相信大多数人对语言学的兴趣都始于世界语言的分类和归属吧！在你浏览各种资料时，偶尔会有“日耳曼语族”“汉藏语系”这样的术语映入眼帘。今天Benjamin就带领大家来系统了解一下语言的归类和划分，以及那些很可能会“惊艳”到你的“小语种”们！

Probably most people's interest in linguistics started with the classification of world languages, and terms like Germanic group or Sino-Tibetan family may have caught your eye when you were glancing through websites. So let's make a real investigation into the meaning of such terms, and have an overview of some amazing facts about world languages!

【太长不看版/For Slackers】

• 世界上有约7000种语言，其中一些在发展壮大，一些则濒临灭绝。当前世界上使用人口最多的九种语言是：汉语、西班牙语、英语、阿拉伯语、印地语、孟加拉语、葡萄牙语、俄罗斯语、日语。联合国六大官方语言为：汉语，英语，法语，俄语，西班牙语，阿拉伯语。（There are about 7000 languages in the world. Some are growing, some are dying. The 10 most spoken languages are: Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, Hindi, Bangli, Portugese, Russian and Japanese. The six official languages of the United Nations are: Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish and Arabic.）

• 语言根据亲缘关系划分为语系、语族和语支。亲缘关系同时也反映了语言的演化历程。世界上的主要语系有：印欧语系、汉藏语系、闪含语系、阿尔泰语系等。语言学习的难度来自于该语言与母语之间的亲疏，而非语言本身。（Languages are categorized into families, groups and branches according to their closeness with each other. This categorization also reflect the language's evolutional course. Some major language families include: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Semito-Hamitic, Altaic. The difficulty in learning a certain language comes from its remoteness to your mother tongue, rather than the language itself.）

• 汉语主要有七大方言：官话、吴语、粤语、闽语、湘语、赣语、客家话。包括蒙古语、满语、藏语、壮语等少数民族语言，中国境内的本土语言有近300种。（The seven major dialects of Chinese are: Mandarin, Wu, Yue(Cantonese), Min(Hokkien), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. There are nearly 300 indigenous languages in China, including minority languages such as Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan and Zhuang.）

• 语言之间的分界线是模糊的，一种语言内的方言之间更是如此。没有哪一种语言比另一种语言更高级；方言也不比通用语低级。（Language boundaries are blurred, especially between dialects of the same language. No language is superior to any other. Dialects are not inferior to the standard speech.）

据Ethnologue: Languages of the World（21st edition）统计，目前世界上有7097种仍在使用的语言，其中三分之二在亚洲和非洲。使用人数最多的23种语言囊括了世界上二分之一的人口。历史上曾经存在过的语言，如拉丁语和梵语，已经几乎没有人使用，因此被称为“死语言”。由于全球化等因素，语言的多样性正在减少。目前世界上有约三分之一的语言拥有不到1000母语者，属于濒危语言。

According to Ethnologue: Languages of the World (21st edition), there are currently 7097 languages still in use. 2/3 of them are from Asia and Africa. The most spoken 23 languages cover about half the world's population. Some languages in history, such as Latin and Sanskrit, now have hardly any users, hence they are called "dead languages". Due to globalization and some other factors, many languages are dying out. About 1/3 of nowaday languages have less than 1000 native speakers, which are thus considered as endangered.

数据来源：

http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size

历时语言学，又称为历史语言学，是十九世纪语言学家们的主要研究内容。语言学家们发现，欧洲各民族的语言之间在词汇、语法、发音等各方面存在很大共性，且和远在印度的梵语也有相似之处。在长久探索之后，人们认为，印度（北部）和欧洲语言具有亲缘关系，如同一种语言随时间流逝产生的诸多方言。后来通过细致的语料分析和比较，印欧语言的谱系和演化历程逐渐明晰。类比生物分类和进化树的方法，语言学家们提出语系、语族、语支等术语来描述语言谱系的层级，提出了“印欧语系”的概念。后来这一方法被欧洲语言学家们用于考察世界上其他的语言，对亚洲、非洲和美洲印第安人的语言也做了类似的处理，做出的结论逐渐成为学界的共识。

