All Language Isolates, Creoles and Pidgins

Languages that fall outside the ordinary genealogical family tree by their own classification: isolates with no demonstrated relatives, and creoles and pidgins that arose from contact between speaker communities rather than generational descent within one family. Belongs here: Basque, spoken in the Pyrenees with no known relation to any other living language; Sumerian, the earliest attested written language, likewise unrelated to any other known family; Etruscan and Meroitic, two more languages of ancient record with no demonstrated family; Haitian Creole (French-lexified) and Nigerian Pidgin (English-lexified), contact languages rather than ordinary descendants of a single parent tongue. Does not belong here: a language merely small in speaker count, since isolate status is about lacking demonstrated genetic relatives, not about size; and a creole lexifier language itself, which stays classified under its own genealogical family above.