑞拉。Chibchan 可能与洪都拉斯和尼加拉瓜使用的米苏马尔潘有关。

5.3.2 Arawakan 5.3.2 阿拉瓦干

The family with the greatest geographical reach, spreading from Honduras down to Bolivia and as far east as Suriname, is Arawakan, with 40 languages, not including about two dozen extinct ones. Some reserve the name Arawakan for a slightly larger group with 11 additional languages, but their genetic connection to the core family is unproven (Campbell, 2012, p. 71). For this reason, Campbell uses Arawakan (which includes the language Arawak) for the core group that also goes by the names Maipurean and Maipuran, as listed in Ethnologue.
地理覆盖范围最广的家族是阿拉瓦坎语系，从洪都拉斯一直延伸到玻利维亚，东至苏里南，拥有 40 种语言，其中不包括大约两打已灭绝的语言。有些人保留阿拉瓦坎语这个名称来称呼一个规模稍大、另外还有 11 种语言的群体，但他们与核心语系的遗传联系尚未得到证实（Campbell，2012 年，第 71 页）。因此，坎贝尔使用阿拉瓦卡语（Arawkan，其中包括阿拉瓦克语）作为核心群体，该群体也被称为 Maipurean 和 Maipuran，如 Ethnologue 中所列。

Three Arawakan languages—Wayuu (Colombia), Garifuna (Honduras), and Asháninka (Peru)—account for more than 85% of the 645,000-odd speakers of languages in the family.
三种阿拉瓦坎语——瓦尤语（哥伦比亚）、加里富纳语（洪都拉斯）和阿沙宁卡语（秘鲁）——占该语系 645,000 多名语言使用者的 85% 以上。

5.3.3 Arawan 5.3.3 阿拉瓦

The Arawan family of western Brazil, with six languages, and Guajiboan, with five languages in Eastern Colombia and southwestern Venezuela, comprise the group of 11 sometimes classed with Arawakan.
巴西西部的阿拉瓦语族有六种语言，瓜吉博安语族有五种语言，分布在哥伦比亚东部和委内瑞拉西南部，共 11 个语系，有时被归为阿拉瓦语族。

5.3.4 Cariban 5.3.4 卡里班

Cariban is a family of 31 languages (as well as around two dozen extinct ones) in Brazil and Venezuela as well as in Guyana, Suriname, and Colombia. Most have just a few hundred speakers; some have a few thousand. The largest is Macushi, with 18,000 speakers in Brazil.
卡里班语是巴西、委内瑞拉、圭亚那、苏里南和哥伦比亚的 31 种语言（以及大约两打已灭绝的语言）的一个语系。大多数只有几百名发言者；有些有几千。最大的是 Macushi，在巴西有 18,000 名使用者。

5.3.5 Tucanoan 5.3.5 图卡诺

Tucanoan includes 25 languages in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. A few are extinct or very severely endangered. The two largest, with just over 6,000 speakers each, are Cubeo (Colombia) and Tucano (Brazil).
图卡诺语包括哥伦比亚、厄瓜多尔、秘鲁和巴西的 25 种语言。有一些已经灭绝或非常严重濒临灭绝。最大的两个分别是 Cubeo（哥伦比亚）和 Tucano（巴西），各拥有超过 6,000 名演讲者。

5.3.6 Aymaran 5.3.6 艾马拉语

Aymaran has just two languages. One of them is Aymara, spoken by a million in Bolivia and several hundred thousand in Peru.
艾马拉语只有两种语言。其中之一是艾马拉语，在玻利维亚有一百万人使用，在秘鲁有数十万人使用。

5.3.7 Quechuan 5.3.7 盖丘亚

Quechuan languages are spoken natively by a greater number than any other language family indigenous to the Americas, a result of the spread of the Inca Empire in pre-Columbian times. The total speaking population is 8.5 million, mainly in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The designations of all but two of the 44 Quechuan languages include the name Quechua along with a geographical identifier, reflecting a close relationship, though in most cases not mutual intelligibility. Most are small, with a few thousand speakers. About a dozen others range from the tens of thousands to around 100,000, and a few more are spoken by several hundred thousand. Larger than these are South Bolivian Quechua (1,600,000 speakers in Bolivia), Ayacucho Quechua (900,000 speakers in Peru, including Lima), and Chimborazo Highland Quichua (800,000 in Ecuador). All three belong to what is known as Peripheral Quechua, a sister branch to Central Quechua. These two branches constitute the major break in the Quechuan family. Quechua is, along with Spanish, the official language in Peru.
由于前哥伦布时代印加帝国的传播，盖川语的使用人数比美洲任何其他本土语系都要多。总人口为850万，主要分布在秘鲁、厄瓜多尔和玻利维亚。44 种盖丘亚语中除两种语言外的所有名称都包含盖丘亚语名称和地理标识符，反映了密切的关系，尽管在大多数情况下无法相互理解。大多数规模都很小，只有几千个扬声器。其他大约有十几种，从几万到十万左右不等，还有一些有几十万人使用。比这些更大的是南玻利维亚盖丘亚语（玻利维亚有 1,600,000 人）、阿亚库乔盖丘亚语（秘鲁，包括利马有 900,000 人）和钦博拉索高地盖丘亚语（厄瓜多尔有 800,000 人）。这三种语言都属于外围盖丘亚语，它是中央盖丘亚语的姐妹分支。这两个分支构成了盖川家族的重大分裂。盖丘亚语与西班牙语一样是秘鲁的官方语言。

Phonological, structural, and lexical similarities between Quechua and Aymara have raised the possibility that the two are related, as discussed by Orr and Longacre (1968) and Kaufman and Berlin, 2007, but Adelaar (1992, 2012) argues instead that the many similarities must have resulted from intense contact predating the protolanguages along with subsequent diffusion. Part of the reasoning is that the lexical similarities are in fact too similar where they occur and extend to only about a quarter of the vocabulary, while the rest is highly different.
正如 Orr 和 Longacre (1968) 以及 Kaufman 和 Berlin, 2007 所讨论的那样，克丘亚语和艾马拉语之间的语音、结构和词汇相似性提出了两者相关的可能性，但 Adelaar (1992, 2012) 相反认为，许多相似之处一定是原始语言出现之前的密切接触以及随后的传播的结果。部分原因是词汇相似性实际上在出现的地方过于相似，并且只扩展到大约四分之一的词汇，而其余部分则非常不同。

5.3.8 Tupian 5.3.8 图皮亚

Jensen and Grimes (2003), Kaufman and Berlin (2007), and Rodrigues and Cabral (2014) regard the Tupian languages of Central Amazonia as a language stock—a grouping of languages families not fully established but thought to be distantly related. Here it is listed as an established family, following Kaufman (1990), Campbell (2012), and Ethnologue.
Jensen 和 Grimes (2003)、Kaufman 和 Berlin (2007) 以及 Rodrigues 和 Cabral (2014) 将亚马逊中部的图皮亚语言视为一个语言库——一组尚未完全建立但被认为关系较远的语系。在此，它被列为继 Kaufman (1990)、Campbell (2012) 和 Ethnologue 之后的一个成熟家族。

This set of 76 languages is grouped into 11 small branches and isolates and one major branch, Tupi-Guarani, which some recognize as a family in and of itself (Michael et al., 2015). Its 51 languages are found in parts of Paraguay, Brazil, and Bolivia but once covered a much larger expanse of South America, from the eastern coast to the west and from northern Argentina up to French Guiana. Ten languages of this group are varieties of Guaraní that together are spoken by five million, principally in Paraguay, where it is an official language (along with Spanish) and is widely used as a second language as well.
这组 76 种语言分为 11 个小分支和孤立语以及一个主要分支图皮瓜拉尼语，有些人将其本身视为一个语系（Michael 等，2015）。它的 51 种语言分布在巴拉圭、巴西和玻利维亚的部分地区，但曾经覆盖了南美洲更大的地区，从东海岸到西海岸，从阿根廷北部到法属圭亚那。该组语言中的十种语言是瓜拉尼语的变体，共有五百万人使用，主要在巴拉圭，瓜拉尼语是巴拉圭的官方语言（与西班牙语一起），并且也广泛用作第二语言。

5.3.9 Northern Foothills 5.3.9 北麓

In this Andean region, we find Jivaroan, Cahuapanan, Zaparoan, and Witotoan, among a few others. Yagua is known to have belonged to the Peba-Yaguan family, whose other two members are extinct.
在这个安第斯地区，我们发现了吉瓦罗安（Jivaroan）、卡瓦帕南（Cahuapanan）、萨帕罗安（Zaparoan）和维托托安（Witotoan）等。据了解，Yagua 属于 Peba-Yaguan 家族，该家族的其他两个成员已灭绝。

Beyond what is presented here, Campbell (2012) discusses many plausible and possible genetic relationships within South America. Campbell and Grondona (2012, p. 29) cite a dozen other works on this topic.
除了这里介绍的内容之外，坎贝尔（Campbell，2012）还讨论了南美洲境内许多合理且可能的遗传关系。Campbell 和 Grondona（2012 年，第 29 页）引用了有关该主题的十几篇其他著作。

6. Sign Languages 6. 手语

As with spoken languages, it is impossible to trace back to the time when the first sign languages were used. Still, McBurney (2012) documents early reports on signing by the deaf, including an Ancient Egyptian text from around 1200 bce: “Thou art one who is deaf and does not hear, to whom men make (signs) with the hand.” From Plato’s Cratylus she quotes: “should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body?” And from a collection on Jewish oral law from the late 2nd century ce: “A deaf-mute may communicate by signs and be communicated with by signs.”
与口语一样，不可能追溯到最早使用手语的时间。尽管如此，麦克伯尼（McBurney，2012）记录了有关聋人手语的早期报告，其中包括公元前 1200 年左右的古埃及文本：“你是聋子，听不见，人们用手向你做出（手势）。” 她引用了柏拉图的《克拉提罗斯》中的话：“我们难道不应该像聋子和哑巴一样，用手、头和身体的其他部位做出手势吗？” 公元 2 世纪末的犹太口传法文集中写道：“聋哑人可以通过手势进行交流，也可以通过手势进行交流。”

Signing systems developed into languages as communities of users grew and the communicative needs of the deaf were recognized by governments, educators, and the general public. In parts of Europe, emerging deaf communities were developing sign languages well before the 18th century, and in 1817 Thomas Gallaudet established the first permanent deaf school in the United States, basing his methods on practices already in place in France and Britain.
随着用户社区的发展以及政府、教育工作者和公众认识到聋人的交流需求，手语系统发展成为语言。在欧洲部分地区，早在 18 世纪之前，新兴聋人社区就开始发展手语，托马斯·加劳德 (Thomas Gallaudet) 于 1817 年在美国建立了第一所永久性聋人学校，其方法以法国和英国已有的做法为基础。

