Astonishingly large number and variety of indigenous languages of America, which existed in those days, when Columbus discovered the New Land. Most of these languages exists today. Some of them used to communicate a very small group of people, while others (like the Navajo and the Sioux) are used extensively by American Indians. Languages of North America are divided into separate language families, which had clear differences in phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. The composition of some of them contain a large number of languages (siuanskaya, Algonquian, Athabaskan family), there are families in which there are very few languages and dialects, there are some comprising only one language.
If you rely on pauellovskuyu classification, which is divided by languages north of Mexico, we can say that there are no less than 55 language families that are common to North America rather uneven. Languages of the 37-households distributed in the basins of the Pacific and the 22th of them – on the Pacific coast. 7 language families include the Atlantic coast. Languages 10 families use of residents of the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi regions. The most common are the Eskimo, Algonquian, Iroquois, muskogskaya, siuanskaya, kaddoanskaya, Shoshonean, Athabaskan and Salishan language family. In the Eskimo group includes Eskimo dialect, common in the eastern part of Greenland and Alaska to the southern Cape Dzheneva located in Siberia and the Aleut language common in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. By the Algonquian language group is the set of languages and its distribution area is quite large.