50. The Principal Speech Families
The number of linguistic families is not a matter of much theoretical import. From what has already been said it appears that the number can perhaps never be determined with absolute accuracy. As knowledge accumulates and dissection is carried to greater refinements, new phonetic laws will uncover and serve to unite what now seem to be separate stocks. Yet for the practical purpose of classification and tracing relationship the linguistic family will remain a valuable tool. A rapid survey of the principal families is therefore worth while.
Fig. 12. Linguistic Families of Asia and Europe. 1, Basque. 2, Indo-European. 3, Caucasian (perhaps two families). 4, Ural-Altaic (a, Finno-Ugric; b, Samoyed; c, Turkish; d, Mongol; e, Tungus-Manchu). 5, Semitic. 6, Dravidian. 7, Kolarian. 8, Sinitic (a, Chinese; b, Shan-Siamese; c, Tibeto-Burman). 9, Khasi. 10, Anamese. 11, Mon-Khmer. 12, Sakai. 13, Semang. 14, Andaman. 15, Malayo-Polynesian. 16, Korean. 17, Japanese. 18, Ainu. 19, Yeniseian. 20, Yukaghir. 21, Chukchi-Kamchadal. 22, Eskimo.
In Asia and Europe, which must be considered a unit in this connection, the number of stocks, according to conservative reckoning, does not exceed twenty-five. The most important of these, in point of number of speakers, is the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic or Aryan family, whose territory for several thousand years has comprised southwestern Asia and the greater part, but by no means all, of Europe. The most populous branches of the Indo-European family are the Indic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance or Latin. Others are Persian or Iranic, Armenian, Greek, Albanian, Baltic or Lithuanian, and Keltic. From Europe various Indo-European languages, such as English, Spanish, French, Russian, have in recent centuries been carried to other continents, until in some, such as the Americas and Australia, the greater area is now inhabited by peoples speaking Indo-European. As the accompanying maps are intended to depict the historic or native distribution of languages they do not show this diffusion. It will be noted that the distribution of Indo-European has the form of a long belt stretching from western Europe to northeastern India, with an interruption only in Asia Minor ([Fig. 12]). Turkish peoples displaced Indo-Europeans there about a thousand years ago, thus breaking the territorial continuity. It is probable that another link between the western and eastern Indo-Europeans once stretched around the north of the Caspian sea. Here also there are Turks now.
Almost equaling Indo-European in the number of its speakers is Sinitic, which is generally held to include Chinese proper with its dialects; the Tibeto-Burman branch; the T’ai or Shan-Siamese branch; and probably some minor divisions like Lolo.
In extent of territory occupied the Altaic stock rivals the Indo-European. Its three main divisions, Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungus-Manchu, cover most of northern and central Asia and some tracts in Europe. The Turks, as just noted, are the only stock that within the period of history has gained appreciable territory at Indo-European expense. The Uralic or Finno-Ugric family has eastern Europe and northwestern Asia as its home, with the Finns and Hungarian Magyars as its most civilized and best known representatives. This is a scattered stock. Most scholars unite the three Altaic divisions, Finno-Ugric, and Samoyed into a vast Ural-Altaic family.
Of the Semitic family, Arabic is the chief living representative, with Abyssinian in Africa as a little known half-sister. Arabic is one of the most widely diffused of all languages, and as the orthodox vehicle of Mohammedanism has served an important function as a culture carrier. Several great nations of ancient times also spoke Semitic tongues: the Babylonians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, and Hebrews.
Southern India is Dravidian. While people of this family enter little into our customary thoughts, they number over fifty millions. Japanese and Korean also merit mention as important stock tongues. Anamese, by some regarded as an offshoot from Chinese, may constitute a separate stock. Several minor families will be found on the Asiatic map, most of them consisting of uncivilized peoples or limited in their territory or the number of their speakers. Yet, so far as can be judged from present knowledge, they form units of the same order of independence as the great Indo-European, Semitic, and Ural-Altaic stocks.
Language distributions in Africa are in the main simple ([Fig. 13]). The whole of northern Africa beyond latitude 10°, and parts of east Africa almost to the equator, were at one time Hamitic. This is the family to which the language of ancient Egypt belonged. Hamitic and Semitic, named after sons of Noah, probably derive from a common source, although the separation of the common mother tongue into the African Hamitic and the Asiatic Semitic divisions must have occurred very anciently. In the past thousand years Hamitic has yielded ground before Semitic, due to the spread of Arabic in Mohammedan Africa.
