Racial and Language Structure of the World Population

Lecture 5

Population of the World (Part II)

Racial and Language Structure of the World Population

The mankind can be divided into 4 races

- European (43%)

- Mongolian (19%) includes Asian and American branches

- Negro (7%)

- Australian (1%)

These races combine about 70% of the world population. The others are mixed.

· Malagasy (Mongolian and Equatorial) – the inhabitants of Madagascar and Malaysia.

· Metis (European and Indian) - Latin America

· Mulatto (European and Negro) - Jamaica, Haiti

· Sambo (Indian and Negro) - Bolivia, Paraguay.

Some nations are widespread and include millions of representatives: the Chinese (over 1 bln), the Bengalese. There are some minor nations as well: Aleutian, Tofalar, Nganasan (about some thousands of representatives).

Population classification can be based on the languages people speak. There are language families which include linguistically and genetically close languages. Families are divided into groups. There are about 30 language families in the world.

The Indo-European Language Family (Индоевропейская языковая семья)

The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), Southwest Asia and Central Asia. Contemporary languages in this family with more than 100 million native speakers each include Hindi, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, French, German and Punjabi, and the classical languages of Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian. Numerous national or minority languages with fewer than 100 million native speakers also exist. Indo-European has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately 3 billion native speakers. The Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European.

There are language isolates, unrelated to any of the language families: Basque thrives between France and Spain. Burushaski and Nahali are found in the Indian subcontinent. Greek is a language isolate as well,

The Sino-Tibetan Family (Сино-тибетская)

A very important language family, it includes some 250 languages. Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) alone is spoken by one billion people!

The Afro-Asiatic Family ( Афро-азиатская)

This is a major language group, with 240 languages and 250 million speakers. It includes ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as the great Nigerian language Hausa. The many dialects of Arabic alone are spoken by as many as 200 million people.

The Altaic Family (with the isolates Ket and Gilyak) (Алтайская)

There are about 60 langauges in the Altaic family, with about 250 million speakers. Included are Turkish and Mongolian. A family is spread from Europe (Turkish) through Central Asia (Uzbek), Mongolia (Mongolian), to the Far East (Korean, Japanese).

There is considerable controversy about this family. First, it is often classified with the Uralic languages, which have similar grammatical structures.

Second, many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included, or that these last three are even related to each other!

Also represented here are the language isolates Gilyak and Ket.

The Niger-Kordofanian Family (Нигеро-кордофанская)

The largest sub-Saharan African family of languages, it includes some 1,000 languages with close to 200 million speakers. Best known are Mandinka, Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu.

The Nilo-Saharan Family (Нило-сахарская)

With about 140 languages and 10 million speakers. The best known of these languages is Maasai, spoken by the tall warrior-herdsmen of east Africa.

The Khoisan family (Койсанская)

About 30 languages with about 100,000 speakers, the Khoisan family includes the people we call the Bushmen and the Hottentots.

The Uralic-Yukaghir Family (Уральская)

There are about 20 languages with 20 million speakers in this family. Best known are Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Saami, the language of the Lapplanders.

The Caucasian Family (Кавказская)

There are 38 Caucasian languages between Russia and the Middle East, with about five million speakers. Abkhasian and Chechenian are the most familiar.

The Kartvelian languages are considered by many linguists to be a separate family, possibly related to Indo-European. Its prime example is Georgian.

The Malayo-Polynesian Family(Малайско-полинезийская)

A family consisting of over 1000 languages spread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well South East Asia. Languages include Malay, Indonesian, Maori and Hawaian.

Austro-Asiatic Family (Австро-азиатская)

This family includes a scattered group of languages in Asia. They are found from eastern India to Vietnam. Languages include Vietnamese and Khmer.

The Chukchi-Kamchatkan ("Paleosiberian") Family (Чукотско-камчатская)

Perhaps the smallest family, this one includes 5 languages with 23,000 speakers in the farthest northeastern areas of Siberia. Many linguists consider these two unrelated families.

Самые распространенные языки мира (с учетом лиц, говорящих на нескольких языках, млн. чел.)

Китайский язык удерживает лидерство по распространенности за счет числа жителей КНР, но в международный оборот он пока не включен. Однако если Китай сохранит гигантские темпы экономического роста, то измениться и статус его языка. Истории такие примеры известны: в начале 16 века в мире лидировал португальский язык, затем почти на три столетия его сменил французский, теперь английский. Нынешнее первенство английского языка связано с его широким распространением в бизнесе, менеджменте, информационных технологиях и с экономической мощью США. Бывший министр финансов Великобритании Гордон Браун назвал английский язык (языковые школы, платное обучение иностранных студентов в вузах и колледжах) более доходным для экономики страны бизнесом, нежели производство и экспорт нефти, кораблестроение, авиационная и пищевая промышленность. Языковой бизнес пополняет казну более чем на 15 млрд. фунтов стерлингов.