What’s on the Language Families poster
A 7-row table: Family · Speakers · Includes.
By number of speakers.
- Indo-European — ~3.2bn — English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian
- Sino-Tibetan — ~1.4bn — Mandarin, Cantonese, Burmese
- Niger-Congo — ~700m — Swahili, Yoruba, Zulu
- Afro-Asiatic — ~600m — Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic
- Austronesian — ~400m — Indonesian, Tagalog, Malagasy
- Dravidian — ~250m — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada
- Turkic — ~200m — Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh
Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are Uralic, not Indo-European — surrounded by relatives they are not related to.
Questions about the Language Families poster
- What’s on the Language Families poster?
- A 7-row table: Family · Speakers · Includes. By number of speakers. Indo-European — ~3.2bn — English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian; Sino-Tibetan — ~1.4bn — Mandarin, Cantonese, Burmese; Niger-Congo — ~700m — Swahili, Yoruba, Zulu; Afro-Asiatic — ~600m — Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic; Austronesian — ~400m — Indonesian, Tagalog, Malagasy; Dravidian — ~250m — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada; Turkic — ~200m — Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh. Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are Uralic, not Indo-European — surrounded by relatives they are not related to.
- Who is the Language Families poster for?
- Language Families belongs to the Languages section rather than to a school year, because languages is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning how languages work can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Language Families poster?
- Related means descended from a common ancestor, not that the languages sound alike. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Language Families belongs on the wall where that languages work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Language Families?
- Bilingualism, Grammatical Case and Code-Switching sit alongside Language Families in the Languages section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.BilingualismGrammatical CaseCode-Switching
- Is the Language Families poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Language Families downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Languages section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Language Families poster print at?
- Language Families is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Language Families loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Language Families on the same wall.
Browse every Languages poster, or start from the full catalogue.