Ethnologue lists 138 sign languages for the deaf, each one named for the location where it is used. Many are adaptions of signing systems already used in other regions, as illustrated by American Sign Language (ASL), which Thomas Gallaudet directly based on French Sign Language. ASL has become the most widely used sign language of the deaf, with 250,000 users in North American, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and Africa. ASL and other sign languages are not closely connected to the spoken languages of the regions where they are used. For example, British Sign Language and American Sign Language are not mutually intelligible.
Ethnologue 列出了 138 种聋人手语，每一种都以其使用地点命名。许多手语系统是其他地区已经使用的手语系统的改编版本，例如美国手语 (ASL)，托马斯·加劳德 (Thomas Gallaudet) 直接基于法国手语。ASL 已成为聋人使用最广泛的手语，在北美、加勒比地区、菲律宾和非洲拥有 25 万用户。美国手语和其他手语与其使用地区的口语联系并不紧密。例如，英国手语和美国手语不能相互理解。

Sign languages also develop in response to other needs. A famous case is Plains Indian Sign Language, once used as a lingua franca by Native Americans over a vast expanse of North America and still in use in some regions (Davis, 2010). Sign languages that have arisen in Aboriginal Australia in response to speech taboos and ritual observance have been described by Kendon (1988).
手语的发展也是为了满足其他需求。一个著名的例子是平原印第安手语，它曾经被北美广大地区的美洲原住民用作通用语言，并且仍在某些地区使用（Davis，2010）。Kendon (1988) 描述了澳大利亚原住民为应对言语禁忌和仪式而出现的手语。

7. Pidgins and Creoles 7. 洋泾浜语和克里奥尔语

7.1 Pidgins 7.1 洋泾浜语

Pidgins are simplified languages that arise out of a need to communicate among speakers lacking a common language, typically in colonial situations where one group is dominant. Members of the dominated group fuse grammatical features, often simplified, of their native language (called the substrate) with vocabulary from the dominant, or superstrate, language. The resulting language serves restricted purposes, such as trade.
洋泾浜语是一种简化语言，是由于缺乏共同语言的使用者之间需要进行交流而产生的，通常是在一个群体占主导地位的殖民环境中。主导群体的成员将其母语（称为基础语言）的语法特征（通常是简化的）与主导语言或上层语言的词汇融合在一起。由此产生的语言服务于有限的目的，例如贸易。

There are not many pidgins. Ethnologue lists only 16, six of them in Africa and five in Oceania, if Indonesia is included. Hiri Motu, an official language of Papua New Guinea, is noteworthy because it goes against some typical views of pidgins. This language developed between the Motu and their trading partners nearby before any European contact. After colonization, its use spread, though the colonizers themselves had little if any knowledge of it. More usual are the cases of the original Chinese Pidgin English, once known as Pigeon English, which arose in 17th-century China for trade with the British, and Nigerian Pidgin, which developed in the same era, again due to trade contact with the British, notably the slave trade.
洋泾浜语并不多。Ethnologue 仅列出了 16 个国家，其中 6 个在非洲，5 个在大洋洲（如果包括印度尼西亚）。巴布亚新几内亚的官方语言 Hiri Motu 值得注意，因为它违背了洋泾浜人的一些典型观点。这种语言在欧洲人接触之前就在莫图人和他们附近的贸易伙伴之间发展起来。殖民化之后，它的使用传播开来，尽管殖民者自己对它知之甚少。更常见的例子是原始的中国洋泾浜英语（曾经被称为鸽子英语），它出现在 17 世纪的中国，用于与英国的贸易；以及尼日利亚洋泾浜语，它在同一时代发展起来，同样是由于与英国的贸易接触。，特别是奴隶贸易。

Hiri Motu, Chinese Pidgin English, and Nigerian Pidgin illustrate three different types of situation. Hiri Motu and Chinese Pidgin English exemplify pidgins that originate when trade partners are equal (Hiri Motu) or unequal (Chinese Pidgin English). The two had similar outcomes, eventually fading away—Hiri Motu in favor of Tok Pisin, a widely spoken creole of New Guinea, and Chinese Pidgin English in favor of Standard English, which came to be commonly taught in schools. (Since then, a different language called Chinese Pidgin English has arisen on the Pacific island of Nauru, for communicating with Chinese-speaking merchants and traders.) By contrast, Chinese Pidgin English and Nigerian Pidgin had analogous origins (for communicating with traders in a dominant position), yet different outcomes, since the first has died out, while the second has vastly expanded its uses and its speaking population. Currently Nigerian Pidgin is learned by many children at an early age for communication with peers in virtually any informal situation.
Hiri Motu、汉语洋泾浜英语和尼日利亚洋泾浜语说明了三种不同类型的情况。Hiri Motu 和中文洋泾浜英语举例说明了源自贸易伙伴平等（Hiri Motu）或不平等（中文洋泾浜英语）的洋泾浜语。两者有着相似的结果，最终逐渐消失——希里·莫图语（Hiri Motu）取代了新几内亚广泛使用的克里奥尔语托克皮辛语（Tok Pisin），而洋泾浜英语则取代了后来在学校普遍教授的标准英语。（从那时起，太平洋岛屿瑙鲁出现了一种不同的语言，称为中文洋泾浜英语，用于与讲中文的商人和贸易商进行交流。）相比之下，中文洋泾浜英语和尼日利亚洋泾浜语有着相似的起源（用于与来自不同国家的商人进行交流）。主导地位），但结果不同，因为第一个已经消失，而第二个则极大地扩大了其用途和使用人群。目前，许多儿童在很小的时候就学会了尼日利亚洋泾浜语，以便在几乎任何非正式场合与同龄人进行交流。

7.2 Creoles 7.2 克里奥尔语

Creoles are first languages of members of speech communities but originate from types of language contact resembling, if not always identical to, situations that give rise to pidgins. Being acquired as a first language gives creoles a stability that pidgins lack, and so it is not surprising that many more creoles are in current use—93 listed in Ethnologue—than pidgins. Thirty-two creoles are spoken around Latin America and the Caribbean, 26 in Oceania, and 22 in Africa. Like pidgins, creoles have a substrate and a superstrate. English is the superstrate for 33 creoles, Malay for 14, Portuguese for 13, and French for 11.
克里奥尔语是语言社区成员的第一语言，但起源于类似于（如果不总是相同的话）产生洋泾浜语的语言接触类型。作为第一语言获得的克里奥尔语具有洋泾浜语所缺乏的稳定性，因此当前使用的克里奥尔语（《Ethnologue》中列出了 93 种）比洋泾浜语多得多也就不足为奇了。拉丁美洲和加勒比地区使用 32 种克里奥尔语，大洋洲使用 26 种，非洲使用 22 种。与洋泾浜语一样，克里奥尔语也有底层和上层。英语是 33 种克里奥尔语的上层语言，马来语是 14 种克里奥尔语的上层语言，葡萄牙语是 13 种克里奥尔语的上层语言，法语是 11 种克里奥尔语的上层语言。

Probably the most vigorously debated topic in current pidgin and creole studies is how creoles form and evolve. Bickerton (1981, 1988) interpreted creolization in terms of what is known as the bioprogram hypothesis. This would see creoles as developing from a pidgin that learners were exposed to at an early age. The hypothesis was that acquisition is guided by an innate bioprogram that supplies structure to complement and modify the pidgin’s substrate and superstrate. This idea excited those who saw its potential to shed light on the human language faculty in general. At the same time, among creolists, the bioprogram hypothesis gave rise to a literature that almost universally sought to disprove it. Viewed more positively, it engendered lots of new thinking on how creoles come about.
当前洋泾浜语和克里奥尔语研究中争论最激烈的话题可能是克里奥尔语如何形成和演变。Bickerton（1981，1988）根据所谓的生物程序假说解释了克里奥尔化。这表明克里奥尔语是从学习者从小就接触到的洋泾浜语发展而来的。假设是获取是由先天生物程序引导的，该程序提供结构来补充和修改洋泾浜的底物和上层。这个想法让那些看到它有可能揭示人类语言能力的人兴奋不已。与此同时，在克里奥尔主义者中，生物程序假说引发了几乎普遍试图反驳它的文献。从更积极的角度来看，它引发了许多关于克里奥尔语如何产生的新思考。

Veenstra (2008) surveys some of the progress made during this period. Early commenters found reason to assign a greater role to the superstrate language than would be the case under Bickerton’s hypothesis, which leaned heavily on universal grammar. Another criticism cited the fact that some creoles develop without having a pidgin as a source. Bickerton’s explanation, relying on acquisition by a generation of speakers with no other first language, implied that a creole would always develop in a single generation, yet this has been falsified by Nicaraguan Sign Language, which took two generations (Kegl, Senghas, & Coppola, 1999). For many more counterproposals and refinements, see DeGraff (1999), Mufwene (1996), Singler (1996), and McWhorter (2005). One area of agreement is that neither pidgins nor creoles are homogeneous types, as earlier work seemed to assume. There are many varieties, as is found with the rest of the languages covered in this essay.
Veenstra（2008）调查了这一时期取得的一些进展。早期的评论者发现有理由赋予上层语言比比克顿假设更大的作用，比克顿的假设严重依赖普遍语法。另一种批评指出，一些克里奥尔语是在没有洋泾浜语作为来源的情况下发展起来的。比克顿的解释依赖于没有其他母语的一代人的习得，暗示克里奥尔语总是在一代人的时间内发展起来，但这一点被尼加拉瓜手语证伪了，尼加拉瓜手语需要两代人的时间（Kegl、Senghas 和 Coppola），1999）。有关更多反建议和改进，请参见 DeGraff (1999)、Mufwene (1996)、Singler (1996) 和 McWhorter (2005)。一个共识是，洋泾浜语和克里奥尔语都不是同质类型，正如早期的研究似乎假设的那样。正如本文所涉及的其他语言一样，有很多变体。

References

Europe

Adkins, M. (2013). Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2016(223), 55–70.
Gamkrelidze, T. V., & Ivanov, V. V. (1990). The early history of Indo-European languages. Scientific American, 262(3), 110–116.
Gamkrelidze, T. V., & Ivanov, V. V. (1995). Indo-European and Indo-Europeans: A reconstruction and historical analysis of a proto-language and proto-culture. Part 1: Text. (J. Nichols, Trans.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Günther, T., Valdiosera, C., Malmström, H., Ureña, I., Rodriguez-Varela, R., Sverrisdóttir, Ó. O., & de Castro, J. M. B. (2015). Ancient genomes link early farmers from Atapuerca in Spain to modern-day Basques. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(38), 11917–11922.
Salminen, T. (2002). Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies. In A. I. Kuznet︠s︡ova, A. E. Kibrik, T. B. Agranat, & O. A. Kazakevich (Eds.), Lingvisticheskii bespredel: Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu A. I. Kuznetsovoi (pp. 44–55). Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta.

