Editing Language family (section)

{{short description|Group of languages related through a common ancestor}}
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[[File:Primary Human Languages Improved Version.png|upright=1.8|thumb|2005 map of the contemporary distribution of the world's primary language families]]

A '''language family''' is a group of [[language]]s related through descent from a common ancestor, called the [[proto-language]] of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the [[tree model]] used in [[historical linguistics]] analogous to a [[family tree]], or to [[phylogenetic tree]]s of taxa used in evolutionary [[taxonomy (biology)|taxonomy]]. Linguists thus describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Bruce M. |last1=Rowe |first2=Diane P. |last2=Levine |title=A Concise Introduction to Linguistics |year=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-34928-0 |pages=340–341 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ePQ5CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA340 |access-date=26 January 2017}}</ref> The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different [[regional dialect]]s of the proto-language undergoing different [[language change]]s and thus becoming distinct languages over time.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Dimmendaal |first1=Gerrit J. |title=Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages |year=2011 |publisher=John Benjamins |isbn=978-9-027-28722-9 |page=336 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e-PxyCpnnzEC&pg=PA336 |access-date=26 January 2017}}</ref> 

One well-known example of a language family is the [[Romance languages]], including [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[French language|French]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], [[Romanian language|Romanian]], [[Catalan language|Catalan]], and many others, all of which are descended from [[Vulgar Latin]].{{refn|group=note|[[Vernacular]] [[Latin]], as opposed to the [[Classical Latin]] used as a literary language.}}<ref name="ethnologue">Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). [http://www.ethnologue.com ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World''], Seventeenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International, 2013.</ref> The Romance family itself is part of the larger [[Indo-European]] family, which includes many other languages native to [[Europe]] and [[South Asia]], all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as [[Proto-Indo-European]].

A language family is usually said to contain at least two languages, although [[language isolate]]s — languages that are not related to any other language — are occasionally referred to as families that contain one language. Inversely, there is no upper bound to the number of languages a family can contain. Some families, such as the [[Austronesian languages]], contain over 1000.<ref>{{cite web |title=Family: Austronesian|url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/aust1307 |website=Glottolog 5.0 |access-date=3 August 2024}}</ref>

Language families can be identified from shared characteristics amongst languages. [[Sound change]]s are one of the strongest pieces of evidence that can be used to identify a genetic relationship because of their predictable and consistent nature, and through the [[comparative method]] can be used to reconstruct proto-languages. However, languages can also change through [[language contact]] which can falsely suggest genetic relationships. For example, the [[Mongolic languages|Mongolic]], [[Tungusic languages|Tungusic]], and [[Turkic languages]] share a great deal of similarities that have led several scholars to believe [[Altaic languages|they were related]]. These supposed relationships were later discovered (in the view of most scholars) to be derived through language contact and thus they are not truly related.<ref>{{cite journal |last=De la Fuente |first=José Andrés Alonso |year=2016 |title=Review of Robbeets, Martine (2015): Diachrony of verb morphology. Japanese and the Transeurasian languages |url=https://www.academia.edu/30240029 |journal=Diachronica |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=530–537 |doi=10.1075/dia.33.4.04alo}}</ref> Eventually though, high amounts of language contact and inconsistent changes will render it essentially impossible to derive any more relationships; even the oldest demonstrable language family, [[Afroasiatic languages|Afroasiatic]], is far younger than language itself.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Boë |first1=Louis-Jean |display-authors=etal |title=Which way to the dawn of speech?: Reanalyzing half a century of debates and data in light of speech science |journal=Science |date=11 December 2019 |volume=5 |issue=12 |doi=10.1126/sciadv.aaw3916 |pmc=7000245 }}</ref>