Language families

Language families are groups of languages with a common ancestor that evolved (usually) within a related geographic region. For example, the Romance language family consists of languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin (late-period Latin) in the Southern European region. The Nilo-Saharan language family evolved in the Nile Delta during the time of the Nubian kingdom. There are roughly 150 language families rolled into major language families that exist today, plus several language isolates that do not have relationships with other languages (Australian Tiwi, for instance). Language isolates have no genetic ancestors linked to other languages. Campbell gives seven major language families (one per continent), though other researchers classify major language families into other groups of languages.

Language drift and relationships

Language families emerged as different populations of genetic ancestor languages became geographically isolated enough for the ancestor...