Diachronic linguistics, also called historical linguistics, was the main subject of 19th century linguists. They discovered that there are many similarities between European languages, and between them and Sanskrit in northern India, in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. After long exploration, they came to believe that these languages probably shared the same ancestor, and are like the dialects of the same ancient language, becoming mutually unintelligible because of long-time independent evolution. Through close investigation and comparison of linguistic data, the relationships among Indo-European languages became clear. Borrowing methods from biology and evolution theory, linguists used terms like family, group and branch to describe the heirarchy of language classification, and the idea "Indo-European family" was proposed. Later this method was used by European linguists to analyze and categorize languages from other parts of the world, and they made many conclusions that are still well accepted today. 

印欧语系（图片源自网络）

一种语言的语音最容易随时间发生变化，而词汇、语法则相对变化较慢，因此后两者也成为历时语言学研究的主要依据。一般而言，一种语言中有两个方面是不太可能变化的：语序和基础词汇。所谓基础词汇就是指身体部位、日月星辰等与基本生活紧密相关的词汇（很可能也是最早出现的一批词汇）。

Phonology (the pronunciation of words) is most easily changed as time passes by, while vocabulary and grammar change rather slowly. The latter two then became the main evidence for the diachronic study of a language. Generally speaking, there are two aspects in a language that are quite unchangeable: word order and basic vocabulary. Basic vocabulary means words that refer to basic concepts in life, such as body parts, time, the sun and the moon (these are probably also the first words in a language). 

如果你学过德语和法语，你会发现他们是非常不同的。而英语似乎介于二者之间。语中有约40%的词汇源自法语和拉丁语，但是最常用的3000个词汇中，非英语词占比不到10%。这也是为什么语言学家认为基础词汇可以很好地反应语言的“血统”。事实上，英语和德语同属日耳曼语族，而法语属于罗曼语族。

German and French are very different, while English seems to be in between. This is because English was profoundly influeced by French in history, obsorbing a great amount of words from it. One estimation says that about 40% of modern English vocabulary are from French or Latin; however, among the most commonly used 3000 words, non-English source words account for less than 10%. This shows why linguists find basic vocabulary a good indication of the "blood" of a language. In fact, both English and German are Germanic languages, while French is a Romance language.

汉藏语系分布与分支

（图片源自网络）

然而这种方法在处理东亚语言的时候遇到了困难。由于地理、历史、文化、政治等原因，东亚各语言之间交流借鉴非常频繁，尤其是日语、朝鲜语受汉语影响非常大，表现在许多基础词汇的相同。然而很明显的事实是，日语、朝鲜语的语法特征与汉语极不相符。同时与西方语言用记音符号书写不同，古代人用用原本表意的汉字来记录日语、朝鲜语，更是让东亚语言的历时研究雪上加霜。下图对比了汉语和日语在语法上的异同。汉语是一种分析语，通过语序或增加新字而非词形变化来表示时态、单复数等含义；日语是一种黏着语，通过在动词后添加词缀来表示意义变化。汉语的典型语序是主谓宾，而日语的典型语序是主宾谓。

This method encountered difficulty in dealing with East Asian languages. Due to geographical, historical, cultural and political factors, languages in East Asia enjoyed frequent communication and borrowing, especially between Japanese, Korean and Chinese. One peculiar fact is that Japanese and Chinese share many basic words, while their grammatical features are obviously different. Also, ancient Japanese used Chinese characters, which stood for meaning rather than sounds, to record their own language (so did ancient Koreans), making the situation even more complicated. The following table compared the grammatical differences between Chinese and Japanese. Chinese is an analytical language, which means it expresses meanings like tense or plurality by adding new characters rather than inflection; Japanese is an agglutinating languag, which means it changes verb endings to express grammatical meanings. As for word order, Chinese is basically an SVO language, while Japanese is SOV.

