What are the language groups. History and habitats

language family

Language systematics- an auxiliary discipline that helps to organize the objects studied by linguistics - languages, dialects and groups of languages. The result of this sorting is also called taxonomy of languages.

The taxonomy of languages is based on the genetic classification of languages: the evolutionary-genetic grouping is natural, not artificial, it is quite objective and stable (in contrast to the often rapidly changing areal affiliation). The goal of linguistic systematics is to create a single coherent system of world languages based on the allocation of a system of linguistic taxa and corresponding names, built according to certain rules (linguistic nomenclature). The terms taxonomy and taxonomy are often used interchangeably.

Device principles

The following principles are characteristic of linguistic systematics:

A single hierarchically organized system.
Unified system of taxa.
Unified nomination system.

Unity of the entire system and the comparability of units of the same level should be provided by common criteria for attributing objects to one or another level. This applies to both upper levels (families and groups) and lower levels (languages and dialects). In a unified taxonomy, the criteria for assigning objects to the same level must meet the following requirements: applicability to any object and consistency(or uniqueness) of referring an object to a particular class.

Unified system of taxa. Linguists can only envy the harmonious system of taxa in biology. Although there are many terms in linguistics (family, group, branch, sometimes phylum, phylum, stock), but their use varies greatly from the author, the language of description and the specific situation. Within the framework of systematics, these taxa are ordered and used according to certain rules.

Unified nomination system. In contrast to biology, where there is a coherent system of nomination in Latin using a binary name for the base unit, in linguistics there is nothing of the kind and it can hardly arise. Therefore, the main thing that a taxonomist can do is, firstly, to arrange the names of languages in the language of description, choosing the main name for each idiom and group of idioms; secondly, as an additional means for the unambiguous designation of languages, regardless of the language of description, indicate for each its self-name.

Using Lexicostatistics Data. To determine the level of taxa in an existing classification (or to build a classification where it does not yet exist) and assign an object to a particular taxon, the criterion for maintaining the basic vocabulary is used; and not only to build the upper levels of classification (which is trivial), but also to distinguish between individual idioms. The percentage of matches is calculated from the standard 100-word Swadesh list. The emphasis is deliberately placed on the percentage of coincidences (although decay times may be given for reference), since there is no unanimity among comparatists on this issue, and a relative percentage of coincidences, rather than absolute decay times, is quite enough to build a taxonomy of languages.

Upper levels of taxonomy

The main upper levels (taxa) of systematics are: family, branch, group. If necessary, the number of taxa can be increased by adding prefixes above- and under-; For example: subfamily, supergroup. The term can also be used occasionally zone, often to denote not genetic but rather areal or paraphyletic groupings, see for example the Bantu or Austronesian language classification.

Family- the upper base level on which all systematics is based. A family is a group of distinctly but far enough related languages that have at least 15 percent of the same in the base list. See List of Families of Eurasia or Overview of Families of Africa for examples.

For each family, the list of branches, groups, etc. is determined taking into account the traditionally distinguished groupings, the degree of their proximity to each other and the time of disintegration into components. At the same time, branches and groups of different families do not have to be of the same level of depth, only their relative order within one family is important.

The table shows examples of building systematics with strict use of taxa. If for the Indo-European languages some levels can be skipped, then for the well-known for their branching of Austronesian, they are not even enough.

An example of the use of taxa

taxon
family	Indo-European	Austronesian
subfamily	"European"	Malayo-Polynesian
superbranch		Central East Malayo Polynesian
zone		Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
subzone		oceanic
branch	Balto-Slavic	central east oceanic
subbranch		Central Pacific (Fiji-Polynesian)
Group	Slavic	Eastern Fijian-Polynesian group
subgroup	East Slavic	Polynesian
sub-subgroup		nuclear-Polynesian
microgroup		Samoan
language	Ukrainian	tokelau

Language / dialect

Therefore, in language systematics, a scale with four levels of similarity is used: language - adverb - dialect - patois, developed on an empirical basis .

According to this scale, if two idioms have the percentage of matches in the 100-word base list< 89 (что соответствует времени распада, по формуле Сводеша-Старостина , >1100 years ago), then the idioms are different languages. If the match percentage is > 97 (decay time< 560 лет), то идиомы являются dialects one language. For the remaining interval (89-97), an intermediate level of very close languages / distant dialects is proposed, for which the term " adverb» in cases where the corresponding idiom is traditionally regarded as a component of another language. When such an idiom is considered to be a separate language, the taxon “language” is retained behind it, and the association into which it belongs and corresponding in terms of proximity to a single language is called “ cluster».