Africa

Bender, M. L. (1996–1997). Nilo-Saharan languages: An essay in classification. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Bendor-Samuel, J. T., & Hartell, R. L. (1989). The Niger-Congo languages: A classification and description of Africa’s largest language family. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Ehret, C. (2001). A historical-comparative reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
Ermisch, S. (Ed.). (2008). Khoisan languages and linguistics: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium, January 8–12, 2006. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
Greenberg, J. H. (1955). Studies in African language classification. New Haven, CT: Compass.
Greenberg, J. H. (1963). The languages of Africa. The Hague: Mouton.
Nordhoff, S., Hammarström, H., Forkel, R., & Haspelmath, M. (Eds.). (2013). Benue–Congo. Glottolog. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Asia

Austerlitz, R. (1971). Long-range comparisons of Tamil and Dravidian with other language families in Eurasia. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies (Vol. 2, pp. 254–261). Madras: Association of Tamil Research.
Benedict, P. K. (1976). Sino-Tibetan: Another look. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 96(2), 167–197.
Bhatia, T. K. (1987). A history of the Hindi grammatical tradition: Hindi-Hindustani grammar, grammarians, history, and problems. (Vol. 4.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Campbell, L. (2011). Review of the book The Dene-Yeniseian connection, by J. M. Kari and B. A. Potter. International Journal of American Linguistics, 77, 445–451.
Georg, S., Michalove, P. A., Manaster Ramer, A., & Sidwell, J. (1999). Telling general linguists about Altaic. Journal of Linguistics, 35, 65–98.
Gamkrelidze, T. V., & Ivanov, V. V. (1990). The early history of Indo-European languages. Scientific American, 262(3), 110–117.
Greenberg, J. H. (2000). Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family. Vol. 1, Grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Greenberg, J. H. (2002). Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family. Vol. 2, Lexicon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Greenberg, J. H. (1997). Does Altaic exist? In I. Hegedus, P. A. Michalove, & A. Manaster Ramer (Eds.), Indo-European, Nostratic and beyond: A festschrift for Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin (pp. 88–93). Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
Johanson, L., & Robbeets, M. (Eds.). (2010).Transeurasian verbal morphology in a comparative perspective: Genealogy, contact, chance. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kachru, Y. (2008). Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani. In B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru, & S. N. Sridhar (Eds.), Language in South Asia (pp. 81–102). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kari, J. M., & Potter, B. A. (Eds.).(2010). The Dene-Yeniseian connection. Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Kiparsky, P. (2014). New perspectives in historical linguistics. In C. Bowern & B. Evans (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics (pp. 64–102). New York: Routledge.
Krishnamurti, B. (2003). The Dravidian languages. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kurpaska, M. (2010). Chinese language(s): A look through the prism of the great dictionary of modern Chinese dialects. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
LaPolla, R. J. (2001). The role of migration and language contact in the development of the Sino-Tibetan language family. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.), Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Case studies in language change (pp. 225–254). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Matisoff, J. A. (1991). Sino-Tibetan linguistics: Present state and future prospects. Annual Review of Anthropology, 20, 469–504.
Matisoff, J. A. (2003). Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Miller, R. A. (1991). Genetic connections among the Altaic languages. In S. M. Lamb & E. D. Mitchell (Eds.), Sprung from some common source: Investigations into the prehistory of languages (pp. 293–327). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Pawley, A. (2009). Greenberg’s Indo-Pacific hypothesis: An assessment. In B. Evans (Ed.), Discovering history through language: Papers in honour of Malcolm Ross (pp. 153–180). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Rai, A. (1984). A house divided: The origin and development of Hindi/Hindavi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Ratliff, M. S. (2010). Hmong–Mien language history. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Robbeets, M. I. (2005). Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Sicoli, M. A., & Holton, G. (2014). Linguistic phylogenies support back-migration from Beringia to Asia. PoS ONE, 9(3), e91722.
Sidwell, P. (2009).Classifying the Austroasiatic languages: History and state of the art. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 76. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Starostin, S. A. (1991). Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka [The Altaic problem and the origin of the Japanese language]. Moscow: Nauka.
Starostin, S. A. (2005). Response to Stefan Georg’s review of the Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages. Diachronica, 22(2), 451–454.
Starostin, S. A., Dybo, A. V., & Mudrak, O. A. (2003). Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages (Vols. 3). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Thurgood, G., & LaPolla, R. J. (Eds.). (2003). The Sino-Tibetan languages. London: Routledge.
Ting Pang-Hsin [Ding Bangxin] & Hongkai Sun. (2000). Hàn-Zàngyu yánjiu de lìshi huígù [Retrospective history of Sino-Tibetan studies]. In Ding Bangxin (Ed.), Hàn-Zàngyu tóngyuáncí yánjiu, 1 [Cognate words in Sino-Tibetan languages, 1]. Nanning: Guangxi Mínzú Chubanshè [Guangxi Nationalities Press].
Unger, J. M. (1990). Summary report of the Altaic panel. In P. Baldi (Ed.), Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Vajda, E. J. (2010). A Siberian link with Na-Dene languages. Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, new ser., 5(1), 33–99.
Vajda, E. J. (2011). A response to Campbell. International Journal of American Linguistics, 77, 451–452.
van Driem, G. (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An ethnolinguistic handbook of the Greater Himalayan region, containing an introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language (Vols. 2). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
van Driem, G. (2007). The diversity of the Tibeto-Burman language family and the linguistic ancestry of Chinese. Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics, 1(2), 211–270.
van Driem, G. (2015). Tibeto-Burman. In W. S.-Y. Wang & C. Sun (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Chinese linguistics (pp. 135–148). New York: Oxford University Press.
Wang, F. (2005). On the genetic position of the Bai language. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 34(1), 101–127.
Wurm, S. A. (1982). The Papuan languages of Oceania. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr.
Yan, M. M. (2006). Introduction to Chinese dialectology. Cologne: Lincom Europa.

Oceania

Adelaar, K. A., & Himmelmann, N. (2005). The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. New York: Routledge.
Blust, R. (2013). The Austronesian languages. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics.
Bowern, C., & Koch, H. (Eds.). (2004). Australian languages: Classification and the comparative method. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian languages: Their nature and development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Foley, W. A. (1986). The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Foley, W. A. (2000). The languages of New Guinea. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 357–404.
Greenberg, J. H. (1971). The Indo-Pacific hypothesis. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 8, pp. 808–871). The Hague: Mouton.
Hale, K. L. (1966). The Paman group of the Pama-Nyungan phylic family. In G. N. O’Grady, C. F. Voegelin, & F. M. Voegelin (Eds.), Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific (pp. 162–197). Fascicle 6. Bloomington: Anthropology Dept., Indiana University.
Mushin, I., & Baker, B. (Eds.). (2008). Discourse and grammar in Australian languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Ross, M. (2005). Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages. In A. Pawley, R. Attenborough, R. Hide, & J. Golson (Eds.), Papuan pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples (pp. 15–65). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Wurm, S. A. (1982). Papuan languages of Oceania. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.

The Americas

Adelaar, W. (1992). Quechuan languages. In W. Bright (Ed.), Oxford international encyclopedia of linguistics 3 (pp. 303–310). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Adelaar, W. (2012). Languages of the Middle Andes in areal-typological perspective: Emphasis on Quechuan and Aymaran. In L. Campbell & V. Grondona (Eds.), The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide (pp. 575–624). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Asher, R. E., & Moseley, C. (Eds.). (2007). Atlas of the world’s languages (2d ed.). London: Routledge.
Beck, D. (2000). Grammatical convergence and the genesis of diversity in the Northwest Coast Sprachbund. Anthropological Linguistics, 42(2), 147–213.
Campbell, L. (1988). Review of the book Language in the Americas, by J. H. Greenberg. Language, 64, 591–615.
Campbell, L. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of native America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, L. (2012). Classification of the indigenous languages of South America. In L. Campbell & V. Grondona (Eds.), The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide (pp. 59–166). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Campbell, L., & Grondona, V. (Eds.), (2012). The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Coe, M. D. (1999). Breaking the Maya code (rev. ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Native languages of the Americas (pp. 527–572). New York: Springer US.
Fabre, A. (1998). Manual de las lenguas indígenas sudamericanas. (Vol. 1.). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Goddard, I. (1996). The classification of native languages of North America. In I. Goddard & W. C. Sturtevant (Eds.), Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 17, pp. 290–323). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Golla, V., Goddard, I., Campbell, L., Mithun, M., & Mixco, M. (2007). North America. In R. E. Asher & C. Mosley (Eds.), Atlas of the world’s languages (2d ed., pp. 5–44). London: Routledge.
Greenberg, J. H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jensen, C. J., & Grimes, B. (2003). International encyclopedia of Linguistics (2d ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaufman, T. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Kaufman, T., & Berlin, B. (2007). South America. In R. E. Asher & C. Mosley (Eds.), Atlas of the world’s languages (2d ed., pp. 59–93). London: Routledge.
Michael, L., Chousou-Polydouri, N., Bartolomei, K., Donnelly, E., Wauters, V., Meira, S., & O’Hagan, Z. (2015). A Bayesian phylogenetic classification of Tupí-Guaraní. LIAMES-Línguas Indígenas Americanas, 15(2), 193–221.
Mithun, M. (1999). The languages of native North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Orr, C., & Longacre, W. A. (1968). Proto-Quechuamaran. Language, 44, 528–555.
Rodrigues, A. D., & Cabral, A. S. (2014). Tupian languages. Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Schoonmaker, P. K., Von Hagen, B., & Wolf, E. C. (1997). The rain forests of home: Profile of a North American bioregion. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Sapir, E. (1915). The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report. American Anthropologist, 17(3), 534–558.
Thomason, S. G., & Kaufman, T. (1992). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Native North American languages spoken at home in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2006–2010. American Community Survey Briefs.