Africa south of the equator is the home of the great Bantu family, except in the extreme southwest of the continent. There a tract of considerable area, though of small populational density, was in the possession of the backward Bushmen and Hottentots, distinctive in their physical type as well as languages.
Fig. 13. Linguistic Families of Africa. 1, Hamitic. 2, Semitic (a, old; b, intrusive in former Hamitic territory since Mohammed). 3, Bantu. 4, Hottentot. 5, Bushman. 6, Malayo-Polynesian. X, the Sudan, not consistently classified.
Between the equator and latitude ten north, in the belt known as the Sudan, there is much greater speech diversity than elsewhere in Africa. The languages of the Sudan fall into several families, perhaps into a fairly large number. Opinion conflicts or is unsettled as to their classification. They are, at least in the main, non-Hamitic and non-Bantu; but this negative fact does not preclude their having had either a single or a dozen origins. It has usually been easier to throw them all into a vague group designated as non-Hamitic and non-Bantu than to compare them in detail.
In Oceania conditions are similar to those of Africa, in that there are a few great, widely branching stocks and one rather small area, New Guinea, of astounding speech diversity. Indeed, superficially this variety is the outstanding linguistic feature of New Guinea. The hundreds of Papuan dialects of the island look as if they might require twenty or more families to accommodate them. However, it is inconceivable that so small a population should time and again have evolved totally new forms of speech. It is much more likely that something in the mode of life or habits of mind of the Papuans has favored the breaking up of their speech into local dialects and an unusually rapid modification of these into markedly differentiated languages. What the circumstances were that favored this tendency to segregation and change can be only conjectured. At any rate, New Guinea ranks with the Sudan, western North America, and the Amazonian region of South America, as one of the areas of greatest linguistic multiplicity.
All the remainder of Oceania is either Australian or Malayo-Polynesian in speech. The Australian idioms have been imperfectly recorded. They were numerous and locally much varied, but seem to derive from a single mother tongue.
All the East Indies, including part of the Malay Peninsula, and all of the island world of the Pacific—Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia—always excepting interior New Guinea—are the habitat of the closely-knit Malayo-Polynesian family, whose unity was quickly recognized by philologists. From Madagascar to Easter Island this speech stretches more than half-way around our planet. Some authorities believe that the Mon-Khmer languages of southern Indo-China and the Kolarian or Munda-Kol tongues of India are related in origin to Malayo-Polynesian, and denominate the larger whole, the Austronesian family.
Fig. 14. Some important linguistic families of North America: 1, Eskimo; 2, Athabascan; 3, Algonkin; 4, Iroquoian; 5, Siouan; 6, Muskogean; 7, Uto-Aztecan; 8, Mayan. SA1, Arawak, No. 1 on South American map ([Fig. 15]). SA8, Chibcha, No. 8 on South American map. The white areas are occupied by nearly seventy smaller families, according to the classification usually accepted.
North and South America, according to the usual reckoning, contain more native language families than all the remainder of the world. The orthodox classification allots about seventy-five families to North America (some fifty of them represented within the borders of the United States) and another seventy-five to South America. They varied greatly in size at the time of discovery, some being confined to a few hundred souls, whereas others stretched through tribe after tribe over enormous areas. Their distribution is so irregular and their areas so disproportionate as to be impossible of vivid representation except on a large-scale map in colors. The most important in extent of territory, number of speakers, or the cultural importance of the nations adhering to them, are, in North America, Eskimo, Athabascan, Algonkin, Iroquoian, Muskogean, Siouan, Uto-Aztecan, Maya; and in South America, Chibcha, Quechua, Aymara, Araucanian, Arawak, Carib, Tupi, Tapuya. It will be seen on the maps (Figs. [14], [15]) that these sixteen groups held the greater part of the area of the double continent, the remaining smaller areas being crowded with about ten times as many stocks. Obviously, as in New Guinea, there cannot well have been such an original multiplicity; in fact, recent studies are tending to consolidate the hundred and fifty New World families into considerably fewer groups. But the evidence for such reductions is necessarily difficult to bring and much of it is still incomplete. The stocks mentioned above have been long determined and generally accepted.
About a third of humanity to-day speaks some form of Indo-European. A quarter talks some dialect of Sinitic stock. Semitic, Dravidian, Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu have each from about fifty to a hundred million speakers. The languages included in these eight families form the speech of approximately ninety per cent of living human beings.