A popular way to display family ties is via a human tree. In the past linguistic professionals have done the same thing to show the relationships between languages. The problem is that these trees were often unprofessional and lacking in beauty. Graphic artist Minna Sundberg changed that. For Sundberg is the famous creator of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent. In the post-apocalyptic Nordic world that Sundberg creates they are obviously speaking a variety of languages. Sundberg wanted a way to show the relationship between the languages and created an amazing graphic family tree of languages from Indo-European and Uralic origins. The poster has become very popular and you can get a copy of it from Sundberg’s website for $30.
Bigger leaves represent more people using the language as their native tongue
Click to enlarge
The European branch splits in three: Slavic, Romance and Germanic. A rather complicated relationship between the Slavic languages is visible
It also shows the Germanic roots of English language
Surprisingly, unlike its Scandinavian neighbors, the Finnish language belongs to Uralic family
The Indo-Iranian group reveals the links between Hindi and Urdu as well as some regional Indian languages like Rajasthani
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