English Language Family Tree

Oh man – this is a beautiful rendering of the Indo-European language family, stretching from English, to Russian, to Hindi–and also, like anything worth viewing on the internet, augmented by playful cats (full image below). Artist Minna Sundberg regretted that there wasn’t space to include hundreds of smaller linguistic offshoots, so the map is definitely not exhaustive, but still an impressive undertaking. Many who commented on the site didn’t seem to understand the concept of a language family, wondering why other significant languages were excluded (Arabic, Turkish, Tamil, etc.). The answer is that they’re from different language families; they’re not included for the same same reason I don’t put Elvis on my own familiy tree (though you never know…). But it would be nice to see a graphic like this for other language families as well. Does anyone know any good ones?  In the meantime, if you’re speak English or any of the other languages below, enjoy this journey through your linguistic genealogy! Feel free to comment below or on the blog’s Facebook page. Follow on Twitter @chriskbacon