Sign Languages

Davis, J. E. (2010). Hand talk: Sign language among American Indian nations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kendon, A. (1988). Sign languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, semiotic and communicative perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
McBurney, S. (2012). History of sign languages and sign language linguistics. In R. Pfau, M. Steinbach, & E. Woll (Eds.), Sign language: An international handbook (pp. 909–948). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Pidgins and Creoles

Bickerton, D. (1981). Roots of language. New York: Karoma.
Bickerton, D. (1988). Creole languages and the bioprogram. In F. J. Newmeyer (Ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey 2. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
DeGraff, M. (Ed.). (1999). Language change and creation: Creolization, diachrony, and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kegl, J., Senghas, A., & Coppola, M. (1999). Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In M. DeGraff (Ed.), Language change and creation: Creolization, diachrony, and development (pp. 179–238). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mufwene, S. (1996). The founder principle in creole genesis. Diachronica, 13, 83–134.
McWhorter, J. H. (2005). Defining creole. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Singler, J. V. (1996). Theories of creole genesis, sociohistorical considerations, and the evaluation of evidence: The case of Haitian Creole and the Relexification Hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 11, 185–230.
Veenstra, T. (2008). Creole genesis: The impact of the language bioprogram hypothesis. In S. Kouwenberg & J. V. Singler (Eds.), The handbook of pidgin and creole studies (pp. 219–241). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

via：

Languages of the World | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics

https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-349

世界语言语系指南

All In The Language Family: A Guide To The Language Families Of The World

It turns out, there are a few similarities between a language family and a regular family.

事实证明，语言语系和普通家庭之间有一些相似之处

By Thomas Moore Devlin

July 22, 2020

Una guía sobre las familias lingüísticas de todo el mundo representado por un árbol con ramas conectados como una familia.

Sometimes languages get stuffed in separate boxes and treated like they’re entirely separate things. Spanish is separate from Italian is separate from English and on and on. When you’ve learned a little about a few languages, though, you know that’s not really the case. Not only are languages not a monolith, but also they don’t exist separately from each other. Languages have complex relationships with each other, and sometimes they even have a shared history. In that case, they may be members of the same language families.
有时，语言被塞进不同的盒子里，并被视为完全独立的东西。西班牙语与意大利语是分开的，与英语是分开的，等等。但是，当您对几种语言有所了解时，您就会知道情况并非如此。语言不仅不是铁板一块，而且它们也不是彼此独立存在的。语言彼此之间有着复杂的关系，有时它们甚至有共同的历史。在这种情况下，他们可能是同一语系的成员。

Even if you’re not too familiar with the concept of language families, you probably know a little about them. You might know the Romance languages, which are a European family that includes Spanish, French and Portuguese, among others. You might know that German and English are part of the same language family. But there’s lots more to them. Here, we break down what exactly a language family is, and also include links to all the articles in our All in the Language Family series so you can learn more about individual families.
即使您不太熟悉语系的概念，也可能对它们有所了解。您可能知道罗曼语，这是一个欧洲语系，包括西班牙语、法语和葡萄牙语等。您可能知道德语和英语属于同一语系。但他们还有更多。在这里，我们分解了到底什么是语系，还包括我们的 All in the Language Family 系列中所有文章的链接，以便您可以了解更多关于各个语系的信息。

What Are Language Families? 什么是语系？

A language family, like any other family, is best thought of as a tree. The idea is that there is one single language — the trunk — that all the members of the language family grew out of. The concept of branches is also useful because usually these new languages form by splitting off from each other. And within any large language family, there might be smaller language families.
与任何其他语系一样，最好将语系视为一棵树。这个想法是，有一种语言——主干——语系的所有成员都是从中发展出来的。分支的概念也很有用，因为这些新语言通常是通过彼此分离而形成的。在任何大型语系中，都可能有较小的语系。

Without extending the tree metaphor any further, the simplest definition of a language family is simply “any group of languages that share a common root language.” The Romance languages, for example, all come from Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin itself is part of the Indo-European language family, meaning that it’s traced back to Proto-Indo-European, which is the ancestor of hundreds of languages mainly spoken in Europe and Asia. While this seems like a simple definition, it gets complicated quickly.
在不进一步扩展树的比喻的情况下，语系的最简单定义就是“共享公共根语言的任何语言组”。例如，罗曼语都来自通俗拉丁语。粗俗拉丁语本身是印欧语系的一部分，这意味着它可以追溯到原始印欧语系，这是主要在欧洲和亚洲使用的数百种语言的祖先。虽然这似乎是一个简单的定义，但它很快就会变得复杂。

How Do We Know Which Languages Belong To Which Languages? 我们如何知道哪些语言属于哪些语言？

The process of determining the lineage of a language family again mimics that of real families. The further back you go, the harder it is to figure out who’s related to who. If two languages are very similar — take, for example, any of the Scandinavian languages, which are practically mutually intelligible — it’s not too hard to determine that they’re related. But what if there are just a few things in common?
确定语系谱系的过程再次模仿了真实语系的过程。你往后追溯得越远，就越难弄清楚谁与谁有关系。如果两种语言非常相似——例如，任何一种斯堪的纳维亚语言，它们实际上是相互理解的——那么确定它们是相关的并不难。但是，如果只有几个共同点呢？

In an ideal world, there is a written record that can clearly show how languages are related. The Romance language family is so often used as an example not only because the languages are widely spoken, but also because there is a clear history showing how they evolved from Vulgar Latin to their modern iterations. As far as language families go, this clarity is uncommon.
在理想的世界里，有一份书面记录可以清楚地显示语言是如何相关的。罗曼语系经常被用作例子，不仅因为这些语言被广泛使用，还因为有一段明确的历史表明它们是如何从通俗拉丁语演变到现代迭代的。就语系而言，这种明确性并不常见。

When you don’t have a paper trail for a language family, you have to rely on historical reconstructions. This is done by comparing old forms of languages and seeing how similar the grammar and vocabulary are, and then coming up with a theoretical Proto- language. Linguists examine Indo-European languages and see that certain words are very similar across languages. “Father,” for example, is believed to come from the Proto-Indo-European “pehter.” There is no actual written evidence of this word, but linguists survey various languages and see Sanskrit pitar, Latin pater, Old Persian pitar and Old Irish athir. From that, linguists can determine that they all likely come from the same root word. One word doesn’t make a language family, though, and so historical reconstruction needs to look at much more vocabulary before being able to decide on the classification of a language.
当你没有一个语系的书面记录时，你就不得不依靠历史重建。这是通过比较旧形式的语言，看看语法和词汇的相似程度，然后提出理论上的原始语言来完成的。语言学家检查印欧语系语言，发现某些单词在不同的语言中非常相似。例如，“父亲”被认为来自原始印欧语系的“pehter”。这个词没有实际的书面证据，但语言学家调查了各种语言，看到了梵语 pitar、拉丁语 pater、古波斯语 pitar 和古爱尔兰语 athir。由此，语言学家可以确定它们都可能来自同一个词根。然而，一个词并不能构成一个语系，因此在决定一种语言的分类之前，历史重建需要研究更多的词汇。

Language families are also made more confusing because languages keep intermingling. Many, many languages in the world have elements of English, for example, because of the long legacy of English colonialism. That doesn’t mean those languages share a root with English; it’s more of an intermarriage. Sometimes, there will be disagreements on whether two languages are part of the same language family or merely influenced each other because of long-term proximity. Sometimes, the best linguists can do is decide that there’s a chance a group of languages are related.
语系也变得更加混乱，因为语言不断混合。世界上很多很多语言都有英语的元素，例如，因为英国殖民主义的悠久历史。这并不意味着这些语言与英语有共同的根源;它更像是一种通婚。有时，对于两种语言是属于同一语系还是仅仅因为长期接近而相互影响，会存在分歧。有时，语言学家能做的最好的事情就是确定一组语言有可能相关。

Learn About Specific Language Families 了解特定语系

The best way to learn about language families is looking at the individual families that are out there. Each of them has their own engaging history, and each of them challenges our idea of what “language” and “family” is in their own way. Our All in the Language Family series goes into detail on how these families work.
了解语系的最好方法是查看那里的单个语系。他们每个人都有自己引人入胜的历史，他们每个人都以自己的方式挑战我们对“语言”和“家庭”的看法。我们的 All in the Language Family 系列详细介绍了这些家庭是如何运作的。

The Indo-European Language Family — One of the largest language families in the world, comprising hundreds of languages including those in the Germanic, Romance, Baltic and Slavic language families.
印欧语系 — 世界上最大的语系之一，包括数百种语言，包括日耳曼语系、罗曼语系、波罗的海语系和斯拉夫语系的语言。
The Romance Language Family — Perhaps the most famous language family there is, the Romance languages are widely spoken in Europe (and the name has nothing to do with our modern notions of love and romance).
罗曼语系 — 也许是最著名的语系，罗曼语系在欧洲被广泛使用（这个名字与我们现代的爱情和浪漫观念无关）。
The Germanic Language Family — The family of English and German, the Germanic languages also include the Nordic and Scandinavian languages, as well as a few others spoken in Europe.
日耳曼语系 — 日耳曼语系是英语和德语的语系，还包括北欧语系和斯堪的纳维亚语系，以及欧洲使用的其他一些语言。
The Slavic Language Family — Spoken throughout Russia and in parts of Eastern and Northern Europe, the Slavic languages are another part of the larger Indo-European language family.
斯拉夫语系 — 斯拉夫语系在整个俄罗斯以及东欧和北欧的部分地区使用，是更大的印欧语系的另一部分。
The Baltic Language Family — The Baltic languages are relatively few, with the only surviving members of the family being Latvian and Lithuanian.
波罗的海语系 — 波罗的海语系相对较少，该语系唯一幸存的成员是拉脱维亚语和立陶宛语。
The Uralic Language Family — Lesser-known than its nearby families, the Uralic languages include Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, along with 35 other languages that are a bit smaller.
乌拉尔语系 — 乌拉尔语系不如附近的语系那么出名，包括匈牙利语、芬兰语和爱沙尼亚语，以及其他 35 种规模稍小的语言。
The Altaic Language Family — This was at one point considered a unified language family, but most linguists agree that the Altaic languages are actually three separate language families: Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolic.
阿尔泰语系 — 这曾一度被认为是一个统一的语系，但大多数语言学家都同意阿尔泰语系实际上是三个独立的语系：突厥语系、通古斯语系和蒙古语系。
The Celtic Language Family — While most of the Celtic languages including Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx can only be found in parts of the British Isles today, they used to spread across the European continent.
凯尔特语系 — 虽然大多数凯尔特语系，包括爱尔兰语、苏格兰盖尔语和马恩语，今天只能在不列颠群岛的部分地区找到，但它们曾经传播到欧洲大陆。
The Afro-Asiatic Language Family — This family — the fourth largest in the world — includes languages spoken in North and East Africa, as well as the Arabian Peninsula, and it has six distinct branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic.
亚非语系 — 这个语系是世界第四大语系 — 包括北非和东非以及阿拉伯半岛使用的语言，它有六个不同的分支：柏柏尔语、乍得语、库什特语、埃及语、奥莫特语和闪米特语。
The Semitic Language Family — Arabic has by far the most speakers of any of the Semitic languages, and this family also features the only language to have ever been successfully brought back after being declared “dead”: Hebrew.
闪米特语系 — 阿拉伯语是迄今为止所有闪米特语系中使用者最多的，这个语系还拥有唯一一种在被宣布“死亡”后成功恢复的语言：希伯来语。
The Amerindian Language Family — A catch-all for the languages spoken in North and South America before the arrival of the Europeans, the Amerindian languages are some of the hardest in the world to study because so much of their history was destroyed by colonialism.
美洲印第安人语系 — 美洲印第安人语言是欧洲人到来之前北美和南美洲使用的语言的统称，是世界上最难学习的语言之一，因为他们的大部分历史都被殖民主义摧毁了。
The Mayan Language Family — A group of 32 languages that are indigenous to North America, the Mayan languages has survived better than any other language family in the Americas.
玛雅语系 — 玛雅语系是北美本土的 32 种语言群，比美洲任何其他语系都存活得更好。
The Sino-Tibetan Language Family — This is a huge family with over 400 members, most of which are found in East Asia, but speakers of these languages can be found around the globe.
汉藏语系 — 这是一个拥有 400 多名成员的大家庭，其中大部分分布在东亚，但这些语言的使用者遍布全球。
The Dravidian Language Family — With about 215 million speakers, the Dravidian languages are spoken in parts of Sri Lanka, Southern India, Pakistan and Nepal, and the largest member of the family is Telugu.
德拉威语系 — 德拉威语系约有 2.15 亿使用者，在斯里兰卡、印度南部、巴基斯坦和尼泊尔的部分地区使用，该语系中最大的成员是泰卢固语。

