Language family refers to a set of languages that are genetically related because they descend, through successive historical developments, from a single ancestral language, often termed a proto-language ^[1]. Membership in a language family is established through evidence of common inheritance rather than through geographical proximity, cultural contact, shared writing practices, or isolated similarities in vocabulary or grammatical structure ^[1][2]. Such evidence consists principally of systematic correspondences among languages in cognate lexical items and in inherited phonological and morphological patterns; these correspondences must be regular and capable of being accounted for by recurring historical sound changes ^[1]. A language family may contain branches, subbranches, and individual languages representing different degrees of divergence from the common ancestor. The term therefore denotes a historical genealogical classification, not a typological grouping of languages that merely share structural characteristics ^[2].