A narrative encyclopedia of language families
How one language grew into many.
Each branch of a language family split from its parent for a reason: a sound law that changed every word, a migration across the sea, years of contact with neighbours. This is a record of those splits, when they happened and what caused them, and of the groupings that historical linguists still argue about.
- families
- 18
- branches
- 165
- turning points
- 602
- sound laws
- 76
The index
Families covered
Each family opens on its tree. Every limb is a branch with its own page.
Before the trees
How we know
Four short primers: how relationships are proved, what a sound law is, where the dates come from, and why some groupings stay disputed.
Read the primers →Across families
Compare sound laws side by side
Grimm’s law beside the Hawaiian shift, lost final consonants in Germanic and in the Pacific, on one timeline. Unrelated languages keep making the same kinds of change.
Open the timeline →What each branch records
What each branch records
Turning points
Dated splits, sound laws, contact, new scripts, extinctions and revivals, drawn as rings along each limb. Where the dating or the credit is disputed, the ring is dashed.
Contested classifications
Groupings that remain in dispute, set out with the evidence each side offers. They are shown as dotted arcs outside the tree, because they may never be settled.
Speakers and places
How many people speak each branch today, how secure its languages are on UNESCO's scale, where on the map they are spoken, and a short phrase in the language itself.
Figures, in context
The people who formulated a sound law or recorded a dying language appear next to the event they are connected with. They do not get separate biographies.