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. This is how various language groups, each of which came from a single “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 they ceased to exist Old Slavonic language, invented by the Greeks - Cyril and Methodius - to write the Bible. 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 area of the entire Southern and South-East 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
A special phonetic structure, and, of course, special sound, unusual for us, have the linguistic groups of the peoples of Africa. Characteristic feature 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 country originated Rising Sun. There is a version that this language originated in Altai, from where it spread, along with the inhabitants, to japanese islands, and then to America (the Indians had very similar dialects). There is also an assumption that the homeland Japanese language is China.
All languages spoken on the planet have approximately identical complexity structures. According to researchers, there are no primitive dialects. Each dialect is ideally suited to reflect and express the culture of the people speaking it.
It is difficult to say exactly how many adverbs exist today. The question of how the language developed also remains unresolved. In addition, there is no certainty that all dialects existing on Earth are known to science. According to some minimal estimates, the number of idioethnic languages present in the world ranges from two and a half to three thousand. In accordance with maximum marks, the number of dialects is several times greater.
There are basic dialectical families. This classification includes traditionally distinguished language groups. They are divided according to geographical associations. At the same time, the main or all branches and subgroups included in the language groups, as well as the most famous dialects, are indicated.
The first to be established using the comparative historical method was the Indo-European family. After Sanskrit was discovered, many researchers (Russian, French, Italian, German, Danish and others) began actively studying the signs of kinship in different dialects of Asia and Europe, similar in appearance. German researchers called this group “Indo-Germanic” (and sometimes continue to call it that). However, in other countries this term is not used.
The distinct language groups included in the Indo-European family first are Greek (which represents only Greek dialects), Iranian, Indian (Indo-Aryan). This also includes the Italian branch. It was composed initially. Subsequently, numerous descendants of this branch were formed. Thus, the modern Romance, Celtic, Baltic, Germanic, Slavic language group was formed. This also includes isolated Albanian and Armenian dialects. These language groups have generally recognized related features. In this regard, mixed dialects are distinguished. For example, there are Indo-Iranian,
The Indo-European family is inferior to other families in the number of dialects included in it. However, it is the most widespread geographically and the largest in terms of the number of speakers (even if you do not take into account all the people who use Spanish, French, English, Russian, Portuguese and many others as a second language).
The Ural family includes two branches. The number of dialects included in this family is more than twenty, if we take the Sami language as one. If we consider the Sami dialects separately, then the total number of dialects is about forty.
The Finno-Ugric language group is considered quite large. The total number of speakers is about twenty million people. This includes the Baltic-Finnish (Estonian and Ugric (Hungarian, Mansi, Khanty), Finno-Volga (Mari and Mordovian dialects), Perm subgroup (Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permyak, as well as Udmurt languages). A special place is occupied by the Sami dialect.
The second branch of the Ural family is Samoyed.
It should be noted that some language groups that are part of this family are at the stage of extinction. These include, in particular, the small Baltic-Finnish dialects (except Vepsian). Of the four Samoyed languages, one remains - Nenets. It is likely that the Votic dialect has already disappeared.
According to most researchers, the language was formed about half a million years ago. However, some authors give other figures. However, the process of language formation itself still remains unclear.
I. Indo-European language family (13 groups or branches)
1. Indian (Indo-Aryan) group Includes Old, Middle and New Indian languages. In total more than 96 living languages
1) Hindustani - New Indian literary language. It has two varieties: Hindi ( official language India); Urdu (the official language of Pakistan).
Dead: 2) Vedic - the language of the ancient sacred books (Vedas) of the Aryans, who invaded India in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC; Sanskrit is the literary language of the ancient Indians from the 3rd century. BC. to the 7th century AD It has two forms: epic (the language of the Mahabharata and Ramayana) and classical (formed in the 1st millennium AD).
2. Iranian group
1) Persian (Farsi), Pashto (Afghan) - the official language of Afghanistan, Tajik, Kurdish, Ossetian, Pamir - the unwritten languages of the Pamirs. Dead: 2) Old Persian - the language of cuneiform inscriptions of the Achamenid era; Avestan - the language of the sacred book "Avesta", close to Sanskrit; Median, Parthian, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Scythian, Saka.
3. Slavic group Slavic languages formed on the basis of one common language, the collapse of which dates back to the middle of the 1st millennium AD.
1) Eastern subgroup: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian; 2) Southern subgroup: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian (Serbs have a letter based on the Russian alphabet, Croats have a letter based on Latin). Dead: 3) Old Church Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic or Church Slavonic). 4) Western subgroup: Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian, Serbo-Sorbian (has two dialects - Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian). Dead: 5) Polabsky - was widespread on the banks of the river. Labs (Elbes) until the 17th century.
4. Baltic group
1) Lithuanian, Latvian, Latgalian. Dead: 2) Prussian - was common in East Prussia, due to the forced Germanization of the Prussians, fell out of use at the end of the 18th century; 3) Curonian is the language of the population of Courland.
