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 proto-language. Languages in the same group sometimes differ only in pronunciation or spelling.
Most languages 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, listening to the sounds of the wildlife of the area, and therefore some languages are very similar to the sounds made by animals.
Classification of 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 linguistic groups of the peoples of Eurasia. There are 17 of them.
All languages are divided into:
1. Indo-European family:
- Slavic group (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech and Bulgarian);
- German group (English, German, Norwegian and Swedish);
- Baltic group (Lithuanian and Latvian);
- Romance group (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian);
- Celtic group (Irish);
- Greek group (Greek);
- Iranian group (Tajik, Afghan and Ossetian);
- Indo-Aryan group (Hindustan and Nepali);
- Armenian group (Armenian);
2. The Kartvelian family (Georgian).
3.Afrasian family:
4. Ural-Yugogir family:
- Finno-Ugric group (Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish);
5. Altai family:
- Turk 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 language did not stop, but people settled, exploring new lands, inventing new words and expressions. So there were language groups, and then families. Each people of Eurasia developed their existing speech in their own way. People living in different places began to call the same things with different names. So 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. Many peoples of Eurasia speak these languages.
Such a popularity this language family owes to the conquerors and discoverers. Indo-European languages were born in Eurasia, and it is considered the birthplace of all mankind on a par 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 scholars associate such a wide spread of Spanish, English and Russian with historical events.
What is the difference between Chinese and Japanese?
A common mistake of many people is to consider Chinese and Japanese to be 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, having its own culture and language.
If the characters themselves, which are written in these countries, are difficult to distinguish, this does not mean that the languages are the same. Their first difference is that the Japanese write vertically, and the Chinese horizontally.
By ear, Japanese speech is much ruder than Chinese. Chinese is filled with soft sounds. Japanese speech is sharper. A deeper study will show that the words in these languages are different, as well as grammar and other rules.
Slavic languages
Slavic languages - the linguistic group of the Indo-European family. These languages are very similar. Speakers of Slavic languages can often almost understand each other, while speaking in different languages. This is especially true of 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 does the division of tribes.
Of the other representatives of the Indo-European language family, the Baltic group is the closest to the Slavic. Many scholars explain this by the long communication of representatives of these tribes.
Peoples living on the continent
In fact, there are a lot of peoples living on the mainland, but if we generalize, we can conditionally divide them by race into 2 groups: Caucasoid and Mongoloid. And these groups, in turn, are divided into subgroups.
Caucasoid race, consisting of the following groups:
- Slavic
- Baltic
- German
- Greek
- Armenian
- Finno-Ugric.
Mongoloid race:
- Turkic;
- Mongolian
- Korean
- Japanese
- Chukchi-Kamchatka;
- Sino-Tibetan.
Of course, much more ethnic groups and tribes live in Eurasia.
The 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. It is impossible not to mention India and China, the country 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 public entity. The list of dwarf countries include Liechtenstein, Andorra, Luxembourg and Monaco. The smallest states in Asia are Brunei, Maldives and Bahrain.
Eurasia is considered the most colorful continent of the planet, still! Its territory is occupied by 3/4 of the world's population with different skin colors, their own culture and traditions.