A language family groups related languages that developed from common ancestors. Families can divide into smaller branches, which then contain individual languages. section 11.0
Model a family as part of a hierarchy: a root such as Languages divides into families, branches, and leaf language nodes. This structure supports tree charts and other hierarchical visualizations. section 11.0 section 11.3
Languages in a tree chart
A dataset can place English, Hindi, and Spanish under Indo-European, with Germanic, Indo-Aryan, and Romance as branches. Sino-Tibetan contains Mandarin Chinese under the Sinitic branch. A D3 tree chart links these nodes, colors language nodes by family, and sizes them by total speakers. section 11.0 section 11.3
Table 11.1 Top five most spoken languages in the world
|
Language
|
Family
|
Branch
|
Total Speakers
|
Native Speakers
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
English
|
Indo-European
|
Germanic
|
1,132 M
|
379 M
|
|
Mandarin Chinese
|
Sino-Tibetan
|
Sinitic
|
1,117 M
|
918 M
|
|
Hindi
|
Indo-European
|
Indo-Aryan
|
615 M
|
341 M
|
|
Spanish
|
Indo-European
|
Romance
|
534 M
|
460 M
|
|
French
|
Indo-European
|
Romance
|
280 M
|
77 M
|
Compare languages, families, branches, total speakers, and native speakers in a compact dataset. section 11.0
