phylum
- noun
- /ˈfaɪləm/
- Specialized
:
filo
- The Indo-European phylum includes many languages spoken in Europe.
Examples
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Some propose that several language families in Papua New Guinea belong to the same phylum.
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The Niger-Congo phylum includes hundreds of languages spoken across Africa.
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Linguists debated the classification of languages within the Austronesian phylum.
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Can you name a language from the Slavic phylum?
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Languages in the Sino-Tibetan phylum include Mandarin and Cantonese.
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Linguists classify the languages of the Uralic phylum as distinctive.
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Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric phylum, which is part of the larger Uralic family.
Compounds
- Specialized
Sea animals that have two hard shells on top and bottom and look like a clam but are not clams
- Specialized
A group of small water animals that live together in colonies in seas and rivers
- Specialized
A group of small transparent worms called arrowworms that eat tiny sea animals in oceans worldwide
- Specialized
A major animal group with a backbone or soft rod along the back at some stage, like mammals
- Specialized
A group of water animals like jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals that have stinging cells
- Specialized
Tiny single-celled living things that live in fresh or salt water and have special colours
- Specialized
A small group of sea animals called comb jellies that have soft bodies and move with rows of tiny hairs
- Specialized
A group of tiny water animals with a wheel of tiny hairs at the front
- Specialized
A group of soft sea worms with a front part you can pull inside, called peanut worms
- Specialized
A group of sea animals with body parts that spread out from the middle, like starfish and sea urchins
- Specialized
A group of small water animals called moss animals that live in colonies and filter food
- Specialized
A large group of long, thin worms without body sections found almost everywhere
- Specialized
A group of mostly sea worms with long bodies and a soft arm they can push out
- Specialized
A group of soft flat animals like tapeworms and planarians that lack bones and hearts
- Archaic
A group of deep-sea worms with beard-like tentacles placed in a different worm family
Surface Forms
Etymology
The word phylum comes from the Greek phylon, which means 'tribe' or 'race'. Linguists use it in a similar way to mean a very large group of related languages, so a language phylum is like one big 'tribe' of languages.
