Language Families And Linguistic Diversity Questions Medium
The major language families spoken in the Middle East are Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Turkic.
The Afro-Asiatic language family includes several subfamilies, such as Semitic (which includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic), Berber (spoken mainly in North Africa), and Cushitic (spoken in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya).
The Indo-European language family is represented in the Middle East by the Iranian branch, which includes languages like Persian (Farsi), Kurdish, and Pashto. Additionally, Armenian, a separate branch of the Indo-European family, is spoken in parts of the Middle East.
The Turkic language family is spoken by various Turkic ethnic groups in the region, including Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen.
It is important to note that there are also smaller language families and isolated languages spoken in the Middle East, such as the Kartvelian family (including Georgian) and the Nilo-Saharan family (including Nobiin in Sudan). However, the Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Turkic language families are the major ones in terms of the number of speakers and geographical distribution in the Middle East.