via：

All In The Language Family: A Guide To The Language Families Of The World

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/language-families

Language Family 语系

When a group of languages shares a common origin language, or a protolanguage, they can be considered a language family.
当一组语言具有共同的源语言或原始语言时，它们可以被视为一个语系。

Social Studies, Geography, Human Geography, English Language Arts, World History
社会研究、地理学、人文地理学、英语语言艺术、世界历史

The Spread of Latin 拉丁语的传播

Latin, originating in Italy, spread with the expansion of the Roman Empire and evolved into into the Romance languages.
拉丁语起源于意大利，随着罗马帝国的扩张而传播，演变为罗曼语族语言。

Dimitrios Karamitros/Shutterstock

The Spread of Latin

Article Vocabulary

Certain languages are related to each other. Just as a person’s family consists of people who share common ancestry, related languages also come from shared lineages. A language family is a group of different languages that all descend from a particular common language. The one language that generated those other languages in its family is known as a protolanguage.

某些语言彼此相关。正如一个人的家庭由共享共同祖先的人组成，相关的语言也来自共享的谱系。语言语系是指一组不同的语言，这些语言都源于一种特定的共同语言。产生这些语言的语言被称为原始语言。

Some languages do not come from a protolanguage. These are known as language isolates, and include languages, such as Basque, spoken by some in southwestern Europe, and Pirahã, spoken by the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon. However, most languages spoken throughout the world belong to a language family.

有些语言并非源自原始语言。这些被称为语言孤立体，包括例如在西南欧洲一些地区使用的巴斯克语和巴西亚马逊的皮拉哈人民所说的皮拉哈语。然而，世界上大多数语言属于某个语言语系。

For example, languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and French, all belong to the language family known as “romance languages.” The romance languages evolved from Latin, the language used in ancient Rome. The Latin word Romanicus, meaning “Roman,” was later shortened to “Romance,” which is where the language family name came from. Latin itself, however, evolved from the Indo-European language, an ancient protolanguage, which is the origin of most of the languages spoken in modern Europe and parts of Asia.

例如，西班牙语、意大利语、罗马尼亚语、葡萄牙语和法语等语言都属于被称为“罗曼语”的语言语系。罗曼语源于拉丁语，这种语言曾在古罗马使用。拉丁词 Romanicus 的意思是“罗马人”，后来简化为“Romance”，这就是这个语言语系名称的来源。然而，拉丁语本身是从印欧语演变而来的，这是一种古老的原始语言，是现代欧洲和部分亚洲国家大多数语言的起源。

Other branches of the Indo-European language family have evolved into completely different groups. One example is the Germanic languages. Linguists generally describe Germanic languages in three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic. The West Germanic group includes German, English, and Dutch. North Germanic includes Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. East Germanic includes Gothic and the languages once spoken by members of peoples like the Vandals and the Burgundians. While the languages in the West Germanic and North Germanic groups are still spoken, those of the East Germanic group are now extinct.

印欧语言语系的其他分支已经演变成完全不同的群体。一个例子是日耳曼语言。语言学家通常将日耳曼语言描述为三个组：西日耳曼语、北日耳曼语和东日耳曼语。西日耳曼语组包括德语、英语和荷兰语。北日耳曼语包括瑞典语、丹麦语、挪威语、冰岛语和法罗语。东日耳曼语包括哥特语以及曾经由汪达尔人和布尔贡人的成员所讲的语言。虽然西日耳曼语和北日耳曼语组的语言仍在使用，但东日耳曼语组的语言现已灭绝。

Another important language family is the Sino-Tibetan family. It is the world’s second largest language family, with more than one billion speakers of its hundreds of different languages. It includes both the Sinetic languages (known as the Chinese dialects) and the Tibeto-Burman languages (such as Tibetan and Burmese). Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in this family.Like many Sino-Tibetan languages, Mandarin Chinese is tonal. In tonal languages (which also include Thai and Hmong), the vocal pitch the speaker uses when saying a word helps determine its meaning.

另一个重要的语言语系是汉藏语系。它是世界第二大语言语系，拥有超过十亿讲者，涵盖了数百种不同的语言。它包括汉语（被称为中国方言）和藏缅语言（如藏语和缅甸语）。普通话是这个语系中使用最广泛的语言。与许多汉藏语的语言一样，普通话是声调语言。在声调语言中（也包括泰语和苗语），说话者在发音时所用的声音高低有助于确定词语的含义。

Although the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language families are two of the largest in the world, linguists have categorized more than one hundred language families around the globe. As linguists continue to study language and its origins, our understanding of language families will continue to evolve.

尽管印欧语言语系和汉藏语言语系是世界上最大的两个语言语系，但语言学家已经将全球的语言语系分类超过一百个。随着语言学家继续研究语言及其起源，我们对语言语系的理解将不断发展。

虽然印欧语系和汉藏语系是世界上最大的两个语系，但语言学家已经在全球范围内分类了一百多个语系。随着语言学家继续研究语言及其起源，我们对语系的理解将继续发展。

via:

Language Family

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/language-family/

世界语言谱系及语种全览

知乎用户 kUsy8i

研究语言谱系关系和语言分化规律的语言学分支是历史比较语言学。根据历史比较语言学的研究成果，一般认为世界上的语言按其亲属关系可以分为十几或二十几个语系，其中比较知名的有印欧语系、汉藏语系、乌拉尔语系、阿尔泰语系、闪 - 含语系、高加索语系、达罗毗荼语系、南岛语系（又称马来 - 玻利尼西亚语系）、南亚语系等十大语系。

历史语言学把来自一个共同原始母语的所有语言都划归到同一个语系当中，而语系下面还分有语族、语支、语言、方言、土语等，语族细分还可以分为亚语族，语支细分也还可以分语组。

语言学术语

Language Family：语系

Language Group：语族

Language Sub-Group：亚语族（次语族）

Language Branch：语支

Language：语言（语种）

Dialect：方言

Sub-Dialect：土语（亚方言、次方言）

一、印欧语系（Indo-European Family）

印欧语系是世界上最大的语系，亦是最为广泛研究的语系。印欧语系包含了世界上许多最重要的语言，如英语、西班牙语、法语、德语、俄语等等。这些语言是很多国家和组织的官方语言，在世界商业、科技、学术、通讯、国际会议中占有极其重要的地位。上述语言的使用者占全球总人口的一半以上。印欧语系还包含使用人数众多的语言如葡萄牙语、印地语、孟加拉语等等。关于宗教、文化、哲学方面的一些经典语言也在印欧语系中，如拉丁语、希腊语、波斯语、梵语、巴利语等。

印欧语系的语言有屈折的特性（动词、名词根据在句中的成分、作用不同而产生不同的词尾变化）。有些语言（如英语）在演变过程中丧失了很多屈折变化而变得相对简单。

印欧语系的分布，从美洲、经过欧洲，一直延伸到印度次大陆北部。一般认为原始印欧语是在新石器时代（约公元前 7000 年）发源于黑海北部森林地区（现乌克兰、立陶宛一带）。这些欧洲大陆的原始居民在公元前 3500— 前 2500 年间开始迁移，向西到欧洲最西端，往南到地中海，向北直至斯堪的纳维亚，往东到达印度。

（一）凯尔特语族（Celtic Branch）：

凯尔特语族是印欧语系中比较小的语族。凯尔特语早期散布在欧洲的广大地区，由于罗马人和日耳曼人的征服、民族大迁移等原因，凯尔特语的使用者被驱赶到了威尔士、爱尔兰、苏格兰等地。凯尔特语族包括的主要语言有威尔士语，爱尔兰盖尔语和苏格兰盖尔语。还包括一些已经灭绝的语言，如康沃尔语（Cornish），高卢语（Gaulish），曼岛语（Manx）等。凯尔特人的一支迁回法国，他们的语言叫做不列颠语（Breton）。威尔士语采用 “谓 — 主 — 宾” 的句子结构。

（二）日耳曼语族（Germanic Branch）：

日耳曼语族发源于古诺斯语（Old Norse）和萨克逊语（Saxon）。世界上应用最广的英语就是日耳曼语族的成员。英语和北海沿岸和沿海岛屿的弗里西亚语（Frisian）最为接近。它们都属于西日耳曼语支。同属该语支的还有德语和荷兰语。荷兰语的变体有弗拉芒语和南非荷兰语；德语有使用希伯来字母的变体意地绪语（或称依地语、犹太德语，Yiddish）。

北日耳曼语支（或斯堪的纳维亚语支）包括丹麦语、挪威语、瑞典语，冰岛语由于长期与大陆隔绝，较多地保留了古诺斯语的特点。与之接近的是法罗语（Faroese）。同属斯堪的纳维亚国家的还有芬兰，但芬兰语不属于印欧语系。

东日耳曼语族已经消亡，包括中欧的哥特语（Gothic）、北非的梵代尔语（Vandal）等等。德语名词有三种性、四个格。英语已经丧失了格和性的变化。

（三）罗曼语族（Roman Branch）：

罗曼语族又称拉丁语族，全部语言都由拉丁语演化而来。罗曼语族包含的大语种有：法语、意大利语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、罗马尼亚语。意大利语和葡萄牙语是现存的和拉丁语最接近的语言。法语和拉丁语只是在拼写上相似，发音已经大不相同。西班牙语受阿拉伯语和巴斯克语影响较大，罗马尼亚语被斯拉夫语包围，受其影响颇深。

