Language family

Language families are groups of languages that are related to each other because they come from a common older language. The languages in such a family are similar in their vocabulary or structure.

For example, French and Spanish both come from Latin. Latin was spoken a long time ago, and some of the people who spoke it started to speak different ways - for the word "good", one group started saying "bueno" while another group started saying "bon". Most words are said a little differently in Spanish and French, so the two are called different languages.

Most languages belong to a language family, but some languages do not. These languages are called language isolates.

There also are constructed languages, such as Esperanto. Constructed languages are made for different reasons: making a 'world language', for fun, for use in fiction, etc.