Genetic relationship (linguistics)  

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In linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between languages that are members of the same language family. The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics. Languages that possess genetic ties with one another belong to the same linguistic grouping, known as a language family. These ties are established through use of the comparative method of linguistic analysis.

Two languages are considered to be genetically related if one is descended from the other or if both are descended from a common ancestor. For example, Italian is descended from Latin. Italian and Latin are therefore said to be genetically related. Spanish is also descended from Latin. Therefore, Spanish and Italian are genetically related.

Contact with another language can result in influence by it. For example, English has been influenced by French, Persian has been influenced by Arabic, and Japanese has been influenced by Chinese. However, this influence by definition does not constitute a genetic relationship, or relates 2 very-distantly related languages more, as with English and French, which are linked by Indo-European.

The discipline of historical linguistics rests on the theory that almost all of the languages spoken in the world today can be grouped by derivation from common ancestral languages into a relatively small number of families. For example, English is related to other Indo-European languages and more specifically to the Germanic family (West Germanic branch), while Mandarin Chinese is related to many other Sino-Tibetan languages.

Mixed and hybrid languages

Mixed and hybrid languages constitute a special genetic type of languages. For example, according to Zuckermann (2009), "Israeli", his term for Modern Hebrew, is a hybrid language, both Semitic and Indo-European, and it "demonstrates that the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. 'Revived' languages are unlikely to have a single parent."

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Genetic relationship (linguistics)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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