The following are the most important language families and phyla commonly distinguished, presented here in a more or less geographical order.

a) The Khoisan family
b) The Niger-Congo family
c) The Nilo-Saharan family
d) The Afro-Asiatic family
e) The Indo-European family
f) The Dravidian family
g) The Caucasian family
h) The Uralic family
i) The Altaic family
j) The Sino-Tibetan family
k) The Austro-Asiatic family
l) The Daic family
m) The Austronesian family
n) The Indo-Pacific languages
o) Australian languages
p) Palaeo-Siberian languages
q) Amerindian languages
r) Language isolates

These 18 different families/languages will be explained in more detail in the following pages.