罗曼语族的小语种有西班牙东北部的加泰隆尼亚语（Catalan），法国南部的普罗旺斯语（Provencal），摩尔多瓦语（Moldovian）。除拉丁语外，已经灭亡的罗曼语还有奥斯干语（Oscan）、达尔马西亚语（Dalmatian）、乌布利亚语（Umbrian）等等。拉丁语名词有三个性、六个格，是一种高度屈折的语言，采用 “主 — 谓 — 宾” 的句法结构。

（四）斯拉夫语族（Slavic Branch）：

斯拉夫语族处于东欧，普遍采用西里尔字母。斯拉夫语族的显著特征是复辅音发达，比如塞语叫作 srpski，克语叫作 hrvatski；名词的格繁多。

东斯拉夫语支包含俄语、乌克兰语和白俄罗斯语。

西斯拉夫语支包含波兰语、捷克语和斯洛伐克语。捷克语和斯洛伐克语曾合称为波希米亚语（Bohemian）。

南斯拉夫语支包含保加利亚语、塞尔维亚语、克罗地亚语、斯洛文尼亚语、马其顿语、波斯尼亚语。中间有不属于印欧语系的匈牙利语隔开。这是我们目前为止遇到的第二个不属于印欧语系的欧洲语言。

（五）波罗的语族（Baltic Branch）：

三个波罗的海国家有两种波罗的语言。一是立陶宛语，二是拉脱维亚语。爱沙尼亚语和芬兰语同宗，不属于印欧语系。这是第三个不属于印欧语系的欧洲语言。

立陶宛语是印欧语系中最古老的语言之一，为研究印欧语系的起源和演化起着重要作用。波罗的语族已经灭亡的语言是古普鲁士语（Prussian）。

（六）希腊语：

希腊语自成一支。现代希腊语是标准语克伊内语（Koine）的后裔。荷马史诗所用的希腊语称作古希腊语，和现代希腊语有诸多不同。希腊语名词有三性四格，使用独特的希腊字母。该字母表由腓尼基字母演变而来，是世界上最古老的字母之一。拉丁字母和西里尔字母都是由希腊字母演变而来。

（七）阿尔巴尼亚语：

阿尔巴尼亚语区位于亚得里亚海之东，塞尔维亚 — 克罗地亚语区之南。其本身的核心词汇显示出它是印欧语系的一个独立分支。

（八）亚美尼亚语：

在小亚细亚有印欧语系的另一单独分支 — 亚美尼亚语。该语言辅音发达，有很多波斯语借词。

（九）印度 — 伊朗语族（Indo-Iranian Branch）：

印欧语系在亚洲的大分支叫做印度 — 伊朗语族。它由伊朗语支和印度语支组成。伊朗语支由古波斯语演化而来。最早的文献是波斯王国的大流士一世时的碑铭，及已经灭绝的阿维斯坦语（Avestan）写的圣经。

伊朗语支现存的主要语种有波斯语、库尔德语。向东有阿富汗的普什图语，向西有高加索地区的奥塞梯语（Ossete/Ossetian）、塔吉克斯坦的塔吉克语。

印度语支包含语言数目众多，多由梵语演化而来。梵语是古代印度的标准语言，是文学、艺术、学术著作的语言。巴利语（Pali）是古代印度些佛经的语言。

现代的印度语支语言中，比较重要的有印地语、乌尔都语、尼泊尔语、孟加拉语和僧伽罗语。其中印地语、尼泊尔语、孟加拉语使用天城体文字或其变体。乌尔都语是巴基斯坦的国语，由于其国民为穆斯林，所以使用阿拉伯文字。僧伽罗语是斯里兰卡的国语，使用源自巴利文的特殊文字。

印度语支方言众多，其中使用人数较多的有以下这些语言：马拉蒂语、古吉拉特语 / 鸠遮拉特语（Gujerati）、旁遮普语、拉贾斯坦语（Rajasthani）、奥里亚语（Oriya）、克什米尔语、信德语、比哈里语（Bihari）、阿萨姆语（Assamese）等等。

除此之外，印度语支还有马尔代夫语（Maldivian）、吉普赛语（罗姆语）等等。印度南部语言如泰米尔语并不属于印欧语系。举例来说，印度北方的印地语和英、法、希腊语更为接近，而和印度南方语毫无关联。

（十）吐火罗语、赫梯语：

根据在中国新疆发现的公元六世纪的手稿，人们知道了中亚有吐火罗语（Tocharian/Tokharian）。吐火罗人是文化程度很高的民族，公元一千年左右为维吾尔人所败，其后消失。

赫梯语（Hittite）是小亚细亚的古代语言，存有楔形文字铭文。

二、汉藏语系（Sino-Tibetan Family）

按使用人数来算，汉藏语系是仅次于印欧语系的第二大语系。它包括世界上使用人数最多的语言 — 汉语普通话。

汉藏语系一般归为四个语族，即汉语族、藏缅语族、侗台语族和苗瑶语族。关于汉藏语系的分类和归属，学术界一直有争论。西方一些学者一般认为侗台和苗瑶不属于汉藏语系，而属于南亚语系。本文从大多数中国大陆学者及部分西方学者的观点，将它们纳入汉藏语系。

汉藏语系的语言一般是由单音节字组成的声调语言。词由单个音节的字组成，每个音节都有声调。汉语北方话有四个声调，泰语有五调，粤语有九调。很多语言是孤立语，使用虚词和语序作为表达语法意义的主要手段。

（一）汉语族（Sinitic Branch）：

汉语族包含中国境内汉民族使用的多种语言，即汉语普通话、吴语、粤语、闽语、赣语、湘语、客家语（Hakka）。这些语言使用约五万多汉字，常用汉字约六千个。

（二）藏缅语族（Tibeto-Burman Branch）：

藏缅语族的大语种有藏语、缅甸语；小语种有中国南部的彝语、傈僳语、拉祜语（Lahu），缅甸的克伦语（Karen），不丹的宗卡语（Jonkha），尼泊尔的内瓦里语（Newari）等等。这些语言使用的文字大多来源于印度文字。

（三）侗台语族（Tai Branch）：

又称侗泰语族、侗傣语族或壮侗语族。包括泰语、老挝语，中国的壮语、布依语、侗语、怒语等等。

（四）苗瑶语族（Miao-Yao Branch）：

主要包括中国少数民族的苗语、瑶语、畲语。

三、闪含语系（Semitic-Hamitic Family）

闪含语系也称 “亚非语系” 或 “阿非罗 — 亚细亚语系”（Afro-Asiatic Family），主要分布在亚洲的阿拉伯半岛和非洲的北部。闪含语系的名称是从圣经的传说中挪亚的两个儿子的名字来源的。圣经说挪亚的儿子闪是希伯来人的祖先，含是亚述人和非洲人的祖先。

闪含语系的主要共同特征是：辅音除了清辅音、浊辅音外，还有一种重辅音，在口腔后部和喉腔形成，又叫喉音。名词有格和性，但比印欧语系简单。阿拉伯和希伯来字母只有辅音，元音用附加上辅音上的符号表示。书写时一般也只写辅音，读者需要从语境中判断出正确的元音。

（一）闪语族（Semitic Branch）：

阿拉伯语是闪语族中重要的成员。它是很多伊斯兰国家的宗教、文学、以及官方的语言，也是联合国六种工作语言之一。

马耳他是天主教国家，马耳他语（Maltese）使用拉丁字母，但属于闪语族。

闪语族另一重要语言是希伯来语。它是犹太教的语言，也是旧约圣经最早的手抄本使用的语言。希伯来语使用自己的一套特殊字符，作为口语曾经消亡过一段时间，后来被人为恢复为口语，现在是以色列的国语。

同属闪语族的还有埃塞俄比亚的阿姆哈拉语、亚述王朝的阿卡德语（Akkadian）、亚述语（Assyrian）。

最后要提到的是阿拉米语（Aramaic），它曾经是波斯王朝的主要官方语言，扩展于中东、近东的广大地区，与希腊语竞争，取代了希伯来语、亚述语等许多其它语言。后来由于阿拉伯语的扩张而被排挤，现存于叙利亚、伊拉克、土耳其和伊朗的孤立小块地区。

（二）埃及语族（Egyptian Branch）：

这是一个已经灭绝了的语族，包括公元前四千年古埃及的象形文字，及后期的使用近似希腊字母文字的科普特语（Coptic）。十七世纪，埃及语灭亡，被阿拉伯语所取代。

（三）贝贝尔语族（Berber Branch）：

贝贝尔语族位于北非山地，代表语言有特哇力语（Tuareg）、卡比勒语（Kabyle）、塔马舍克语（Tamazight）等。它们在非洲北部抵挡住了阿拉伯语的进攻。

（四）库施特语族（Cushite Branch）：

主要分布于埃塞俄比亚、厄立特里亚、苏丹和索马里。包括索马里语（Somali）、加拉语（Galla）、贝扎语（Beja）等等。

（五）乍得语族（Chadic Branch）：

乍得语族包括尼日利亚、乍得和喀麦隆地区使用的约 600 种语言。其中最主要的是豪萨语，它是尼日利亚的主要语言，从前使用阿拉伯字母，现在采用拉丁字母。

埃及语族、贝贝尔语族、库施特语族和乍得语族可合称 “含语族”（Hamitic Branch）。

四、乌拉尔语系（Uralic Family）

前面提到，有三种欧洲语言不属于印欧语系：芬兰语、匈牙利语和爱沙尼亚语。它们属于乌拉尔语系。乌拉尔语的原始居民在大约 1500 年前从乌拉尔山脉的西伯利亚一侧迁入欧洲，生活习俗已经完全欧洲化，但语言仍然保存了原来的面貌。乌拉尔语系分为两个大语族：芬兰 — 乌戈尔语族和萨莫耶德语族。

（一）芬兰 — 乌戈尔语族（Finno-Ugric Branch）：

该语族分为两个语支。芬兰语支包括十分相似的芬兰语和爱沙尼亚语，以及西伯利亚的莫尔多维亚语（Mordvin）、乌德穆尔特语（Udmurt）、科米语（Komi）等小语种。乌戈尔语支包括匈牙利语及与之相近的处于中西伯利亚的奥斯恰克语（Ostyak）、沃古尔语（Vogul）。

（二）萨莫耶德语族（Samoyed Branch）：

在叶尼塞河沿岸约有一万八千人说萨莫耶德语族的语言，如塞尔库普语（Selkup）、涅涅茨语（Nenets）、牙纳桑语（Nganasan）、埃内茨语（Enets）等等。