The use of taxa of the lower levels is clearly illustrated in the table. At the same time, it often happens that one or more idioms in one cluster are considered to be languages, while others are not, although they are at the same level of mutual intelligibility / structural similarity. An example is the Vainakh cluster, which includes the Chechen and Ingush languages and the Akkin-Orstkhoi dialect.

Use of lower-level taxa (for "languages and dialects")

levels	examples

1 level usually matches either a) independent language(poorly intelligible with other languages), or b) group ( cluster) of closely related languages.
2 level corresponds a) adverbs (groups of dialects) or b) separate closely related languages(partially mutually intelligible).	picardy, Walloon, "literary French
3 level corresponds to individual dialects (with good understanding).		Pskov group of dialects (GG), Tver GG, Moscow
4th level corresponds to individual dialects(with very small structural differences).		moscow city,

Note.: Underlined names are expanded in the following rows of the table..

The indicated levels at the same time correlate with the degree of mutual intelligibility, which is especially useful when the percentage of overlap between languages is unknown.

Between two languages mutual intelligibility is very difficult and normal communication is impossible without special training.
Inside the tongue between two adverbs there is mutual intelligibility, but not complete; communication is possible, but misunderstandings or errors may occur.
Between dialects within the dialect there is almost complete mutual intelligibility, although speakers note the features of each dialect, usually in pronunciation (accent) and the use of certain words.

The allocation of languages and dialects may not coincide with the traditional approach. For example:

The Chinese branch includes up to 18 languages traditionally considered dialects of the Chinese language.
The French language (or the language of oil) includes Francian (on the basis of the dialect of which French literary language), Picard, Norman and other dialects.
The Serbo-Croatian cluster includes the Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian dialects, and the latter also the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian literary languages (=dialects).
The Western Oguz cluster consists of Turkish, Gagauz, South Crimean Tatar.
The Nogai cluster consists of the Nogai, Kazakh and Karakalpak languages.
The Ibero-Romance cluster includes Portuguese, Galician, Asturo-Leones, Spanish, (High) Aragonese.

macro levels

Despite the fact that the family is the top base taxon in taxonomy, it also takes into account information about deeper relationships. But the taxa for the higher levels do not lend themselves to such rigorous formalization as the lower ones.

Superfamily- the union of close families (percentage of coincidences = 11-14), which are traditionally considered one family, but in accordance with the definition of a family in language taxonomy, should be taken to a higher level. The superfamily, apparently, is the Altaic languages in a broad sense(including Korean and Japanese-Ryukyuan languages), Cushitic and Austronesian.
Macrofamily(= Fila) - an association of families, with somehow established correspondences and approximately calculated percentages of coincidences. Such, apparently, are the Nostratic, Afroasian, Sino-Caucasian, Khoisan macrofamilies.
hyperfamily- association of macrofamilies, extremely hypothetical; for example, the Borean hyperfamily.
Hypothesis- alleged association of families, without establishing correspondences and calculating the percentage of coincidences between individual components. As a rule, it is done offhand. For example, the Nilo-Saharan, Broad Khoisan hypothesis.

In the works of predominantly foreign linguists (see, for example,) other terms are also used:

Stock (stock) is the union of families ( families), which in this case are understood more narrowly than defined above. Examples of stocks are Indo-European (with Germanic, Romance and other families), Uralic, Sino-Tibetan, Autronesian; thus, stock usually corresponds to the above definition family.
Phylum / phyla (phylum, pl. phyla) is a union of sinks (also called a superstock - superstock) or families (if the term stock is not used), and, as a rule, rather assumed than proven. Generally consistent macrofamily.

Notes

Literature

Koryakov Yu. B., Maisak T. A. Systematics of world languages and databases on the Internet // Proceedings of the International Seminar "Dialogue "2001" on Computational Linguistics and its Applications. Volume 2. M., Aksakovo, 2001.

