Pacific and African Languages
In the Pacific, the three main language groups are, first, the Malayo-Polynesian languages, a family that has a Western or Indonesian branch and an Eastern or Oceanic branch; second, the Papuan languages, a group of New Guinea, a number of and families (some possibly related to one another); and third, the Australian aboriginal languages (related to one another but not to non-Australian languages). The extinct Tasmanian language may represent a fourth group.

The languages of the Hamito-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic family are spoken in the Middle East and Africa. The family's five branches are Semitic, including Arabic and Hebrew (see Semitic Languages); Chad, including Hausa, widely spoken in West Africa; Berber; Cushitic; and (now extinct) Egyptian-Coptic. Africa has three other important families. Of the Niger-Kordofanian family, the branch is the Niger-Congo; it includes Africa's most group, the Bantu languages (such as Swahili and Zulu). In the Nilo-Saharan family the sub-division is the Chari-Nile; its Nilotic branch includes such languages as Masai. The Khoisan family the click languages of the San and other peoples of the Kalahari Desert.

Native American Languages
Attempts to classify native American languages have resulted in the conservative of more than 150 families. In classifications these are further grouped into about a dozen superstocks, but recent studies have such groupings. Even with a , many small families remain to larger groups, and many exist. Along the Arctic coast and in Greenland, Inupiaq (Eskimo-Aleut family) is spoken by the Inuit (Eskimo). Sub-arctic Canada includes various Athabascan and Algonquian languages. Native American languages in the United States east of the Mississippi River are Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean. The Great Plains family is the Siouan, but Caddoan and western Algonquian languages are also spoken. Shoshonean languages (Uto-Aztecan family) the Great Basin, bordered on the north by the Sahaptian family. On the Northwest Coast are the Salishan and Wakashan families, Tlingit (thought to be related to Athabascan languages), and a probable , Haida. The Apachean branch of Athabascan is found throughout the Southwest, alongside the Yuman family and the Pima-Papago language (Uto-Aztecan) of Arizona and southern California. In California many small families exist, their relationships often disputed.

Important in Mexico and Central America are the Uto-Aztecan family (Aztec or Nahuatl), the Otomanguean superstock (Mixtec, Otomí, and Zapotec, among others), and families such as Mixe-Zoquean, Totonacan, and Tequistlatecan. The Mayan family about two dozen languages with millions of speakers.

Depending on their , linguists classify South American languages into 90- families and or into three nearly all-inclusive superstocks (superfamilies, or groups of families that may be remotely related); Macro-Chibchan, Andean-Equatorial, and Gê-Pano-Carib. The most widely spoken native South American languages are Quechua and Aymara, Guaraní, and Mapuche or Araucanian. Important in Central America and northern South America are Macro-Chibchan languages (such as Guaymí, Paez, and Warao) and also the large Arawakan group (including Island or Black Carib, Guajiro, and Campa). The widely accepted Macro-Gê superstock includes many languages spoken in the Brazilian tropics.

Classification
The geographic, or , classification of languages is also useful. classification is based on the observation of the ways in which neighbouring languages have influenced one another. In discussions of the Northwest Coast languages of North America, for example, statements are often made that these languages share various consonants of a certain type, or that they all have a large fishing-related vocabulary. such statements is an that the exist because, over time, these languages have borrowed grammar, sounds, and vocabulary from one another. Such resemblances, however, do not necessarily either genetic relationship or typological .