乌拉尔语系诸语言比前面几个语系的语言更为屈折，词尾后缀变化丰富。芬兰语名词有 15 个格，匈牙利语有 17 个！一些常见的国名在这些语言里变得不再熟悉，例如芬兰语中的 “芬兰”、“德国”、“法国” 分别叫做 Suomi，Saksa，Ranska，与 Finland，Germany，France 相去甚远。

五、阿尔泰语系（Altaic Family）

阿尔泰语系由中亚的阿尔泰山得名，现在主要分布在中国、蒙古、土耳其以及一些中亚国家。使用阿尔泰语系各种语言的人民早期是中国北方的游牧民族。匈奴、乌桓、鲜卑、突厥、契丹、女真、蒙古、满各个民族在这一地区直至西亚和东欧都曾建立国家。由于统治权不稳定、战争、迁移等原因，居民流动性很大，和其它语言接触很多，阿尔泰语言发展历史就比较复杂。

阿尔泰语系分为突厥、蒙古、满 — 通古斯三个大语族。

（一）突厥语族（Turkic Branch）：

突厥语族中的土耳其语是阿尔泰语系最西边、使用人口最多的一种语言。很多前苏联的加盟共和国的语言也都是突厥语族的成员，如阿塞拜疆语、土库曼语、哈萨克语、吉尔吉斯语、乌兹别克语；另外还有鞑靼语（Tatar）、维吾尔语、巴什基尔语（Bashkir）等语种。中国境内的有些少数民族的译法略有不同：“乌兹别克族” 译为 “乌孜别克族”；“吉尔吉斯族” 译为 “柯尔克孜族”；“鞑靼族” 译为 “塔塔尔族”。

（二）蒙古语族（Mongolian Branch）：

蒙古语使用于蒙古人民共和国和中国北方的蒙古族。蒙古国使用西里尔字母，中国的蒙古族仍然使用一种竖写的拼音文字。

蒙古语族的小语种有布利亚特语（Buryat），卡尔梅克语（Kalmyk）

（三）满 — 通古斯语族（Manchu-Tungusic Branch）：

这个语族包括西伯利亚地区的埃文基语（Evenki），或通古斯语（Tunguse），以及满语、锡伯语（Sibo）等。但中国境内的满族人大都只能说汉语。

早期曾经把乌拉尔语系和阿尔泰语系并称为 “乌拉尔 — 阿尔泰语系”。后来经深入研究发现更多相异特性，不应合并为同一语系。

另外有的语言学家主张把日语和朝鲜语也划入阿尔泰语系，因为它们和阿尔泰语言确有共同特质。但大量相异成分又难于解释，因此也有很多人认为它们属于阿尔泰语系只是假说。还有很多人认为日语、朝鲜语语系归属未定，或自成一支。关于日语、朝鲜语的划分问题，至今未有定论。

日语使用汉字及两套假名。朝鲜语过去使用汉字，现用一套 600 多年前其独创的一种拼音文字系统。日语和朝鲜语的敬语发达，根据说话者和说话对象的地位不同，采取不同的词汇或敬语形式。另外日语中不同性别的人用词也有差异。

阿尔泰语系，包括日语、朝鲜语都是典型的黏着语（粘着语）：以在词根后加构词附加成分为派生新词的主要手段，以在词干之后加语法粘附成分为形态变化的主要手段。

在语音结构上，阿尔泰语系的语言，包括朝鲜语，都有 “元音和谐” 的特性。所谓元音和谐是指，元音根据发音位置前后不同分为阳性、阴性两类，在同一个词里要么都是阳性元音，要么都是阴性元音。例如，土耳其语构成复数的词尾有两种：-lar 和 - ler。at（马）构成复数为 atlar；而 ev（房子）的复数为 evler。

六、高加索语系（Caucasian Family）

高加索语系由黑海和里海之间的高加索山脉得名。其南支的卡尔特维里语族（Kartvelian Branch）中最主要的语言是格鲁吉亚语，其它语言还有明格雷利亚（Mingrelian）、拉兹语（Laz）、斯凡语（Svan）。西北支的阿布哈兹 — 阿第盖语族（Abkhaz-Adyghean Branch）主要包括阿布哈兹语（Abkhaz）、阿第盖语（Adyghe）、卡巴尔达语（Kabardian）、阿巴兹语（Abaza）等等。东北地区主要有车臣语（Chechen）、印古什语（Ingush）、达吉斯坦语（Daghestanian）、阿瓦尔语（Avar）、莱兹金语（Lezgin）、拉克语（Lak）、列兹吉语（Lezgi）、塔巴萨兰语（Tabasaran）等。

高加索语言的普遍特点是存在大量复杂的辅音簇。有种已消亡的高加索语言包含多达 81 个单个辅音。俄罗斯南方的卡巴尔达语只有 3 个元音，而且在实际话语中常常消失。很难想象人们说话都是辅音是什么样子，也许由于地处高寒地区，人们有意避免张口发元音，以提高语速并减少热量损失。

七、南岛语系（Austronesian Family）

或称 “马来 — 玻利尼西亚语系”（Malayo-Polynesian Family）。该语系从印度洋、马来半岛、东南亚，越过太平洋直到复活节岛，由一千多种语言组成。该语系的使用者据说最早起源于黄河谷地，公元前 2500 年左右经台湾迁移到菲律宾，公元前约 1000 年进一步迁至印度尼西亚、太平洋诸岛屿。南岛语系包括五个分支：

（一）台湾语族（Formosan Branch）：

包括台湾本土的阿美语（Amis）、泰雅语（Atayal）、排湾语（Paiwan）、邹语（Tsou）。这些语言的使用者都是台湾原住民。

（二）印度尼西亚语族（Indonesian Branch）：

又称马来语族，是南岛语系最大的一支。其中的马来语作为一种贸易和文化的语言在许多地方使用。马来语曾使用阿拉伯字母，20 世纪改用拉丁字母。该语族还包括印度尼西亚的诸多语言如印尼语、爪哇语、巽他语（Sundanese）、马都拉语（Madurese）、巴厘语（Balinese）等等；及许多菲律宾语言，如比萨亚语（Visayan）、他加禄语等。

此外还有一个遥远的分支叫做马尔加什语（Malagasy），它是非洲南部岛国马达加斯加的国语。1500 年前，一部分人从印度尼西亚渡过印度洋来到马达加斯加岛。他们尽管已成为非洲人，风俗习惯也变得非洲化，但语言仍然表现南岛语的特点。

（三）密克罗尼西亚语族（Micronesian Branch）：

包括较小地区的语言，如马绍尔群岛语（Marshallese）、吉尔伯特群岛语（Gilbertese）、雅浦岛语（Yapese）、瑙鲁语（Nauruan）等等。

（四）美拉尼西亚语族（Melanesian Branch）：

包括斐济语（Fijian）、所罗门群岛语（Solomonese）等。

（五）玻利尼西亚语族（Polynesian Branch）：

包括新西兰的毛利语（Maori）以及太平洋中靠东面的一些岛屿的语言，如萨摩亚群岛语（Samoan）、塔希提岛语（Tahitian）、夏威夷语（Hawaiian）、复活节岛语（Rapa Nui）等。

不难发现这些语族名称普遍带有 - nesian 词根。从字面意思看，Austronesian 意为 “南岛”；印度尼西亚（Indonesian）意为 “印度岛”；密克罗尼西亚（Micronesian）意为 “小岛”；美拉尼西亚（Melanesian）意为 “黑岛”；玻利尼西亚（Polynesian）意为 “群岛”。

南岛语系语言的名词、动词形式变化很简单。马来语没有时态或格的变化。复数通过重复词根完成，如 anak：小孩；anak anak：孩子们。

太平洋诸语中代词变化复杂。物主代词 “我们 / 我们的” 在有的太平洋语言中要细分为 “暂时性属于”（如汽车、书本），和 “永久性属于”（如身体器官）。有的语言的指示代词 “这” 分为三种变化，一种指示看得见的物体；一种用来指示说话时看不到但存在的物体；一种指示不存在的事物。还有的语言中的人称代词 “我们” 分为 “包括说话对象” 和 “不包括说话对象” 两种。美拉尼西亚语的复数人称代词还有三种数的变化：双数 aijumrau（我们俩）；三数 aijumtai（我们仨）；复数 aijam（我们）。

太平洋语言另一特点是辅音、元音数量较少。夏威夷语仅有 8 个辅音（H、K、L、M、N、P、W、喉塞音）和五个元音（A、E、I、O、U）。他加禄语和毛利语采用 “谓 — 主 — 宾” 的语法形式。马尔加什语为 “谓 — 宾 — 主”。

八、南亚语系（Austroasiatic Family）

南亚语系分布在印度东部至中南半岛的亚洲东南部地区。一般分为三个语族。

（一）越芒语族（Viet-Muong Branch）：

该语族包括越南语、芒语（Muong）（两者都是越南境内的语言）。

（二）孟 — 高棉语族（Mon-Khmer Branch）：

该语族主要包括孟语（Mon），曾经的泰王国的主要语言，现在使用于缅甸、泰国、中国和越南的零星地区；高棉语，柬埔寨的国语；尼科巴语（Nicobarese），位于苏门答腊西北的尼科巴群岛；卡西语（Khasi）；中国境内（主要云南省）的佤语、布朗语（Blang）、德昂语（De’ang）等。

（三）扪达语族（Munda Branch）：

扪达语族语言零星分布于印度北部地区，包括扪达语（Munda）、科尔库语（Korku）等近 20 种语言。

南亚语系中越南语具有声调，其余语言没有声调。前面汉藏语系中提到，有学者认为 “侗台” 和 “苗瑶” 两个语族属于南亚语系。

九、达罗毗荼语系（Dravidian Family）

在前文 “印欧语系” 中提到，印度北部语言大多属于印欧语系，但南部语言与北部差距甚远。印度南方大部的语言属于达罗毗荼语系。该语系的一显著特点是发音难度大。

达罗毗荼语系包括的大语种有泰米尔语，使用者约一千八百万人，分布于印度的泰米尔省、斯里兰卡北部、马来西亚，同时也是新加坡的四种国语之一；马来雅兰语（Malayalam），约有六百万人使用；泰卢固语，约二千四百万人使用，分布于印度东南沿海马德拉斯以北的地区；卡拿拉语（Canarese），约一千万人使用于孟买地区的卡拿拉。这些语言使用各自的书写系统，具有弯曲、圆弧形的典型南印文字特征。