Examples of directories built on the basis of taxonomy or similar:

Koryakov Yu. B. Atlas of Caucasian languages. M., 2006
Registry of World Languages (in development)
Dalby D. Vol. 1-2. Hebron, 2000
Gordon R.G., Jr. (ed). Ethnologue.com Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. SIL, 2005
Kaufmann T. The native languages of Latin America: general remarks // Atlas of the World's Languages (edited by C. Moseley and R.E. Asher). 1994
Meso-American Indian languages in Languages of the World // Britannica CD. Version 97. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997.
Voegelin C.F. & F.M. Classification and Index of the World's languages. N.Y., 1977
Wurm S. Australasia and the Pacific // Atlas of the World's Languages (edited by C. Moseley and R.E. Asher). 1994

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

Languages develop like living organisms, and languages that come from the same ancestor (called a "proto-language") are part of the same language family. A language family can be divided into subfamilies, groups, and subgroups: for example, Polish and Slovak belong to the same subgroup of West Slavic languages, which is part of the Slavic language group, which is a branch of the larger Indo-European family.

Comparative (contrastive) linguistics, as its name implies, compares languages in order to discover their historical connections. This can be done by comparing the phonetics of languages, their grammar and vocabulary, even in cases where there are no written sources of their ancestors.

The further away languages are from each other, the more difficult it is to find genetic links between them. For example, none of the linguists doubts that the Spanish and Italian languages are related, meanwhile, the existence of the Altaic language family (including the Turkish and Mongolian languages) is questioned and not recognized by all linguists. At the moment, it is simply impossible to know whether all languages come from the same ancestor. If a single human language existed, then it must have been spoken ten thousand years ago (if not more). This makes comparison extremely difficult or even impossible.

List of language families

Linguists have identified over a hundred major language families (language families that are not considered related to each other). Some of them consist of only a few languages, while others consist of more than a thousand. Here are the main language families of the world.

language family	range	Languages
Indo-European	From Europe to India, modernity, by continent	Over 400 languages spoken by nearly 3 billion people. This includes Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French...), Germanic (English, German, Swedish...), Baltic and Slavic languages (Russian, Polish...), Indo-Aryan languages (Persian, Hindi, Kurdish, Bengali and many other languages spoken from Turkey to Northern India), as well as others such as Greek and Armenian.
Sino-Tibetan	Asia	Chinese languages, Tibetan and Burmese
Niger-Congolese (Niger-Kordofanian, Congo-Kordofanian)	Sub-Saharan Africa	Swahili, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu (Zulu language)
Afro-Asiatic (Afro-Asiatic, Semitic-Hamitic)	Middle East, North America	Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew...), Somali (Somali)
Austronesian	Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Pacific Ocean, Madagascar	Over a thousand languages including Filipino, Malagasy, Hawaiian, Fijian...
Ural	Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, Northern Asia	Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Sami, some languages of Russia (Udmurt, Mari, Komi...)
Altai (disputed)	from Turkey to Siberia	Turkic languages (Turkish, Kazakh...), Mongolian languages (Mongolian...), Tungus-Manchu languages, some researchers include here Japanese and Korean
Dravidian	South India	Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu
thai kadai	Southeast Asia	Thai, Lao
Austroasiatic	Southeast Asia	Vietnamese, Khmer
Na-Dene (Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit)	North America	Tlingit, Navo
tupi (tupi)	South America	Guaranian languages (Guarani languages)
Caucasian (disputed)	Caucasus	Three language families. Among the Caucasian languages, the largest number of speakers is Georgian

Special cases

Isolated languages (isolate languages)

An isolate language is an "orphan": a language that has not been proven to belong to any of the known language families. The best example is the Basque language spoken in Spain and France. Despite being surrounded by Indo-European languages, it is very different from them. Linguists have compared Basque with other languages spoken in Europe, with Caucasians and even with Americans, but no links have been found.

Korean is another well-known isolate, although some linguists suggest a connection with the Altaic languages or Japanese. Japanese is sometimes considered an isolate on its own, but is best described as belonging to a small Japanese family that includes several related languages such as Okinawan.

Pidgin and Creole languages

A pidgin is a simplified communication system that has developed between two or more groups that do not share a common language. It does not come directly from one language, it has absorbed the characteristics of several languages. When children begin to learn a pidgin as their first language, it develops into a full-fledged, stable language called Creole.

Most of the pidgin or creole languages spoken today are the result of colonization. They are based on English, French or Portuguese. One of the most widely spoken Creole languages is Tok Pisin, which is the official language of Papua New Guinea. It is based on English but its grammar is different, its vocabulary including many loanwords from German, Malay, Portuguese and several local languages.

