The world's languages can be grouped into language families (Language family) consisting of languages that can be shown to have common ancestry. Linguists recognize many hundreds of language families, although some of them can possibly be grouped into larger units as more evidence becomes available and in-depth studies are carried out. At present, there are also dozens of language isolates: languages that cannot be shown to be related to any other languages in the world. Among them are Basque (Basque language), spoken in Europe, Zuni (Zuni language) of New Mexico, Purépecha (Purépecha language) of Mexico, Ainu (Ainu language) of Japan, Burushaski (Burushaski language) of Pakistan, and many others.
Distribution of languages in the world]]''.
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The language family of the world that has the most speakers is the Indo-European languages, spoken by 46% of the world's population. This family includes major world languages like English (English language), Spanish (Spanish language), Russian (Russian language), and Hindustani (Hindustani language) (Hindi/Urdu). The Indo-European family achieved prevalence first during the Eurasian Migration Period (c. 400–800 AD), and subsequently through the European colonial expansion (History of colonialism), which brought the Indo-European languages to a politically and often numerically dominant position in the Americas and much of Africa. The Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken by 20%<ref name="EthnologueFamily"/> of the world's population and include many of the languages of East Asia, including Hakka, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and hundreds of smaller languages.
Africa is home to a large number of language families, the largest of which is the Niger-Congo language family (Niger–Congo languages), which includes such languages as Swahili (Swahili language), Shona (Shona language), and Yoruba (Yoruba language). Speakers of the Niger-Congo languages account for 6.9% of the world's population.<ref name="EthnologueFamily"/> A similar number of people speak the Afroasiatic languages, which include the populous Semitic languages such as Arabic (Arabic language), Hebrew language, and the languages of the Sahara region, such as the Berber languages and Hausa (Hausa language).<ref name="ComrieOgilvie"/>
The Austronesian languages are spoken by 5.5% of the world's population and stretch from Madagascar to maritime Southeast Asia all the way to Oceania.<ref name="EthnologueFamily"/> It includes such languages as Malagasy (Malagasy language), Māori (Maori language), Samoan (Samoan language), and many of the indigenous languages of Indonesia and Taiwan (Formosan languages). The Austronesian languages are considered to have originated in Taiwan around 3000 BC and spread through the Oceanic region through island-hopping, based on an advanced nautical technology. Other populous language families are the Dravidian languages of South Asia (among them Kannada Tamil (Tamil language) and Telugu (Telugu language)), the Turkic languages of Central Asia (such as Turkish (Turkish language)), the Austroasiatic (Austroasiatic languages) (among them Khmer (Khmer language)), and Tai–Kadai languages of Southeast Asia (including Thai (Thai language)).<ref name="ComrieOgilvie"/>
The areas of the world in which there is the greatest linguistic diversity, such as the Americas, Papua New Guinea, West Africa, and South-Asia, contain hundreds of small language families. These areas together account for the majority of the world's languages, though not the majority of speakers. In the Americas, some of the largest language families include the Quechumaran (Quechumaran languages), Arawak (Arawak languages), and Tupi-Guarani (Tupi-Guarani languages) families of South America, the Uto-Aztecan (Uto-Aztecan languages), Oto-Manguean (Oto-Manguean languages), and Mayan (Mayan languages) of Mesoamerica, and the Na-Dene (Na-Dene languages), Iroquoian (Iroquoian languages), and Algonquian (Algonquian languages) language families of North America. In Australia, most indigenous languages belong to the Pama-Nyungan family (Pama-Nyungan languages), whereas New Guinea is home to a large number of small families and isolates, as well as a number of Austronesian languages.<ref name="Katzner"/>