5. German group Includes 3 subgroups: northern, western and eastern (dead)
1) Northern (Scandinavian) subgroup: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Farrish; 2) West Germanic subgroup: English, Dutch*, Flemish, German (developed in the 16th century), Yiddish (new Hebrew).
- NOTE. After the text you are reading was posted on the Internet, the editor of the site received the following letter:
I would like to draw the attention of the site authors to the inaccuracy in the classification of languages. As a certified Dutch language specialist, with full knowledge subject, I argue that it is unlawful to talk about “Dutch” and “Flemish” languages. The Dutch and Flemings have a common literary language - Dutch. All major philological reference books and dictionaries, including the Bolshoi Dictionary Dutch (Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal) - fruit collaboration Dutch and Flemish linguists.
O. Biletsky, Amsterdam, [email protected]
6. Roman group
1) French, Italian, Sardinian (Sardinian), Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, Moldovan, Romansh - the official language of Switzerland, Creole - crossed with French O. Haiti. Dead: 2) Medieval Vulgar Latin - folk Latin dialects early Middle Ages, which, when crossed with the languages of the Roman provinces, became the basis of modern Romance languages.
7. Celtic group
1) Irish, Scottish, Breton, Welsh (Welsh). Dead: 2) Gallic.
8. Greek group
1) Greek (Modern Greek). Dead: 2) Ancient Greek; Central Greek (Byzantine).
9. Albanian group
1) Albanian.
10. Armenian group
1) Armenian.
Dead groups of the Indo-European language family: 11) Anatolian - Hittite, Luwian, Lydian (were common in Asia Minor); 12) Italic - Latin and Umbrian languages; 13) Tocharian - Karashar, Kuchan (known from manuscripts of the 5th-7th centuries, found during excavations in Chinese Turkestan in the 20th century).
II. Semito-Hamitic (Afroasiatic) language family
1. Semitic group
1) Northern subgroup: Aisorian. Dead: 2) Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew (Hebrew). In Hebrew in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e. spoke the Jews of Palestine. The most important monument of the Hebrew language - Old Testament(the oldest part - "The Song of Deborah" - dates back to the 12th or 12th centuries BC, the rest of the text - to the 9th-2nd centuries BC). Since the beginning e. Hebrew, displaced from colloquial use Aramaic was the language of culture and religion. The revival of Hebrew began with Jewish writers and journalists from the Haskalah (Enlightenment) period in the 18th-19th centuries. You can read more about this in the article by O.B. Cohen "From the history of the revival of the Hebrew language." In the 20th century Hebrew is the official language of Israel; 3) Southern group: Arabic; Amharic is the literary language of Ethiopia; Tigre, Tigrinnya, Harari, etc. are the unwritten languages of Ethiopia.
2. Cushitic group Includes languages of Northeast Africa
1) Galla, Somalia, Beja, etc.
3. Berber group
1) Tuareg, Kabyle, etc. Dead: 2) Libyan.
4. Chadian group
1) House et al.
5. Egyptian group (dead)
1) Ancient Egyptian, Coptic - cult language Orthodox Church in Egypt.
NOTE. The Semitic-Hamitic family is sometimes divided into two groups: Semitic and Hamitic, which includes all non-Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that there is no relationship between the Semitic and Hamitic languages.
III. Caucasian language family
1) Adyghe-Abkhaz group: Abkhazian, Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardian; 2) Nakh group: Chechen, Ingush; 3) Dagestan group (5 written languages, 22 unwritten): Avar, Dargin, Lezgin, Lak, Tabasaran; 4) Kartvelian group: Mingrelian, Georgian, Svan.
IV. Finno-Ugric language family
1. Ugric group
1) Hungarian (Magyar), Mansi, Khanty;
2. Finnish group
1) Baltic subgroup: Finnish (Suomi), Sami (Lapp), Estonian, Karelian, Izhorian, Vepsian, Votic, Livonian; 2) Perm group: Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak; 3) Volga group: Udmurt, Mari, Mordovian (includes two independent language- Erzya and Moksha).
V. Samoyedic language family
1) Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup.
NOTE. Sometimes the Finno-Ugric and Samoyed language families are combined into a single Uralic language family with two groups: Finno-Ugric and Samoyed.
VI. Turkic language family
1) Bulgarian group: Chuvash; dead - Bulgarian, Khazar; 2) Oghuz group: Turkmen, Gagauz, Turkish, Azerbaijani; Dead - Oguz, Pecheneg; 3) Kypchak group: Tatar, Bashkir, Karaite, Kumyk, Nogai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altai, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar. Dead - Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Golden Horde. 4) Karluk group: Uzbek, Uyghur; 5) Eastern Hunnic group: Yakut, Tuvan, Khakass, Shor, Karagas. Dead - Orkhon, ancient Uyghur.
VII. Mongolian language family
1) Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk, Mughal (Afghanistan), Mongolian (PRC), Dakhurian (Manchuria).