Russia is a multinational country, which means it is multilingual. Linguistic scientists count 150 languages - here they take into account such a language as Russian, which is spoken by 97.72% of the population in Russia, and the language of the Negidals - a small people (only 622 people!), Living on the Amur River.

Some languages are very similar: people can speak their own language and at the same time understand each other perfectly, for example, Russian - Belarusian, Tatar - Bashkir, Kalmyk - Buryat. In other languages, although they also have a lot in common - sounds, some words, grammar - it will still not be possible to agree: a Mari with a Mordovian, a Lezghin with an accident. And finally, there are languages - scientists call them isolated - that are not like any other. These are the languages of the Kets, Nivkhs and Yukagirs.

Most of the languages of Russia belong to one of the four language families: Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic and North Caucasian. Each family has a common language-ancestor - proto-language. The ancient tribes who spoke such a proto-language moved, mixed with other peoples, and the once single language fell apart into several. This is how many languages appeared on Earth.

Let's say a Russian belongs to the Indo-European family. In the same family - English and German, Hindi and Farsi, Ossetian and Spanish (and many, many others). Part of the family is a group of Slavic languages. Here, Czech and Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, etc. coexist with Russian. And together with closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian, it is included in the subgroup of East Slavic languages. More than 87% of the population speaks Indo-European languages in Russia, but only 2% of them are not Slavic. These are Germanic languages: German and Yiddish (see the plot "Jews in Russia"); Armenian (one makes up a group); Iranian languages: Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish and Tajik; Romance: Moldavian; and even the new Indian languages spoken by the gypsies in Russia.

The Altai family in Russia is represented by three groups: Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu. There are only two peoples who speak Mongolian languages - Kalmyks and Buryats, but one enumeration of Turkic languages \u200b\u200bmay surprise. These are Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, Kumyk, Altai, Khakass, Shor, Tuvan, Tofalar, Yakut, Dolgan, Azerbaijani, etc. Most of these peoples live in Russia. In our country, there are also such Turkic peoples as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks. The Tungus-Manchu languages include Evenki, Even, Negidal, Nanai, Oroch, Orok, Udege and Ulch.

Sometimes the question arises: where is a separate language, and where are only dialects of the same language? For example, many linguists in Kazan believe that Bashkir is a dialect of Tatar, and the same number of specialists in Ufa are convinced that these are two completely independent languages. Such disputes are not only about Tatar and Bashkir.

The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept of "Finnish" is conditional - in this case it does not designate the official language of Finland. It’s just that the languages included in this group have related grammars, a similar sound, especially if you don’t make out the words, but listen only to the melody. Finnish languages are spoken by Karelians, Vepsians, Izhors, Vods, Komis, Mariys, Mordovians, Udmurts, Sami. There are two Ugric languages in Russia: Khanty and Mansi (and the third Ugric is spoken by the Hungarians). Samoyedic languages are spoken by the Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups. The Yukaghir language is genetically close to the Uralic. These peoples are very small in number, and their languages cannot be heard outside the north of Russia.

The North Caucasian family is a rather arbitrary concept. Unless specialists-linguists understand the ancient relationship of the languages of the Caucasus. These languages have very complex grammar and phonetics of extraordinary difficulty. They contain sounds that are completely inaccessible to people who speak other dialects.

Specialists divide the North Caucasian languages into the Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Nakh languages, which are understandable to each other, are spoken by the Vainakhs - this is the common name for the Chechens and Ingush. (The group got its name from the self-name of the Chechens - Nakhchi.)

Representatives of about 30 peoples live in Dagestan. "Approximately" - because far from all the languages of these peoples have been studied, and very often people determine their nationality precisely by language.

The Dagestan languages include Avar, Andi, Yez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshinsky, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Rutul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list even half. No wonder this republic was called the "mountain of languages". And a "paradise for linguists": the field of activity for them is boundless here.

The Abkhazian-Adyghe languages are spoken by kindred peoples. On the Adyghes - Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians, Shapsugs; in Abkhazian - Abkhazians and Abaza. But not everything is so simple in this classification. Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians and Shapsugs consider themselves a single people - Adyghes - with one language, Adyghe, and official sources name four Adyghe peoples.

