the major families of languages
which we cannot trace back to a proto-family descended from a proto-language,
include:

• Athapaskan
  native to, and spoken in, North America, and including Aztec. | Links
  
  
• Niger-Congo, or Bantu
  native to, and spoken in, western & southern Africa. | Links
  
  
• Mongolian
  native to, and spoken in, East Asia, and including Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. | Links
  
  
• Afro-Asiatic
  native to, and spoken in, northeast Africa and southwest Asia, and including Egyptian, Ge'ez, and Semitic. | Links
  
  
• Indo-European family, spoken before Columbus from northern India in the southeast, and the Takla Makan desert at the foot of the Tien Shan Mountains in Chinese Turkestan, to Iceland in the northwest; and spoken today on every continent of planet Earth; and whose branches are the following:
  • Tocharian
  • Indo-Iranian
  • Hittite
  • Armenian
  • Slavic
  • Albanian
  • Hellenic (Greek)
  • Italic
  • Celtic
  • Germanic

© 1998–2007 by Arden Schaeffer, 1932-2032?, author & webster
at URL http://www.nola.house.name/lang/en/i/idiom/germanic.html
Edition of 2007/06/04 || Links: | page-top | Indo-European | idioms | Hub | Portal ||