Linguistic composition (structure) of the world's population. language family

The development of languages can be compared with the process of reproduction of living organisms. In past centuries, their number was much smaller than today, there were so-called "proto-languages", which were the ancestors of our modern speech. They broke up into many dialects, which were distributed throughout the planet, changing and improving. Thus, various language groups were formed, each of which descended from one "parent". On this basis, such groups are defined in families, which we will now list and briefly consider.

The biggest family in the world

As you may have guessed, the Indo-European language group (more precisely, it is a family) consists of many subgroups that are spoken in most of the world. Its distribution area is the Middle East, Russia, all of Europe, as well as the countries of America, which were colonized by the Spaniards and the British. Indo-European languages fall into three categories:

Native speeches

Slavic language groups are very similar both in sound and phonetics. They all appeared at about the same time - in the 10th century, when the Old Slavonic language, invented by the Greeks - Cyril and Methodius - ceased to exist to write the Bible. In the 10th century, this language broke up, so to speak, into three branches, among which were eastern, western and southern. The first of these included the Russian language (Western Russian, Nizhny Novgorod, Old Russian and many other dialects), Ukrainian, Belarusian and Rusyn. The second branch included Polish, Slovak, Czech, Slovene, Kashubian and other dialects. The third branch is represented by Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Slovenian. These languages are spoken only in those countries where they are official, and Russian is the international one among them.

Sino-Tibetan family

This is the second largest language family, which covers the range of all of South and Southeast Asia. The main "proto-language", you guessed it, is Tibetan. All those descended from him follow him. This is Chinese, Thai, Malay. Also language groups belonging to the Burmese regions, the Bai language, Dungan and many others. Officially, there are about 300 of them. However, if you take into account adverbs, then the figure will be much larger.

Niger-Congo family

A special phonetic system, and, of course, a special sound that is unusual for us, have the language groups of the peoples of Africa. A characteristic feature of the grammar here is the presence of nominal classes, which is not found in any Indo-European branch. Indigenous African languages are still spoken by people from the Sahara to the Kalahari. Some of them "assimilated" with English or French, some remained original. Among the main languages that can be found in Africa, we will highlight the following: Rwanda, Makua, Shona, Rundi, Malawi, Zulu, Luba, Xhosa, Ibibio, Tsonga, Kikuyu and many others.

Afroasian or Semitic-Hamitic family

There are language groups that are spoken in North Africa and the Middle East. Also, many dead languages of these peoples are still included here, for example, Coptic. Of the currently existing dialects that have Semitic or Hamitic roots, the following can be mentioned: Arabic (the most common in the territory), Amharic, Hebrew, Tigrinya, Assyrian, Maltese. It also often includes the Chadic and Berber languages, which, in fact, are used in Central Africa.

Japanese-Ryukyuan family

It is clear that the areola of distribution of these languages is Japan itself and the island of Ryukyu adjacent to it. Until now, it has not been finally clarified from which proto-language all those dialects that are now used by the inhabitants of the country of the Rising Sun originated. There is a version that this language originated in Altai, from where it spread, along with the inhabitants, to the Japanese islands, and then to America (the Indians had very similar dialects). There is also an assumption that China is the birthplace of the Japanese language.

language families of the world

The following classifications (+maps) are based on Merrit Ruhlen's book " Guide to the languages of the world” (A Guide to the World’s Languages), published by Stanford University Press in 1987), which in turn draws heavily on the work of the great linguist Joseph Greenberg, who died on May 7, 2001. Maps and statistics are only an approximation of reality. Errors are allowed.

Khoisan family

There are about 30 languages in this family, spoken by about 100,000 people. The Khoisan family includes the peoples we call Bushmen and Hottentots.

Niger-Kordofanian family

The largest sub-Saharan African family of languages, it includes 1,000 languages with up to 200 million speakers. The most famous languages are Mandinka, Swahili, Yoruba and Zulu.

Nilo-Saharan family

This family is ok. 140 languages and 10 million speakers. The most famous language is Maasai, spoken by the warlike nomads of East Africa.

Afro-Asian family

This is a large language group, which includes 240 languages spoken by 250 million native speakers. It includes: ancient Egyptian, Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as the well-known Nigerian language Hausa. Some say ok. 200 million people!

Indo-European family (including isolates: Basque, Burushaski and Nahali)

The only major language family, Indo-European, which includes approx. 150 languages with 1 billion native speakers. Among the languages of this family: Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), German (100 million), Russian (300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and America. The number of English speakers around the world may reach 1 billion people.

In the distribution region of this family of languages, there are 3 isolates that cannot be attributed to any family: Basque language living in the territory between France and Spain, Burushaski and impudent that are located on the Indian Peninsula.

caucasian family

In total there are 38 Caucasian languages, they are spoken by about 5 million people. The most famous: Abkhazian and Chechen.

Kartvelian languages considered by many linguists as a separate family, possibly belonging to the Indo-European family. This includes the Georgian language.

Dravidian family

These are ancient languages. India, just ok. 25, the number of speakers 150 million people. The most famous of the languages of this family are Tamil and Telugu.

Ural-Yukaghir family

This family includes 20 languages with 20 million speakers. The most famous of the languages are: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Sami - the language of the Laplanders.

Altai family (including isolates Ket and Gilat)

The Altaic family includes about 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people. Turkish and Mongolian languages belong to this family.

There are many discussions about this family. The first controversial issue is how to classify the Altaic and Uralic languages (see above), since they have a similar grammatical structure.

The second controversial issue is that many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included in this family, or even that these three languages are related!

Isolates are also represented here: the Ket and Gilyak languages.

Chukchi-Kamchatka family ("Paleosiberian") family

Possibly the smallest family with only 5 languages spoken by 23,000 speakers. The distribution area of these languages is the northeastern part of Siberia. Many linguists believe that these are two different families.

Sino-Tibetan family

A very significant language family, which includes about 250 languages. Only 1 billion people speak!

Miao-Yao languages, Austro-Asiatic and Dai family

Austro-Asiatic (Munda languages in India and Mon-Khmer languages in southeast Asia) includes 150 languages spoken by 60 million people, including Vietnamese.

The Miao-Yao family of languages consists of 4 languages spoken by 7 million people living in southern China and Southeast Asia.

The Dai family has 60 languages and 50 million native speakers, this includes the Thai language (Siamese).

These three language families are sometimes combined with the Austronesian family (below) into a hyperfamily called the Austrian ( australian). On the other hand, some linguists consider the Miao-Yao and Dai families to be related to the Chinese languages.

Austronesian family

This family includes 1000 different languages spoken by 250 million people. Malay and Indonesian (essentially the same language) are spoken by approx. 140 million. Other languages of this family include: Madagascar in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of Formosa (Taiwan) - now almost superseded by Chinese - and many languages of the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the North Pacific Ocean to Maori in New Zealand.

Indian-Pacific and Australian families

The Indian-Pacific family includes approx. 700 languages, most of them spoken on the island of New Guinea, the number of speakers of these languages is approximately 3 million. Many linguists do not believe that all these languages are related to each other. In fact, some of them have not even been studied! On the other hand, some believe that this family may also include the Tasmanian language - now extinct.

It is possible that 170 Australian Aboriginal languages also belong to this family. Unfortunately, only 30,000 speakers of these languages remain today.

Eskimo-Aleut family

The Eskimo-Aleut family of languages consists of 9 languages spoken ca. 85,000 people. The Inuit language plays a key role in the administration of Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and the Canadian territory of Nunavut today.

Na-Dene language family

This family includes 34 languages with approx. 200,000 people. The most famous examples are the Tlingit, the Haida, the Navajo, and the Apache.

Amerindian family (North America)

Although many linguists do not accept the idea of grouping all North (except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut) and South American Indian languages into one family, they are often grouped for convenience. The Amerindian family includes almost 600 languages spoken by more than 20 million people. In North America, the most famous languages are: Ojibwe, Cree, Dakota (or Sioux), Cherokee and Iroquois, Hopi and Nahuatl (or Aztec), as well as the Mayan languages.

Amerindian family (South America)

The language map of South America includes some of the North American subfamilies and others. The most famous languages are Quechua (the language of the Inca Indians), Guarani and Caribbean. The Andean subfamily of languages (which includes Quechua) has almost 9 million speakers!

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.

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.

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 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 broke up 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, Tuva, 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 mean 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 Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Vainakhs speak Nakh languages that are understandable to each other - 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