There are languages in Russia that are not included in any of the four families. These are primarily the languages of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. All of them are few. The Chukchi-Kamchatka languages are spoken by the Chukchi, Koryaks and Itelmens; in Eskimo-Aleut - Eskimos and Aleuts. The languages of the Kets on the Yenisei and the Nivkhs on Sakhalin and the Amur are not included in any language family.

There are many languages, and in order for people to agree, a common one is needed. In Russia, it has become Russian, for Russians are the most numerous people in the country and they live in all its corners. It is the language of great literature, science and international communication.

Languages, of course, are equal, but even the richest country cannot publish, for example, books on all issues in the language of several hundred people. Or even tens of thousands. In a language spoken by millions, this is feasible.

Many peoples of Russia have lost or are losing their languages, especially representatives of small peoples. So, they almost forgot the native language of the Chu-lymys - a small Turkic-speaking people in Siberia. The list is unfortunately long. In the cities of Russia, the Russian language becomes common for the multinational population. And most of all the only one. However, recently national cultural and educational societies have taken care of their own languages in large centers. They usually organize Sunday schools for children.

Most of the languages of Russia until the 20s. 20th century had no writing. Georgians, Armenians, Jews had their own alphabet. The Latin alphabet (Latin alphabet) was written by the Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns. Some languages do not have a written language even now.

The first attempts to create a written language for the peoples of Russia were made even before the revolution, but they seriously took up this in the 1920s: they reformed the Arabic script, adapting it to the phonetics of the Turkic languages. It did not fit the languages of the Yarods of the Caucasus. They developed the Latin alphabet, but there were not enough letters for the exact designation of sounds in the languages of small peoples. From 1936 to 1941, the languages of the peoples of Russia (and the USSR) were translated into the Slavic alphabet (except for those that had their own, moreover, ancient), added superscript signs, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and combinations of letters, strange for the Russian eye, like "ь" and "ь" after vowels. It was believed that a single alphabet helped to better master the Russian language. Recently, some languages have begun to use the Latin alphabet again. (For a detailed classification, see the volume "Linguistics. Russian Language" of the "Encyclopedia for Children".)

Languages of the peoples of Russia

1. Indo-European languages

o Slavic (namely East Slavic) - Russian (about 120 million speakers according to the 1989 census)

o Germanic languages - Yiddish (Jewish)

o Iranian languages - Ossetian, Talysh, Tat (language of Tats and Mountain Jews)

o Indo-Aryan languages - Romani

2. Uralic languages

o Finno-Ugric languages

§ Mari

§ Sami

§ Mordovian languages - Moksha, Erzya

§ Ob-Ugric languages - Mansi, Khanty

§ Permian languages - Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt

§ Baltic-Finnish - Vepsian, Votic, Izhorian, Karelian

o Samoyedic languages - Nganasan, Nenets, Selkup, Enets

3. Turkic languages- Altai, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Tofalar, Tuva, Khakass, Chuvash, Shor, Yakut

4. Tungus-Manchu languages- Nanai, Negidal, Orok, Oroch, Udege, Ulch, Evenk, Even

5. Mongolian languages- Buryat, Kalmyk

6. Yenisei languages- Ket

7. Chukchi-Kamchatka languages- Alyutor, Itelmen, Kerek, Koryak, Chukchi

8. Eskimo-Aleut languages- Aleutian, Eskimo

9. Yukaghir language

10. Nivkh language

11. North Caucasian languages

o Abkhazian-Adyghe languages - Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian

o Nakh-Dagetan languages

§ Nakh languages - Batsbi, Ingush, Chechen

§ Dagestan languages

§ Avar

§ Andean languages - Andian, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kvanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin

The Russian language belongs to the group of Slavic languages, which is part of the Indo-European language family. It is the state language adopted on the territory of the Russian Federation and the most numerous in terms of geographical distribution and the number of speakers in Europe.
Story
Modern lexical and grammatical norms of the Russian language appeared as a result of a long interaction between various East Slavic dialects that existed on Great Russian territory and the Church Slavonic language, which arose as a result of the adaptation of the first Christian books.
East Slavic, also known as the Old Russian language, in the 14th-15th centuries was the basis for the formation of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, however, the dialectical features due to which they differ so much appeared somewhat earlier.
Dialects
In the 15th century, two main groups of dialects were established in the European territory of Russia - the southern and northern dialects, which have a number of distinctive features, for example, akanye is typical for the southern dialect, and okanye for the northern one. In addition, a number of Central Russian dialects appeared, which were essentially intermediate between northern and southern and partially incorporated their distinctive features.
A bright representative of the Central Russian dialect - Moscow was the basis for the emergence of the literary Russian language, which is currently classical Russian, literature and periodicals in other dialects are not published.
Vocabulary
A large layer in Russian vocabulary is occupied by words of Greek and Turkic origin. So, for example, diamond, fog and pants came to us from the Turkic language, and crocodile, bench and beets are words of Greek origin, just as in our time it is no secret to anyone that most of the names that were given at baptism also came to us from Greece, and these names were not only Greek, such as Catherine or Fedor, but also of Hebrew origin, such as Ilya or Mary.
In the 16th-17th century, Polish became the main source of the emergence of new lexical units in Russian, thanks to which such words of Latin, Germanic and Romance origin as algebra, dance and powder and directly Polish words, such as jar and duel, got into our speech.

In Belarus, Russian is the state language along with the Belarusian language. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, Russian is recognized as the official language, that is, it has a privileged status despite the presence of the state language.

In the US, in the state of New York, Russian is one of the eight languages in which all official election documents are printed, and in California, in Russian, you can take an exam for obtaining a driver's license.

Until 1991, the Russian language was used for communication in the territory of the former USSR, in fact being the state language. For this reason, for many residents of the republics that left the USSR, Russian is still their native language.

In the literature there are such names of the Russian language as Russian and Great Russian, but they are used mainly by linguists and are not used in modern colloquial speech.

The alphabet of the Russian language, consisting of thirty-three letters in the form in which we are all accustomed to seeing it, has existed since 1918, and was officially approved only in 1942. Until that time, there were officially thirty-one letters in the alphabet, because Ё was equal to E, and Y to I.

Church Slavonic, from its inception to the present day, has been the language used in Orthodox worship. For a long time it was Church Slavonic that was used as the official written language and prevailed in colloquial speech.

The oldest monument of literary art written in Russian is the Novgorod Code, its appearance dates back to the beginning of the 11th century. In addition to it, historians mention the Ostromir Gospel, written in Church Slavonic in 1056-1057.

The modern Russian language that we use, also known as the literary language, appeared in the 17th-18th centuries, after which it underwent serious interference in 1918, the letters “decimal and”, “fita” and “yat” were removed from the alphabet by reform , instead of which the letters “i”, “f” and “e” appeared, respectively, in addition, the use of a solid sign at the ends of words was canceled. In prefixes, it has become customary to write the letter “s” before voiceless consonants, and “z” before vowels and voiced consonants. Some other changes were also made regarding the use of endings in different case forms and the replacement of a number of word forms with

more modern. By the way, the official changes did not affect the use of Izhitsa, this letter was little used even before the reform, and over time it disappeared from the alphabet itself.

Differences in dialects have never been a hindrance to communication between people, but compulsory education, the advent of the press and the media, and large-scale migration of the population during the Soviet era, almost completely forced dialects out of use, as standardized Russian speech came in their place. At present, echoes of the use of dialects are heard in the speech of representatives of the older generation, who live mainly in rural areas, but, thanks to the spread of television broadcasting, their speech is also gradually leveling out, acquiring the outlines of a literary language.

In modern Russian, many words came from Church Slavonic. In addition, the vocabulary of the Russian language was significantly influenced by those languages with which he had been in contact for a long time. The oldest layer of borrowings has East Germanic roots, as evidenced by such words as, for example, camel, church or cross. A few, but often used words were borrowed from the ancient Iranian languages, the so-called Scythian vocabulary, for example, paradise or dog. Some Russian names, such as Olga or Igor, have a Germanic, most often Scandinavian origin.

Since the 18th century, the main flow of words has come to us from the Dutch (orange, yacht), German (tie, cement) and French (beach, conductor) languages.

Today, the main stream of words comes to us from the English language, and some of them began to appear already at the beginning of the 19th century. The flow of English borrowings intensified in the first half of the 20th century and gave the Russian language such words as station, cocktail and container. It is interesting to know that some words fell into Russian speech from English twice, while displacing each other, an example of such a word is lunch (earlier - lunch), in addition, modern English borrowings are gradually replacing earlier borrowings from others in Russian, for example, English the word "bowling" replaced the old German word "bowling alley" with its appearance, and the old French lobster became the modern English lobster.

It is also impossible not to note the influence of other languages, although to a much lesser extent than English, on the modern sound of the Russian language. Military terms (hussar, saber) came to us from Hungarian, and musical, financial and culinary (opera, balance and pasta) from Italian.

However, despite the abundant influx of borrowed vocabulary, the Russian language also developed independently, having managed to give the world a lot of its own words that became internationalisms. Examples of such words are vodka, pogrom, samovar, dacha, mammoth, satellite, tsar, matryoshka, dacha and steppe.

Teacher's advice:

Learning a foreign language becomes easier when you practice it a little every day. Each language has its own special sound. The more you listen to the language, the easier it is given. Reading helps build grammar and your vocabulary, so read every day. It doesn't matter if you listen to the news or music, whether you read a book, a magazine or a website, the most important thing is to do it a little every day.

Learning a language becomes easier when you practice a little every day. Every language has a different sound and the more you listen the easier it gets. Reading improves your grammar and vocabulary so read a little every day too. It doesn't matter if you listen to the news or music, or read a book, magazine or website, the important thing is to a little every day.

Language families is a term used in the classification of peoples according to linguistic characteristics. The language family includes languages that are related to each other.

It manifests itself in the similarity of the sound of words denoting the same subject, as well as in the similarity of such elements as morphemes, grammatical forms.

According to the theory of monogenesis, the language families of the world were formed from the proto-language spoken by the ancient peoples. The division occurred due to the predominance of the nomadic way of life of the tribes and their remoteness from each other.

Language families are subdivided as follows.

Language family name	Languages in the family	Distribution regions
Indo-European		India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Fiji
		India, Pakistan
		Countries of the former USSR and Eastern Europe
	English	USA, UK, Europe, Canada, Africa, Australia
	Deutsch	Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy
	French	France, Tunisia, Monaco, Canada, Algeria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg
	Portuguese	Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Macau
	Bengal	Bengal, India, Bangladesh
Altai	Tatar	Tatarstan, Russia, Ukraine
	Mongolian	Mongolia, PRC
	Azerbaijani	Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Central Asia
	Turkish	Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, USA, France, Sweden
	Bashkir	Bashkorstan, Tatarstan, Urdmutia, Russia.
	Kyrgyz	Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, China
Ural	Hungarian	Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia
	Mordovian	Mordovia, Russia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan
	Evenki	Russia, China, Mongolia
		Finland, Sweden, Norway, Karelia
	Karelian	Karelia, Finland
Caucasian	Georgian	Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran
	Abkhazian	Abkhazia, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Iraq
	Chechen	Chechnya, Ingushetia, Georgia, Dagestan
Sino-Tibetan	Chinese	China, Taiwan, Singapore

	Laotian	Laos, Thailand,
	Siamese
	Tibetan	Tibet, China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan
	Burmese	Myanmar (Burma)
Afro-Asian	Arab	Arab countries, Iraq, Israel, Chad, Somalia,

	Barbary	Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Egypt, Mauritania

This table shows that the languages of one family can be distributed in various countries and parts of the world. And the very concept of "language families" was introduced to facilitate the classification of languages and the compilation of their genealogical tree. The most widespread and numerous is the Indo-European family of languages. Peoples who speak the languages of the Indo-European family can be found in any hemisphere of the Earth, in any on any continent and in any country. There are also languages that are not included in any language family. This is also artificial.

If we talk about the territory of Russia, then there are a variety of language families. The country is inhabited by people of more than 150 different nationalities, who can consider their mother tongue from almost every language family. The territorial language families of Russia are distributed depending on which country a particular region borders on, which language is most common in the country bordering the region.

Some nationalities have occupied a certain territory since ancient times. And at first glance it may seem strange why these particular language families and languages predominate in this region. But there is nothing strange in this. In ancient times, people's migrations were determined by the search for new hunting grounds, new lands for agriculture, and some tribes simply led a nomadic lifestyle.

The forced resettlement of entire peoples during the Soviet era also played a significant role. The languages from the Indo-European, Uralic, Caucasian and Altaic families are most fully represented in Russia. The Indo-European family occupies Western and Central Russia. Representatives live mainly in the north-west of the country. The northeast and southern regions are predominantly occupied by the Altaic language groups. Caucasian languages are represented mainly in the territory lying between the Black and Caspian Seas.