How all the langauges on earth are connected

Language is an integral part of geography, with approximately 7,000 documented active languages existing today. However, about 44% of these are endangered, having fewer than a thousand speakers. Roughly half the global population speaks at least one of the 20 most common languages, with English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French topping the list. Languages evolve and spread over time, much like people, and tracing them back reveals convergence into common ancestral branches. To understand these connections, linguists have developed language family maps, illustrating how linguistic groups are ancestrally linked through geographic origin, migration, or conquest. Just as Spanish and Italian speakers can find common ground due to shared roots, languages within families exhibit "verbal DNA." Interestingly, some languages are isolates, not belonging to any family group. Today, about 80% of the world speaks a language from one of the top five language families: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic, and Austronesian. Asia boasts the highest number of languages (around 2,300), but the Americas have the highest concentration of distinct language families (estimated at 100). The Indo-European family is the largest and most widespread, encompassing languages from Hindi to Norwegian. This means European languages share a common ancestor with those in South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. The Indo-European languages are thought to have originated in the Caspian Steppe region of Central Asia, spreading across Europe and much of Eastern Turkey to Bangladesh. Many languages spoken in India today, like Hindi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, and Punjabi, are descended from a non-native ancestor. The most native Indian languages are the southern Dravidian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, which are ancient and unrelated to the Indo-European tongues. While Central Asia was once predominantly Indo-European, Turkic peoples migrated from Eastern Siberia and now dominate the region. The Indo-European family breaks down into eight main subgroups. In South Asia, the Indo-Aryan group includes languages like Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, and Sinhala. Armenian is an isolate within the Indo-European family, found in the Caucasus region. In Europe, Indo-European languages cover about 94% of the population and can be categorized into three main groups: Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. Slavic languages, originating likely in Belarus or Ukraine, include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin. Germanic languages, probably from southern Sweden or northern Germany, include English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch. Romance languages, spoken in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, include French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, all descending from vulgar Latin. Other Indo-European groups include Celtic languages (Ireland, Great Britain, Brittany) and Baltic languages (Latvian, Lithuanian). Non-Indo-European languages in Europe include Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish), Turkic (Turkish), and Basque, a unique isolate in southwestern France and northwestern Spain. Moving to Asia, the Sino-Tibetan family is dominant, especially in East Asia. Its origin is possibly in northern China, around the Yellow River Basin, associated with early Neolithic cultures. China historically hosted hundreds of diverse languages and dialects, many mutually unintelligible. Mandarin Chinese, or Putonghua, was officially defined and promoted as the national language of China in the 1950s, based on the Beijing dialect. Mandarin is the largest Sino-Tibetan language with over 1.3 billion speakers, followed by Yue (Cantonese), Wu, Tibetan, and Burmese. Further south, the Austronesian languages form Asia's second-largest family. Linguists believe they originated in Taiwan from indigenous peoples before Chinese migration. From Taiwan, Austronesians became the largest maritime language group, spreading across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This means Malaysians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Polynesians, Micronesians, and even people in Madagascar are linguistically related. Ancient Austronesians sailed as far as Madagascar, with Malagasy, the national language, being closest to the Ma'anyan language of Borneo. The largest Austronesian languages today include Malay, Indonesian, Javanese, Tagalog/Filipino, Sundanese, Cebuano, and Malagasy. In Africa, the Niger-Congo family is the largest, spoken by about 75% of Africans, spanning from West Africa to the south and east. This spread is largely attributed to the Bantu migration, estimated to have begun 1,500 to 6,000 years ago, possibly originating in Cameroon, Nigeria, or the Congo rainforest. The largest Niger-Congo language is Swahili, an official language in multiple East African countries and the only native African language of the AU. Other large languages include Yoruba and Igbo (Nigeria), and Fula/Fulani (Sahel regions). North of the Niger-Congo family is the Afroasiatic family, split between northern Africa and parts of Western Asia/Middle East. While its exact origin is debated, a growing consensus points to northeastern Africa, possibly around the Nile. Afroasiatic is the oldest proven language family on Earth. Arabic is its largest language, and all Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Oromo, and Amharic, fall within this group. Other languages include Hausa (northern Nigeria) and the Amazigh languages (Sahara). Although Indo-European languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese) dominate the Americas, the continent holds the highest concentration of distinct language families globally. Some indigenous languages, like Guarani in Paraguay, have official status. Bolivia, in 2009, recognized 36 native languages alongside Spanish. The largest Native American language families by speakers are Quechua and Aymara (Andes Mountains), Mayan (Mesoamerica), and Uto-Aztecan (Mexico), with Nahuatl being the largest. Other significant families include Otomanguean and Tupian in South America and the Caribbean. While language families group related languages, tracing back further becomes speculative. Languages don't leave fossils, and ancient recording devices didn't exist. The oldest known written language is Sumerian cuneiform from around 3,200 BC, though earlier proto-writing systems exist. Linguists reconstruct older languages by analyzing speech patterns and grammar, potentially dating back 10,000 to 12,000 years. Only Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic can be somewhat confidently partially reconstructed. Going back even further is controversial. Theories like the Dené–Yeniseian languages propose links between Athabaskan (North America) and Yeniseian (Siberia) languages, supporting the land bridge migration theory. The Nostratic hypothesis suggests a common ancestor for Indo-European and Afroasiatic. Most controversial is the Altaic or Trans-Eurasian theory, linking Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic, and Koreanic languages, which would restructure perceptions of these often-isolated languages. Languages frequently borrow words, making it difficult to trace origins. Arabic influenced Spanish and Swahili; Spanish influenced Tagalog; Chinese influenced Vietnamese; Persian influenced Turkic languages. Even modern English is about 70% French and Latin derived. The ultimate, controversial theory is monogenesis: that all known languages (excluding creoles, pidgins, and sign languages) descended from a single ancestral language. While fascinating, most linguists dismiss this idea as unprovable, given that evidence