The peoples of Eurasia make up almost three-quarters of the world's population. A large number of different ethnic groups live on the mainland, which differ in appearance, mentality, culture and language.
Each people of Eurasia belongs to a certain language family, which, in turn, is divided into groups. The speech of each people in the family is similar and comes from one common parent language. Languages in the same group sometimes differ only in pronunciation or spelling.
Most languages were formed territorially. This explains the fact that different peoples of Eurasia have almost the same or similar speech. There is a hypothesis that ancient people developed their speech by listening to the sounds of the wildlife of the area, and therefore some languages are very similar to the sounds that animals make.
Classification of the languages of the peoples of Eurasia
To date, 7 language families have been recorded, which unite all the languages and dialects of the peoples living on the mainland. Each of these families is divided into language groups of the peoples of Eurasia. There are 17 of them.
All languages are divided into:
1. Indo-Europeanfamily:
- Slavic group (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech and Bulgarian);
- German group (English, German, Norwegian and Swedish);
- B altic group (Lithuanian and Latvian);
- Roman group (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian);
- Celtic group (Irish);
- Greek group (Greek);
- Iranian group (Tajik, Afghan and Ossetian);
- Indo-Aryan group (Hindustani and Nepalese);
- Armenian group (Armenian);
2. Kartvelian family (Georgian).
3. African family:
Semitic group (Arabic);
4. Ural-Yukogir family:
Finno-Ugric group (Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish);
5. Altai family:
- Turkish group (Turkish, Kazakh and Kyrgyz);
- Mongolian group (Mongolian and Buryat);
- Japanese group (Japanese);
- Korean group (Korean);
6. Sino-Tibetan family (Chinese);
7. North Caucasian family:
- Abkhaz-Adyghe group (Abkhaz and Adyghe);
- Nakh-Dagestan group (Chechen).
How did the languages of the peoples of Eurasia develop?
On the mainland of Eurasia, the most ancient civilizations were created and developed: India, China and Mesopotamia. They gave development to all other peoples, their states, culture, traditions and speech.
The development of the language did not stop, and people settled, masteringnew lands, inventing new words and expressions. This is how language groups appeared, and then families. Each people of Eurasia developed the already existing speech in its own way. People living in different places began to call the same things by different names. This is how dialects appeared, which then turned into full-fledged national languages. Linguists divided all languages into families and groups for easier study.
Indo-European language family
The largest language family in the world is the Indo-European family. These languages are spoken by many peoples of Eurasia.
This language family owes its popularity to conquerors and discoverers. Indo-European languages were born in Eurasia, and it is considered the birthplace of all mankind along with Africa. People developed new territories and captured the indigenous peoples of other continents, then imposed their culture and language on them. Each people of Eurasia at that time tried to subjugate more territories and people. Many scientists associate such a wide spread of the Spanish, English and Russian languages precisely with historical events.
What is the difference between Chinese and Japanese?
A common mistake many people make is to think that Chinese and Japanese are similar or almost the same. These two languages are not just in different language families. People living in Japan and China are completely different, although they belong to the same race. Each of these countries is a separate people of Eurasia with its own culture and language.
If the characters themselves, which are written in thesecountries, it is quite difficult to distinguish, this does not mean that the languages are the same. The first difference is that the Japanese write vertically while the Chinese write horizontally.
Japanese sounds much rougher than Chinese. The Chinese language is filled with soft sounds. Japanese speech is harsher. A deeper study will show that the words in these languages are different, as well as grammar and other rules.
Slavic languages
Slavic languages are a language group of the Indo-European family. These languages are very similar. Speakers of Slavic languages can often understand each other almost without difficulty, while speaking in different languages. This is especially true for Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian speech.
Slavic languages began to develop with the advent of the first Slavic tribes. Each tribe used its own dialect. The greater the distance between them, the more differences appeared in speech.
All Slavic languages are divided into Eastern, Western and Southern. This division occurs territorially, as well as the division of tribes.
Of the other representatives of the Indo-European language family, the closest to the Slavic is the B altic group. Many scientists attribute this to the long communication between the representatives of these tribes.
Peoples living on the continent
In fact, there are a lot of peoples living on the mainland, but if you generalize, then they can be conditionally divided by race into 2 groups: Caucasoid and Mongoloid. And these groups, in turn, are divided into subgroups.
Caucasian race, consisting offollowing groups:
- Slavonic;
- B altic;
- German;
- Greek;
- Armenian;
- Finno-Ugric.
Mongoloid race:
- Turkic;
- Mongolian;
- Korean;
- Japanese;
- Chukotka-Kamchatka;
- Sino-Tibetan.
Of course, there are many more ethnic groups and tribes in Eurasia.
Peoples of Eurasia: countries
Perhaps, within the framework of a single article it is impossible to list all the countries of the continent, because there are about 99 of them! But it is worth mentioning the largest of them. Probably everyone knows that Russia is the largest state on the mainland. Not to mention India and China, the countries with the highest population density.
As for the smallest states, they are mainly located in the western territories of the mainland. For example, the Vatican is considered a unique state entity. The list of dwarf countries includes Liechtenstein, Andorra, Luxembourg and Monaco. The smallest countries in Asia are Brunei, Maldives and Bahrain.
Eurasia is considered the most colorful continent on the planet, of course! Its territory is occupied by 3/4 of the world's population with different skin colors, their own culture and traditions.
