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any language family in a sentence
1. Afroasiatic languages have over 495 million native speakers, the fourth largest number of any language family (after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and Niger–Congo).
2. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any language family.
3. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any language family.
4. With the exception of the extinct Sumerian (a language isolate) of Mesopotamia, Afro-Asiatic has the oldest documented history of any language family in the world.
5. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
6. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period.
7. The strongest lexical evidence for any language family is shared morphological paradigms, especially highly irregular or suppletive paradigms with bound morphology, because these are extremely resistant to borrowing.
8. The Ainu languages, of which Hokkaido Ainu is the only extant variety, are isolated and do not fall under any language family.
9. The family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
10. Cuitlatec has not been convincingly classified as belonging to any language family.
11. Austronesian languages, by contrast, may have the simplest sounds of any language family.
Some Words
- Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and Niger–Congo
- The phylum
- six branches
- the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language
- dialect continuum
- A de facto group
- distinct language varieties
- the Semitic branch
- around 313 million native speakers
- several important ancient languages
- a distinct branch
- The original homeland
- the Afroasiatic family
- the parent language
- (i.e. Proto-Afroasiatic
- historical linguists
- Proposed locations
- the Book of Genesis
- Shem
- the 1860s
- Friedrich Müller
- Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft
- 1876
- Maurice Delafosse
- Joseph Greenberg
- Greenberg
- Erythraean
- Tucker
- Lisramic
- Hodge
- "Hamito-Semitic"
- Igor Diakonoff
- Afroasiatic language
- over 300 million
- Tiaret
- Theodor Benfey
- Ethiopic
- T.N. Newman
- Hausa
- "Outline of Linguistics"