另有一种达罗毗荼语叫做婆罗灰语（Brahui），有 17 万人使用，在俾路支山区。

达罗毗荼语普遍具有卷舌辅音（一称顶音），该特征是受印欧语系的印度语族语言影响而来。发这种音时，舌面卷起，舌尖抵住硬腭。这也是印度境内诸语的显著特征。另外，达罗毗荼语多表现黏着特征，名词格的变化复杂。

一般认为达罗毗荼语系发源于现在巴基斯坦境内的印度河谷，曾经覆盖过整个印度次大陆。

十、尼日尔 — 刚果语系（Niger-Congo Family）

尼日尔 — 刚果语系包含撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲大陆的共 900 多种语言。该语系起源于西非，逐渐迁徙至非洲东南部。

非洲国家的疆界并不完全反映语言的划分，而更多展现的是其被殖民的历史，所以非洲诸语言常常不按国界划分，通常一种语言可能被几个国家同时使用；同样，一个国家也可能有多种互不相同的语言。

尼日尔 — 刚果语系包括九个语族，主要语言有：非洲西部的弗拉尼语（Fulani），使用于尼日利亚、喀麦隆、马里、几内亚、冈比亚、塞内加尔、毛里塔尼亚、尼日尔、布基纳法索；马林克语（Malinke），用于塞内加尔、冈比亚、几内亚、马里、科特迪瓦；门德语（Mende），主要使用于塞拉利昂；特维语（Twi），用于加纳；埃维语（Ewe），用于加纳、多哥；莫西语（Mossi），用于布基纳法索；约鲁巴语（Yoruba），用于尼日利亚；伊波语（Ibo），用于尼日利亚；科佩勒语（Kpelle），用于利比里亚；沃洛夫语（Wolof），用于塞内加尔；方语（Fang），用于喀麦隆、加蓬、几内亚。

非洲东南部从几内亚到苏丹这条地带南面，有一大群班图语族（Bantu Branch）的语言。班图语族数量众多，使用者约五千万人。使用者最多的一种是斯瓦希里语，用于坦桑尼亚、肯尼亚、乌干达、卢旺达、布隆迪等地；其余包括乌干达的干达语（Ganda），卢旺达的卢旺达语（Ruanda），布隆迪的隆迪语（Rundi），刚果（金）的鲁巴语（Luba），刚果（金、布）的林加拉语（Lingala），刚果语（Kongo），刚果（金）、赞比亚的贝姆巴语（Bemba），津巴布韦的肖纳语（Shona），津巴布韦和南非的恩德贝勒语（Ndebele），博茨瓦纳的茨瓦纳语（Tswana），南非的祖鲁语等等。

非洲南部语言普遍用声调表达语法意义（偶尔用于区别词义）。刚果的班达语（Banda）有三种调，当地人也使用三调的鼓来传递信息。埃菲克语（Efik）有四调，m、n 当作元音使用。

尼日尔 — 刚果语系的大部分语言使用丰富的前后缀来修饰名词和动词，名词、动词从不单独出现。弗拉尼语有 18 个名词限定后缀；恩德贝勒语有 16 种名词限定前缀和丰富的表达亲属关系的词语，如 u-baba（我的父亲）、u-yihlo（你的父亲）、u-yise（他的父亲）。

肖纳语有 200 多个描述 “走” 的词语，如 mbwembwer（摇晃屁股走），chakwair（在泥中咯吱咯吱地走），donzv（拄着拐杖走），panh（长距离地走），rauk（大步走）等等。弗拉尼语名词通过变换词首辅音来表达语法意义，如 jese（脸），gese（脸的复数），ngesa（大脸）。

班图语族采用五进制，数字六用 “五加一” 表达。许多非洲部落语言中有吸气音、咂嘴音等古怪的辅音。

十一、其它语系

除了前面这十大语系，世界上还有一百多种小语系散布各地，有许多土著语、原始部落的语言还没能完全为语言研究者了解和认识。在本文的最后章节，简要介绍一下尚未涉及的部分非洲语言、美洲大陆的土著语言、未界定语系或独立不属任何语系的语言。

非洲东北部尚有尼罗 — 撒哈拉语系（Nilo-Saharan Family），包含诸如埃及南部和苏丹的努比亚语（Nubian）、肯尼亚北部的丁卡语（Dinka）和玛赛语（Masai）等语言。该语系发源自埃塞俄比亚山区，一万年来并未有大迁徙，基本仍存留在发源地。

非洲南部有一小撮语言属于科依桑语系（Khoisan Family）。该语系的两种典型语言是霍登托语（Hottentot）和布施曼语（Bushman），使用于纳米比亚和南非。该语系曾覆盖整个非洲中部和南部的广大地区，后为迁入的尼日尔 — 刚果语系所取代。

爱斯基摩 — 阿留申语系（Eskimo-Aleut Family）覆盖西伯利亚、阿拉斯加及阿留申群岛地区。主要语言为爱斯基摩人的因纽特语（Inuit）。该语言合成词发达，通常一个动词与众多名词及修饰成分合成一个复合词表达意义，这种复合词即相当于其它语言中的句子。

阿尔贡金语系（Algonquian Family）分布在美洲大陆东北部，包括奥积瓦语（Ojibwa）、克利语（Cree）、黑脚语（Blackfoot）、密克马克语（Micmac）、水彦语（Cheyenne）、卓克托语（Choctaw）、坡塔瓦托米语（Potawatomi）、莫希干语（Mohican）、特拉华语（Delaware）等。该语系的许多语言名词分为两种类似性的变化：有生命的和无生命的。

位于加拿大的阿沙巴斯甘语系（Athapascan Family）包括拿瓦荷语（Navajo）和阿帕奇语（Apache）。拿瓦荷语有很多词语来描述不同形状、颜色和位置的物体。在拿瓦荷人眼中的世界都由几何图形构成，事物都通过几何形状来观察和描述。

伊洛魁语系（Iroquoian）同样位于北美洲，包括切诺基语（Cherokee）、休语（Sioux）、摩荷克语（Mohawk）等。摩荷克语的主语在动词上按照性别标记，词序随意，该特征与班图语族相似。

北美大陆的太平洋沿岸有一支莫桑语系（Mosan Family），包括贝拉 — 库拉语（Bella-Coola）、平头语（Flathead）和奥卡纳干语（Okanagan）。这些语言的有些词汇既可以作动词又可以作名词。只有通过上下文才能判断出正确意义。

北美及中美洲地区的乌托 — 阿斯特克语系（Uto-Aztecan Family）包括美国和墨西哥境内的河比语（Hopi）、帕帕哥语（Papago）和科曼奇语（Comanche）等。该语族的最重要的语言是拿哇特尔语（Nahuatl）。辅音 tl 为该语言的显著特征之一。该语言采用五进制。

墨西哥中部有奥托 — 曼吉语系（Oto-Manguean Family），包括 7 个语族 150 多种语言。其中很多语言有声调。

墨西哥南部尤卡坦半岛及危地马拉的玛雅语系（Mayan Family）包括 8 个语族约 30 种语言。这些古文明的承担者约发源于公元前 800 年。

中美洲的大奇布查语系（Macro-Chibchan Family）包括洪都拉斯和尼加拉瓜的加勒比海沿岸的密斯基多语（Miskito）和巴拿马的库纳语（Cuna）。

佩纽蒂语系（Penutian Family）散布于中、南美洲，最大的一支是智利的阿劳坎尼语（Araucanian）。

加勒比语系（Carib Family）散布在南美洲北部的雨林地区，包括加勒比语（Carib）、帕诺亚语（Panoan）、奇基多语（Chiquito）等。其中巴西雨林中约 350 人使用的 Hixykaryana 的语序为 “宾 — 谓 — 主”，这种语序为南美洲所独有。

安第斯 — 厄瓜多尔语系（Andean-Equatorial）覆盖南美广大地区，包括秘鲁和厄瓜多尔印加族人的克权语（Quechua）、玻利维亚的埃玛拉语（Aymara）、巴拉圭的瓜拉尼语（Guarani）、巴西的图皮语（Tupi）及加勒比海沿岸的阿拉瓦克语（Arawak）。

巴布亚新几内亚的 700 多种语言还不怎么为人们知道，还在研究之中。该岛上的语言可能分为六、七个大语系，一些小语系和一些独立语言。大多数巴布亚语言的使用者只有几千人，不为外界熟知。

新几内亚岛上许多语言的共同特点是有双数代词，即使用不同词语表示 “我们”，“我们俩”；“你们”，“你们俩”。

奇瓦伊语（Kiwai）有已知的最复杂的动词变化结构，依靠在动词上加前后缀来表达句子意义。例如：odi 意为 “给弓装弦”，通过添加下列前后缀：ri-mi-bi-du-mo-i-odi-ai-ama-ri-go，来表达 “在遥远的将来的某个时候，他们三个人一定会为两只弓装弦” 的意义。

伊马斯语（Yimas）有四种过去式变化，以严格区分动作发生的过去时间与说话时间的远近程度。

拉托卡斯语（Ratokas）只有 11 种发音，是已知语言中最少的。这 11 个音位由 5 个元音和 6 个辅音构成：A、E、I、O、U、B、G、K、P、R、T。

有的语言学家认为安达曼群岛和塔斯马尼亚岛语言与巴布亚语言有亲属关系。

澳大利亚的约 250 种土著语言可大致分为 23 个语系。北方地区分布有其中的 22 个，如 Bunaban，Ngaran，Yiwaidjan 等。澳大利亚中南部的 Pama-Nyungan 语系拥有复杂的代词系统，例如代词 “我们” 有四种形式：yunmi（我们俩，你和我）；mintupals（我们俩，他和我）；mipala（我们所有人，包括你）；melabat（我们所有人，不包括你）。Jiwarli 语有三个不同动词表示 “搬运” 的意义，以区分物体在手上、在头上或在背上。澳大利亚不少土著语言使用不同词汇与不同亲属交谈。Adnyamathanha 语有十套代词系统，用于与不同的亲人交谈。Dyirbal 语的每个词都有两套几乎完全不同的词汇。该语言名词有四种性别。

大多数土著语言的数量词只有三个：“一”、“二” 和 “许多”。

世界上还有很多语言不属于任何一个语系，这些语言称作独立语言或语言孤岛。比如日本北海道地区有一种阿伊努语（Ainu），几近灭绝。Porome 语为巴布亚新几内亚约一千人使用，没有文字系统。巴基斯坦控制下的克什米尔地区也有一种没有文字的语言叫做布鲁沙斯基(Burushaski) 语。

在法国和西班牙交界处的比利牛斯山区西部约有五十万人说巴斯克语（Basque），它是古代伊比利亚语的残留形式。巴斯克语采用 20 进制，代词 “它” 有三种形式，分别指代离说话人较近距离、中距离和远距离的事物。

发布于 2020-12-28 17:05

via: