The development of languages can be compared to 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”. Based on this criterion, such groups are classified into families, which we will now list and briefly consider.
The largest family in the world
As you might have guessed, the Indo-European language group (more accurately, it is a family) consists of many subgroups that are spoken throughout much of the world. Its distribution area is the Middle East, Russia, all of Europe, as well as the countries of America that were colonized by the Spaniards and the British. Indo-European languages are divided into three categories:
Native speeches
Slavic language groups are very similar in both sound and phonetics. They all appeared at about the same time - in the 10th century, when the Old Church Slavonic language, invented by the Greeks - Cyril and Methodius - for writing the Bible, ceased to exist. In the 10th century, this language split, so to speak, into three branches, among which were the eastern, western and southern. The first of them 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, Slovinian, Kashubian and other dialects. The third branch is represented by Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Slovenian. These languages are common only in those countries where they are official, and Russian is the international one.
Sino-Tibetan family
This is the second largest language family, which covers the entire area of South and Southeast Asia. The main “protolanguage,” as you guessed, is Tibetan. All who come from him follow him. These are Chinese, Thai, Malay. Also language groups belonging to the Burmese regions, Bai language, Dungan and many others. Officially, there are about 300 of them. However, if you take into account adverbs, the number will be much higher.
Niger-Congo family
The linguistic groups of the peoples of Africa have a special phonetic system, and, of course, a special sound, unusual for us. 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” into English or French, some remained original. Among the main languages that can be found in Africa, we highlight the following: Rwanda, Makua, Shona, Rundi, Malawi, Zulu, Luba, Xhosa, Ibibio, Tsonga, Kikuyu and many others.
Afroasiatic or Semito-Hamitic family
There are language groups spoken in North Africa and the Middle East. It also still includes many of the dead languages of these peoples, such as Coptic. Of the currently existing dialects that have Semitic or Hamitic roots, the following can be named: Arabic (the most widespread in the territory), Amharic, Hebrew, Tigrinya, Assyrian, Maltese. Also often included here are the Chadic and Berber languages, which are essentially spoken in Central Africa.
Japanese-Ryukyuan family
It is clear that the distribution area of these languages is Japan itself and the adjacent Ryukyu Island. Until now, we have not finally figured out from which proto-language all those dialects that are now used by the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun originated. There is a version that this language originated in Altai, from where it spread, along with its inhabitants, to the Japanese islands, and then to America (the Indians had very similar dialects). There is also an assumption that the birthplace of the Japanese language is China.
Russia is a multinational country, and therefore multilingual. Linguistic scientists count 150 languages - a language such as Russian, which is spoken by 97.72% of the population in Russia, and the language of the Negidal-Ievs, a small people (only 622 people!), living on the Amur River, are equally taken into account here.
Some languages are very similar: people can each 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 come to an agreement: a Mari with a Mordovian, a Lezgin with an accident. And finally, there are languages - scientists call them isolated - that are unlike any other. These are the languages of the Kets, Nivkhs and Yukaghirs.
Most of the languages of Russia belong to one of four language families: Indo-European, Altai, Uralic and North Caucasian. Each family has a common ancestor language - a proto-language. Ancient tribes who spoke such a proto-language moved, mixed with other peoples, and the once single language split into several. This is how many languages arose on Earth.
Let's say Russian belongs to the Indo-European family. In the same family there are English and German, Hindi and Farsi, Ossetian and Spanish (and many, many others). Part of the family is the 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. Indo-European languages are spoken in Russia by more than 87% of the population, but only 2% of them are not Slavic. These are Germanic languages: German and Yiddish (see the story “Jews in Russia”); Armenian (one makes up a group); Iranian languages: Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish and Tajik; Romance: Moldavian; and even modern Indian languages spoken by 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 just the enumeration of Turkic languages may surprise you. 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. Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, and Uzbeks also live in our country. 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. Similar disputes occur not only regarding Tatar and Bashkir.
The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept “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 and similar sounds, especially if you don’t parse the words and listen only to the melody. Finnish languages are spoken by Karelians, Vepsians, Izhorians, Vods, Komi, Maris, Mordovians, Udmurts, and Sami. There are two Ugric languages in Russia: Khanty and Mansi (and the third Ugric is spoken by Hungarians). The Samoyed languages are spoken by the Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups. The Yukaghir language is genetically close to 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 specialist linguists understand the ancient kinship of the languages of the Caucasus. These languages have very complex grammar and extremely difficult phonetics. They contain sounds that are completely inaccessible to people who speak other dialects.
Experts divide the North Caucasian languages into Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Vainakhs speak Nakh languages, which are mutually understandable - this is the common name for the Chechens and Ingush. (The group received its name from the self-name of the Chechens - Nakhchi.)
Representatives of approximately 30 nations live in Dagestan. “Approximately” - because not 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, Iez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshin, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Ru-Tul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list even half. It’s not for nothing that this republic was called the “mountain of languages.” And a “paradise for linguists”: the field of activity for them here is vast.
Abkhaz-Adyghe languages are spoken by related peoples. In Adyghe - Kabardians, Adygeis, Circassians, Shapsugs; in Abkhazian - Abkhaz and Abaza. But not everything is so simple in this classification. Kabardians, Adyghe, Circassians and Shapsugs consider themselves a single people - Adyghe - with one language, Adyghe, and official sources call four Adyghe peoples.
In Russia there are languages 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 in number. The Chukchi, Koryak and Itelmen languages speak the Chukchi-Kamchatka languages; in Eskimo-Aleutian - Eskimos and Aleuts. The languages of the Kets on the Yenisei and the Nivkhs on Sakhalin and Amur are not included in any language family.
There are many languages, and in order for people to agree, they need a common one. In Russia, it became Russian, because 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 several tens of thousands. In a language that is spoken by millions, this is feasible.
Many peoples of Russia have lost or are losing their languages, especially representatives of small nations. Thus, they have practically forgotten the native language of the Chu-lymys - a small Turkic-speaking people in Siberia. The list, unfortunately, is long. In Russian cities, Russian is becoming the common language for the multinational population. And most often 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 before the 20s. XX century had no writing. Georgians, Armenians, and Jews had their own alphabet. Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Finns wrote in the Latin alphabet (Latin alphabet). Some languages are still unwritten.
The first attempts to create a written language for the peoples of Russia were made even before the revolution, but they began to take this seriously in the 20s: they reformed the Arabic script, adapting it to the phonetics of the Turkic languages. It did not fit into the languages of the peoples of the Caucasus. They developed a Latin alphabet, but there were not enough letters to accurately designate sounds in the languages of small nations. From 1936 to 1941, the languages of the peoples of Russia (and the USSR) were transferred to the Slavic alphabet (except for those that had their own, which was also ancient), superscripts were added, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and combinations of letters that were strange to 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 (the language of the 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 Samoyed languages - Nganasan, Nenets, Selkup, Enets
3. Turkic languages- Altai, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Tofalar, Tuvan, Khakass, Chuvash, Shor, Yakut
4. Tungus-Manchu languages- Nanai, Negidal, Orok, Oroch, Udege, Ulch, Evenki, Even
5. Mongolian languages- Buryat, Kalmyk
6. Yenisei languages- Ket
7. Chukotka-Kamchatka languages- Alyutor, Itelmen, Kerek, Koryak, Chukchi
8. Eskimo-Aleut languages- Aleutian, Eskimo
9. Yukaghir language
10. Nivkh language
11. North Caucasian languages
o Abkhaz-Adyghe languages - Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian
o Nakh-Dagetan languages
§ Nakh languages - Batsbi, Ingush, Chechen
§ Dagestan languages
§ Avar
§ Andean languages - Andean, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kwanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin
Languages evolve like living organisms, and languages that descend from the same ancestor (called a "protolanguage") 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, part of the Slavic languages group, which is a branch of the larger Indo-European family.
Comparative linguistics, as its name suggests, 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 more distant languages are from each other, the more difficult it is to detect genetic connections between them. For example, no linguist doubts that Spanish and Italian are related, however, the existence of the Altaic language family (including Turkish and Mongolian) is questioned and not accepted by all linguists. At present, it is simply impossible to know whether all languages originate from a single 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 more than one 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, modern times, by continent | More than 400 languages spoken by almost 3 billion people. These include 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 languages |
| Niger-Congo (Niger-Kordofanian, Congo-Kordofanian) | Sub-Saharan Africa | Swahili, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu (Zulu language) |
| Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic, Semitic-Hamitic) | Middle East, North America | Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew...), Somali language (Somali) |
| Austronesian | Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Pacific, Madagascar | More than a thousand languages, including Filipino, Malagasy, Hawaiian, Fijian... |
| Ural | Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, Northern Asia | Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Sami languages, some Russian languages (Udmurt, Mari, Komi...) |
| Altai (disputed) | from Turkey to Siberia | Turkic languages (Turkish, Kazakh...), Mongolian languages (Mongolian...), Tungus-Manchu languages, some researchers include Japanese and Korean here |
| Dravidian | South India | Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu |
| Thai-Kadai | Southeast Asia | Thai, Laotian |
| Austroasiatic | Southeast Asia | Vietnamese, Khmer |
| Na-Dene (Athabascan-Eyak-Tlingit) | North America | Tlingit, Navo |
| tupi (Tupian) | South America | Guarani 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 whose belonging to any known language family has not been proven. The best example is the Basque language, which is spoken in Spain and France. Even though it is surrounded by Indo-European languages, it is very different from them. Linguists have compared Basque to other languages spoken in Europe, to Caucasian languages, and even to American languages, but no connections have been found.
Korean is another well-known isolate, although some linguists suggest a connection to the Altaic languages or Japanese. Japanese itself is sometimes considered an isolate, but it is best described as belonging to the small Japanese family, which includes several related languages such as Okinawan.
Pidgin and Creole languages
A pidgin is a simplified communication system that developed between two or more groups that do not have a common language. It does not come directly from one language, it has absorbed the characteristics of several languages. When children begin to learn pidgin as a first language, it develops into a full-fledged, stable language called a creole.
Most 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.
The Russian language belongs to the group of Slavic languages, 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 number of speakers in Europe.
Story
Modern lexical and grammatical norms of the Russian language appeared as a result of the long-term interaction of 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, was the basis for the formation of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages in the 14th-15th centuries, but the dialectical features that make them so different appeared somewhat earlier.
Dialects
In the 15th century, two main groups of dialects established themselves on the European territory of Russia - the southern and northern dialects, which have a number of distinctive features, for example, Akanye is characteristic of the southern dialect, and Okanye is characteristic of the northern one. In addition, a number of Central Russian dialects appeared, which were essentially intermediate between the northern and southern ones and partially absorbed 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 considered classical Russian; literature and periodicals are not published in other dialects.
Vocabulary
A large layer in the 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, and in our time it is no secret that most of the names 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 Maria.
In the 16th-17th centuries, the main source of the emergence of new lexical units in the Russian language was Polish, thanks to which such words of Latin, Germanic and Romance origin as algebra, dance and powder and directly Polish words, for example bank and duel, came into our speech.
In Belarus, Russian is the official language along with the Belarusian language. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Transnistrian 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, you can take the driver's license exam in Russian.
Until 1991, Russian was used for communication in the territory of the former USSR, essentially being the state language. For this reason, for many residents of the republics that seceded from 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 this time, the alphabet officially had thirty-one letters, because E was equated with E, and Y with I.
From its inception to the present day, the Church Slavonic language has been the language used in Orthodox services. For a long time, it was Church Slavonic that was used as the official written language and predominated in spoken language.
The oldest monument of literary art written in Russian is the Novgorod Codex, 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 intervention in 1918, with a reform that removed the letters “decimal i”, “fita” and “yat” from the alphabet. , instead of which the letters “i”, “f” and “e” appeared, respectively; in addition, the use of a hard 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 adopted 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 rarely used even before the reform, and over time it disappeared from the alphabet.
Differences in dialects have never been an obstacle to people communicating with each other, however, compulsory education, the advent of the press and the media, and large-scale migration of the population during the Soviet era almost completely forced the dialects out of use, as they were replaced by standardized Russian speech. Currently, echoes of the use of dialects can be heard in the speech of representatives of the older generation living 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.
Many words in modern Russian came from Church Slavonic. In addition, the vocabulary of the Russian language was significantly influenced by those languages with which it was in contact for a long time. The oldest layer of borrowings has East German roots, as evidenced by words such as camel, church or cross. A few but frequently used words were borrowed from ancient Iranian languages, the so-called Scythian vocabulary, for example, paradise or dog. Some Russian names, such as Olga or Igor, are of Germanic, most often Scandinavian origin.
Since the 18th century, the main flow of words comes to us from the Dutch (orange, yacht), German (tie, cement) and French (beach, conductor) languages.
Today, the main flow of words comes to us from the English language, and some of them began to appear at the beginning of the 19th century. The flow of English borrowings intensified in the first half of the twentieth century and gave the Russian language such words as station, cocktail and container. It is interesting to know that some words entered Russian speech twice from English, displacing each other, an example of such a word is lunch (formerly lunch), in addition, modern English borrowings are gradually replacing earlier borrowings from others in the Russian language, for example English The word “bowling” with its appearance displaced the old German word “skittle alley” from use, and the old French lobster became the modern English lobster.
It is 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 terms (opera, balance and pasta) from Italian.
However, despite the abundant influx of borrowed vocabulary, the Russian language developed independently, managing to give the world many of its own words, which 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 becomes. Reading helps strengthen your grammar and your vocabulary, so read every day. It doesn't matter if you listen to the news or music, or read a book, magazine or website, the most important thing is a little bit 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 are a term used to classify peoples according to language. A language family includes languages that are related to each other.
It manifests itself in the similarity in the sound of words denoting the same object, as well as in the similarity of elements such as morphemes and grammatical forms.
According to the theory of monogenesis, the world's language families were formed from the proto-language spoken by ancient peoples. The division occurred due to the predominance of the nomadic lifestyle of the tribes and their distance from each other.
Language families are divided as follows.
Language family name | Languages included in the family | Regions of distribution |
Indo-European | India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Fiji |
|
India, Pakistan |
||
Countries of the former USSR and Eastern Europe |
||
English | USA, UK, European countries, Canada, Africa, Australia |
|
German | 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, China |
|
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, Bashkorstan |
|
Evenk | Russia, China, Mongolia |
|
Finland, Sweden, Norway, Karelia |
||
Karelian | Karelia, Finland |
|
Caucasian | Georgian | Georgia, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Iran |
Abkhazian | Abkhazia, Türkiye, 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 |
From this table it is clear that languages of the same family can be distributed in a wide variety of 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 family tree. The most widespread and numerous is the Indo-European family of languages. Peoples speaking languages of the Indo-European family can be found in any hemisphere of the Earth, on any continent and in any country. There are also languages that are not included in any language family. These are also artificial.
If we talk about the territory of Russia, then a wide variety of language families are represented here. The country is inhabited by people of more than 150 different nationalities, who can consider almost every language family to be their native language. The linguistic families of Russia are distributed geographically depending on which country a particular region borders on, and which language is most widespread 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 about this. In ancient times, human migrations were determined by the search for new hunting grounds, new lands for agriculture, and some tribes simply led a nomadic lifestyle.
The forced relocation of entire peoples during the Soviet era also played a significant role. The languages from the Indo-European, Uralic, Caucasian and Altai 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 Altai language groups. Caucasian languages are represented mainly in the territory lying between the Black and Caspian seas.