VIII. Tungus-Manchu language family
1) Tungus group: Evenki, Evenki (Lamut), Negidal Nanai, Udean, Ulch, Oroch; 2) Manchu group: Manchu; Dead - Jurzhen, Sibo.
NOTE. The Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu language families are sometimes combined into the Altaic language family. The Altai language family sometimes includes a Japanese-Korean group (branch) with Korean and Japanese languages.
IX. Sino-Tibetan language family
1) Chinese group: Chinese, Dungan; 2) Tibeto-Burman group: Tibetan, Burmese, Itzu, Hani, Lisu, Himalayan and Assamese languages.
X. Dravidian language family (languages of the pre-Indo-European population of the Hindustan Peninsula)
1) Dravidian group: Tamil, Malalayam, Kannara; 2) Andhra group: Telugu; 3) Central Indian group: Gondi; 4) Brahui language (Pakistan).
XI. Austroasiatic language family
1) Vietnamese group: Vietnamese; 2) Mon-Khmer group: Mon, Khasi, Khmer, Senoy, Semang, Nicobar; 3) Miao-Yao group: Miao, Yao;
There are a large number of language families in the world and the most diverse languages. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the world's largest language families, which are distinguished by lexical and grammatical composition, kinship of origin and community geographical location their carriers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.
In turn, the world's language families are divided into groups. They are distinguished according to a similar principle. There are also languages that do not belong to any of the identified families, as well as so-called isolated languages. It is also common for scientists to distinguish macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.
Indo-European family
The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It began to be distinguished in ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began to study the Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages whose speakers live across vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, Eastern European peoples who speak languages of the Slavic group also belong to the Indo-European family. These are Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.
This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages it includes. However, these languages are spoken by almost half of the world's population.
Afro-Asian family
Languages representing the Afro-Asiatic language family are spoken by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.
This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. These include the Semitic branch, the Egyptian, Chadian, Cushitic, Berber-Libyan and Omotian. In general, the Afro-Asian family includes more than 300 languages African continent and parts of Asia.
However, this family is not the only one on the continent. IN large quantities, especially to the south, there are other unrelated languages in Africa. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not represented in in writing until the 20th century and were used only orally. Some of them are purely oral to this day.
Nilo-Saharan family
The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages are represented by six language families. One of them is Songhai Zarma. The languages and dialects of the other family, the Saharan family, are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, the Fur, is also common in Sudan.
The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The Last Family- coma - common in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they represent great difficulty for linguistic researchers. Into the languages of this macrofamily big influence provided by the Afro-Asian macrofamily.
Sino-Tibetan family
The Sino-Tibetan language family has more than a million speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible thanks to large numbers the Chinese population speaking a Chinese language belonging to one of the branches of this language family. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.
The other branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are classified as the Tibeto-Burman branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.
Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most languages of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many as yet unrevealed secrets.
North and South American languages
Currently, as we know, the vast majority of North and South American languages belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. When settling the New World, European colonists brought their own languages with them. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear completely. Many monks and missionaries who arrived from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages and dialects of the local population.
Thus, the languages of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. Later, some experts revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well linguistically.
Language families of Russia
All the peoples of Russia speak languages belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Uralic. Wherein most of The country's population speaks languages belonging to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages are very close to each other. Their speakers can understand each other almost without difficulty. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.
Altaic language family
The Altai language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchu and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their speakers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But several dozen languages are included in the Turkic group. These include Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.
The group of Tungus-Manchu languages includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is in danger of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long-term study of the Altai language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altai proto-language. This is explained big amount borrowings by its speakers from other languages due to close contact with their representatives.
Ural family
The Uralic languages are represented by two large families- Finno-Ugric and Samoyed. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages of the second family are spoken by the Enets, Nenets, Selkups, and Nganasans. The bearers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).
The name of this family comes from the name Ural ridge, where the formation of the Uralic proto-language is believed to have taken place. The languages of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages of the Uralic family both on the territory of Russia and abroad.
North Caucasian family
Languages of peoples North Caucasus represent a huge difficulty for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. The concept of a North Caucasian family itself is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and in-depth work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how disjointed and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.
Difficulties concern not only the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most complex languages on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.
A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.
Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of related peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adygeis, Abkhazians, etc.
Other language families
The language families of the peoples of Russia are not always extensive, uniting many languages into one family. Many of them are very small, and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and Far East. Thus, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmen, and Koryaks. Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.
A large number of nationalities scattered across the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages that are not included in any known language family. Like, for example, the Nivkhs, who inhabit the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.
However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten Russia's cultural and linguistic diversity. Not only individual languages, but also entire language families are under threat of extinction.
Language families are a term used to classify peoples according to linguistic feature. 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 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 | Türkiye, 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 the most various countries and parts of the world. And the very concept of “language families” was introduced to facilitate the classification of languages and their compilation 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.
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