Language Families

Language families are this atlas's own classification vocabulary: the genealogical groupings, Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic and the rest, that the Languages band's own twenty two subcategories draw their names from. Grouped here by a different, geographic axis instead, the six world macroareas Glottolog and WALS both use, African, Australian, Eurasian, New Guinea and Pacific, North American and South American, so a reader can also find a family by where its member languages are spoken rather than only by its place in the genealogical tree. A family is placed by the documented historical and demographic core of its member languages, not by every region a single branch happens to reach.