Low German (spoken in Northern Germany) and Dutch (Netherlands) are
linguistically dialects but politically separate languages. Low German and Swiss
German are mutually unintelligible but are both considered to be German. There are
more differences between Italian spoken in different cities in Italy than between
Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
The language of Iraq and Morocco are both called Arabic but they differ
greatly. The Mandarain speaking government of China considers China's other
languages (like Cantonese and Wu) to be dialects whereas they are often very
different.
These political elements will be generally ignored in this outline. The study of
languages and their relationships gives us information about how people have
migrated during historical times. It also helps with the dating of developments like
plant domestication and the development of tools.
For the sections on specific language families below, an Atlas would be handy.
Ten Language Families in Detail
The Indo-European Family
The most widely studied family of languages and the family with the largest number
of speakers. Languages include English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian,
Russian, Greek, Hindi, Bengali; and the classical languages of Latin, Sanskrit, and
Persian.
The Uralic Family
A family found in Europe (Hungarian, Finnish) and Siberia (Mordvin) with
complex noun structures.
The Altaic Family
A family spread from Europe (Turkish) through Central Asia (Uzbek), Mongolia
(Mongolian), to the Far East (Korean, Japanese). These languages have the
interesting property of vowel harmony.
The Sino-Tibetan Family
An important Asian family of languages that includes the world's most spoken
language, Mandarin. These languages are monosyllabic and tonal.
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