语法对比（@Paul Langfocus。URL：

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHC3i6N9Wvk）

目前语言学家比较认可的一个方案是将日语、朝鲜语或算作独立的语言，或算入阿尔泰语系的满-通古斯语族。不同的语言学家对语系的划分意见可能不同。较为广泛承认、争议较少的语系有4个，分别是：印欧语系、汉藏语系、闪含语系、阿尔泰语系。其他常见的语系还有：尼日尔-刚果语系、南岛语系、乌拉尔语系、爱斯基摩-阿留申语系等。

A widely accepted solution is to treat Japanese and Korean as either isolated languages, or a sub-category of the Manchu-Tongusic group of the Altaic family. Different linguists may have different ideas about how world languages should be categorized. There are four major language families that are generally acknowleged: the Indo-European family, the Sino-Tibetan family, the Semito-Hamitic family, and the Altaic family. Other frequently mentioned families include: the Niger-Congo family, the Astronesian family, the Uralic family, and the Eskimo-Aleut family. 

世界语言分布示意图（图片源自网络）

中国学界通常认为，汉语共有七中主要方言，分别是：官话、吴语、粤语、闽语、湘语、赣语、客家话（所谓“台湾话”就是闽语的一种）。其中官话覆盖地区最广、人口最多，普通话所基于的北京话也是官话的一种。根据地域差异，官话又可以分为北方官话、西南官话、西北官话等。有意见认为应该将晋语（山西话）也处理为一种方言，而非官话的子类。

Chinese scholars generally agree that modern Chinese has 7 major dialects: Mandarin, Wu, Yue(Cantonese), Min(Hokkien), Xiang, Gan and Hakka (the so-called "Taiwanese" is a form of Min). Among the dialects, Mandarin covers most regions and population. Mandarin is also the basis of Putonghua, the standard Chinese language (sometimes the term "Mandarin" is also used in its narrow sense to refer to Putonghua only). There are opinions that regard Jin, spoken in Shanxi province, as a major dialect as well, rather than a subcategory of Mandarin.

汉语方言分布图（图片源自网络）

除汉语外，中国境内还存在许多少数民族语言。根据Ethnologue统计，中国本土语言（不包括移民等因素带来的外来语）包括汉语在内共有275种。一些较为常见的少数民族语言有蒙古语、满语、藏语、壮语等。新中国成立后，中央政府大力扶植少数民族语言的规范和普及，为其中的许多创造了文字。

Apart from Chinese, there are many national minorities in China, most of which have their own languages. According to Ethnologue, there are 275 indigenous languages in China, including Chinese. Common minority languages include Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan and Zhuang. After the establishment of the PRC, the government promoted the standardization and popularization of minority languages, and created writing systems for many of them.

方言是一种正常的现象，几乎每一种语言都有方言。即使通过暴力、政策或文化影响暂时消除了某一语言内部的方言，只要该语言有不止一个使用者，早晚还是会发生分化，形成新的方言。实际上，语言在时间和空间上的分布都是相当连续的，严格划定语言之间的界限是不可能的。语言学中常举的一个例子是：如果你从维也纳走到阿姆斯特丹，每隔十公里记录一下当地的语言，你会发现相邻两个采样点之间都能互相听懂，而接近起点和接近终点的两个地方的语言就几乎无法交流了，语言也从德语变成了荷兰语。

The existence of dialects is a normal phenomenon. Almost all languages have dialects. Even if a language is ridded of dialects due to violence, policies or cultural influences, new dialects will form up sooner or later, as long as more than one person speaks the language. In fact, language distribution is quite continuous, both temporally and spatially, and to strictly determine the boundaries of a language is impossible. One usually mentioned fact in linguistics is this: Go from Vienne to Amsterdam, and record the language spoken by the local people every ten kilometers. You will find that between every two sample points the people can communicate with each other, but two places from near Vienne and from near Amsterdam will have unintelligible languages, one German and the other Dutch.

