ItThere seemsis likelysome (but by no means certain)possiblity that all languages spoken in the world today are genetically related, by descent from a single ancestral tongue; the established language families would then be only the upper branches of the genealogical tree of all languages. For this reason, isolate languages have been the object of uncountable studies seeking to uncover their genealogy. Thus, for instance, Basque has been compared with every living and extinct language family, from [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]] to the [[South Caucasian languages|South Caucasian]] — without convincing results, of course.
