Disputed Statements

Haida, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No settled proto-language: Haida is generally considered a language isolate, though a Na-Dene relationship has been proposed and disputed

Generally treated as a language isolate, but the linguist John Enrico has argued for a relationship to the Na-Dene family; the counterargument is that early loanwords complicate the supporting evidence, so the field has not settled the question.

Source Wikipedia: Haida Language tier 2

Hatam-Mansim, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Ross (2005) tentatively classified Hatam as part of the West Papuan family based on pronoun similarities, without considering Mansim. Glottolog continues to list Hatam-Mansim as an independent language family rather than accepting the West Papuan link.

Ross (2005) proposed a West Papuan affiliation for Hatam alone; Glottolog treats Hatam-Mansim as an independent family.

Source Wikipedia: Hatam-Mansim languages tier 2

Hokan, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Disputed grouping proposed by Dixon and Kroeber (1913); accepted by many specialists in Californian and Mesoamerican historical linguistics but not universally.

Hokan is a proposed genetic grouping, not a settled family; no secure Proto-Hokan has been reconstructed and inclusion of several branches (Seri, Salinan, Tequistlatecan) remains contested.

Source Wikipedia: Hokan Languages tier 2

Ijoid, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Description

Currently States Ijoid is a proposed but undemonstrated group of languages in Nigeria linking the Ijaw languages with the endangered Defaka language; the similarities may instead be due to Ijaw influence on Defaka.

Source Wikipedia: Ijoid Languages tier 2

Ijoid, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proposed to form a divergent branch of the hypothetical Niger-Congo family on the strength of its subject-object-verb word order and its lack of the Niger-Congo noun-class system; linguists Gerrit Dimmendaal and Tom Güldemann doubt its inclusion in Niger-Congo altogether and consider Ijaw/Ijoid an independent family.

Source Wikipedia: Ijoid Languages tier 2

Insular Celtic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Insular Celtic has no proto-language of its own separately named from Proto-Celtic. It is a proposed higher-level grouping within Celtic, competing with the older P-Celtic/Q-Celtic classification.

Insular Celtic has no proto-language separately named from Proto-Celtic; whether it is a valid genetic node, versus the alternative P-Celtic/Q-Celtic classification, is debated, though the Insular Celtic view has been the more widely held position among specialists since the 1970s.

Source Wikipedia: Celtic Languages tier 2

Iroquoian, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States A widely cited glottochronological estimate attributed to Lounsbury (1961), based on 34 to 38 percent shared Swadesh-list cognates between Cherokee and the Northern Iroquoian languages, places the Cherokee/Northern Iroquoian split around 3,500 to 3,800 years ago; an independent estimate from Sorosoro's own linguistic documentation places the same split at roughly 1800 to 1500 BCE, a closely matching range. Neither figure has been verified here against Lounsbury's original 1961 publication, which could not be directly accessed.

Source Sorosoro: Iroquoian Languages tier 2

Italic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Whether a single Proto-Italic language existed is disputed. The unitary theory, tracing Latin and the other ancient Italic languages to one common ancestor, remains dominant in current scholarship, but some linguists, including Silvestri and Rix, have argued that no single consistent Proto-Italic phonology and morphology can be reconstructed, proposing instead that the ancestors of the ancient Italic languages were two or more separately descended Indo-European languages.

Rix later changed his mind and became a supporter of Italic as a unified family, per the same article.

Source Wikipedia: Italic Languages tier 2

Italo-Celtic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Region

Currently States Hypothesized to have been spoken in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BCE in south-central Europe, possibly associated with the Bell Beaker culture

Applies only if the hypothesis that Proto-Italo-Celtic was a real historical language is accepted; not every scholar accepts the grouping

Source Italo-Celtic, Wikipedia

Italo-Celtic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proposed and partly reconstructed, Kortlandt attempted a reconstruction of Proto-Italo-Celtic in 2007, but the underlying grouping remains contested among scholars

The Italo-Celtic grouping itself is not universally accepted, so the proto-language it implies is debated rather than settled

Source Italo-Celtic, Wikipedia

Japonic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proto-Japonic is reconstructed chiefly from Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages. Proposed deeper connections to Korean or to a broader Altaic grouping are considered fringe hypotheses by most comparative linguists; Japonic is treated on this atlas as an independent family.

The internal Proto-Japonic reconstruction from Japanese and Ryukyuan is not seriously disputed; the external hypotheses are the fringe element.

Source Glottolog

Kanoê, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Too poorly attested to classify for decades; a 2004 detailed description by Laercio Bacelar established it as a language isolate. Van der Voort (2005) finds similarities with Kwaza and Aikana but judges the evidence too weak for a demonstrated family; others have proposed unconfirmed links to Nambikwaran or Kunza.

Source Wikipedia: Kanoê Language tier 2

Kaure-Kosare, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Foley (2018) considers a connection between Kaure-Kosare and Trans-New Guinea to be promising but tentatively leaves the family independent pending further evidence.

Foley (2018) names Trans-New Guinea membership as a promising but unconfirmed hypothesis; Glottolog treats Kaure-Kosare as an independent family pending further evidence.

Source Wikipedia: Kaure-Kosare languages tier 2

Khoisan, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No Proto-Khoisan can be reconstructed, because the grouping is not now believed to be a genuine genetic family at all.

Only its three constituent families, Khoe-Kwadi, Tuu and the formally demonstrated Kx'a grouping (2010), have their own internal reconstructions in progress.

Source Wikipedia: Khoisan Languages tier 2

Konda-Yahadian, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No proto-language reconstruction has been published. Holton and Klamer (2018) tentatively treat Konda-Yahadian as an independent family pending further evidence, on the strength of low cognacy rates with neighboring South Bird's Head groups.

Source Wikipedia: Konda-Yahadian Languages tier 2

Kordofanian, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Quint (2020) reconstructs Proto-Kordofanian from the Heibanian, Talodian, Rashadian, Katloid and Lafofa branches; Kordofanian itself has not been shown to constitute a valid genetic grouping distinct from other Niger-Congo branches

Kordofanian's status as a valid Niger-Congo genetic subgroup, as opposed to independently related branches, is disputed; Proto-Kordofanian itself has been reconstructed by Quint (2020) from five of its branches regardless of that dispute.

Source Wikipedia: Kordofanian Languages tier 2

Koreanic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Korean is usually treated at the family level as a language isolate; Koreanic here groups it with the closely related and severely endangered Jeju language. Proposed deeper connections to Japonic or to a broader Altaic grouping are fringe hypotheses rejected by most comparative linguists.

Korean at the family level is usually treated as an isolate rather than as securely reconstructed from multiple sister languages.

Source Glottolog

Kru, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Whether Kru belongs within Niger-Congo is unresolved. Guldemann (2018) found insufficient lexical and noun-class evidence to conclude a relationship, and Glottolog treats Kru as an independent family rather than a Niger-Congo branch.

Source Wikipedia: Kru languages

Kuliak, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Kuliak's external affiliation is unresolved and has shifted repeatedly: classified within Eastern Sudanic, then as a basal Nilo-Saharan branch, while Glottolog treats it as an independent family and rejects Nilo-Saharan as a valid grouping. Bernd Heine has proposed Proto-Kuliak sound correspondences.

Source Wikipedia: Kuliak languages

Kunama, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Kunama's placement beyond its own small family is unresolved: it is provisionally included within the proposed Nilo-Saharan phylum but is only distantly related to the other languages there, if related at all.

Source Wikipedia: Kunama language