Language family

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related.

Extends: [Historical linguistics](https://wikipedia.org.ai/Historical linguistics), [Language families](https://wikipedia.org.ai/Language families), [Types of groupings](https://wikipedia.org.ai/Types of groupings)