Basic Language Maps

Click on the picture for the full map.

The first linguistic maps in the world date from the 1800s, and in the first few decades, these were maps of individual words.1 The large language families are in bold face.

Indo-European Most of Europe, Iran and India

Sino-Tibetan Most of China and Myanmar

Afro-Asiatic North Africa and the Middle East

Altaic Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Manchuria (debatably, Japanese and Korean)

Niger-Kordofanian Sub-saharan Africa

Malayo-Polynesian Malaysia, Indonesia, other Oceania, Taiwan and Madagascar

Uralic Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia and certain people of northern, climactically challenging Russia

Dravidian Southern India and Sri Lanka

Caucasian/Kartvellian Georgia and the Caucasus Mountains

Nilo-Saharan Squished between Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Kordofanian

The Daic Family and the Austro-Asiatic Family Daic is for Thailand, Austro-Asiatic for Viet Nam and Cambodia

Xhoe Southwest Africa

Basque Northeast Spain and Southwest France

Pama-Nyungan Australian Aboriginal

Note: All the maps on this page are from Professor Boeree, who is not a linguist, but did come up with a fairly complete set of maps closely following what I gather is the general consensus among linguists.

Footnotes1.

"maps with a linguistic content have existed only since the early nineteenth century(the first appear to be by J. A. Schmeller and date from 1821 ...). Such early maps dealt primarily with sounds or words and, until recently, linguistic maps have continued to adopt an individual item-centered approach, usually showing the reflexes of an older phoneme or the response to a questionairre item.2

back

Indo-European	Most of Europe, Iran and India
Sino-Tibetan	Most of China and Myanmar
Afro-Asiatic	North Africa and the Middle East
Altaic	Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Manchuria (debatably, Japanese and Korean)
Niger-Kordofanian	Sub-saharan Africa
Malayo-Polynesian	Malaysia, Indonesia, other Oceania, Taiwan and Madagascar
Uralic	Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia and certain people of northern, climactically challenging Russia
Dravidian	Southern India and Sri Lanka
Caucasian/Kartvellian	Georgia and the Caucasus Mountains
Nilo-Saharan	Squished between Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Kordofanian
The Daic Family and the Austro-Asiatic Family	Daic is for Thailand, Austro-Asiatic for Viet Nam and Cambodia
Xhoe	Southwest Africa
Basque	Northeast Spain and Southwest France
Pama-Nyungan	Australian Aboriginal