德语方言分布（图片源自网络）

现实生活中，人们判断语言的边界时，更多是依靠政治、文化、民族等社会性标准，而非语言学标准。比如汉语的几个方言，如果单纯从“是否能互相听懂、顺畅交流”这一标准来看，恐怕就要被认定为不同的语言。然而实际上，除了语音上的差异之外，汉语方言之间在词汇、语法方面有相当多的共性，且都能用汉字顺利地记录，因此把他们处理为不同语言是不合适的。又比如，北欧语言之间相互交流的障碍很小，却因为不同国家的存在而分为挪威语、瑞典语、丹麦语、冰岛语等不同的语言。因此，方言的划分和地位更多地与社会因素有关，而在语言学层面上没有哪一种语言的地位高于另一种语言。

In reality, when people are trying to define the boundaries of languages, they rely more on political, cultural and ethnical standards, rather than linguistic ones. For example, if we strickly perform the "mutual intelligibility" standard, the dialects of Chinese mentioned above must be regarded as different languages. However, despite phonological differences, these dialects share a lot in common in vocabulary and grammar, and they can all be quite well recorded with Chinese characters, thus treating them as individual languages is inappropriate. Another example is that of the Scandinavian languages. People speaking Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic can understand each other quite well, but they still see what they speak as severa languages rather than dialects of a single language, because they have different countries. As you can see, the definition of dialects and languages are more related to social factors. In linguistics all languages are equal: no language is superior or inferior to any other language.

虽然如此，为了消除文盲、促进社会发展等，多数国家都会将某一种或几种广泛使用的语言确立为官方语言，并加以推广和标准化。比如中国的官方语言是普通话，加拿大的官方语言是英语和法语。有意思的是，美国没有确立英语为官方语言。日语也并没有被日本政府确立为官方语言。实际上，世界上唯一以日语为官方语言的地区在日本的前殖民地帕劳。

Still, to eliminate illiteracy and to promote social development, most governments will set one or two widely spoken languages as the official language, and standardize it and expand its coverage. For example, the official language of China is Putonghua, and the official languages of Canada are English and French. It is curious, though, that English is not set as the official language of the United States; neither is Japanese the official language of Japan. In fact, the only place in the world where Japanese is an official language is Palau, a former Japanese colony. 

联合国也有自己的“官方语言”：根据1946年联合国大会决议2(I)，汉语、法语、英语、俄语、西班牙语五种语言为联合国工作语言；1973年加入阿拉伯语，形成现在的六种工作语言。联合国中，英语以英式英语为准，汉语以简体中文为准。

It is worth mentioning that the United Nations also has its own "official languages". In 1946 the General Assembly resolution 2(I) made Chinese, French, English, Russian and Spanish the five working languages of the UN. In 1973 Arabic was added as the sixth working language. The UN standard for English is British English, and for Chinese the simplified Chinese characters. 

任何语言都有自己的独特之处。一门语言或许词汇丰富，但是语法简单；或许构词规则，但是动词变位复杂。根据乔姆斯基的理论，语言与其主要组成部分的关系大致可以表示为：

Every language has its uniqueness. One language may be rich in vocabulary but have very simple grammar; another may have very regular morphology but complicated conjugation of verbs. According to N. Chomsky, the relation between a language and its components can be vaguely illustrated by this equation:

L=V×G

其中L代表语言，V代表词汇，G代表语法。人类语言的复杂度相差无几。对于语言学习者来说，一门语言的难度来自于该语言与学习者母语之间的亲疏关系，而非该语言本身。因此欧洲人学习邻国的语言会相对容易，而学习亚洲语言则会觉得困难重重；一个日本人学习汉语可能比较吃力，学习韩语则相对轻松。下图对比了欧洲国家国民英语平均水平与该国家主要语言的语言学分类，可见同属日耳曼语族的德语和北欧语言母语者英语水平普遍较高，而已经属于另一个语系了的土耳其语（阿尔泰语系）母语者的英语水平则相对较低。

Here L stands for language, V for vocabulary, and G for gramamr. Human languages are close in their compexity. The true difficulty in learning a language comes from its remoteness to the learner's mother tongue, rather than the language itself. Therefore, it is relatively easy for European people to learn to speak the language of a neighboring country, but they may feel it really hard to learn an Asian language; a Japanese will probably find it challenging to speak Chinese very well, but not so much if they want to speak Korean. The following pictures compares the relation between average English level of citizens and linguistic distance from other languages of European countries. You can see there is a clear correlation.

欧洲语言与国民英语水平

（图片源自网络）