When this series started, the Bradford family consisted of Tom, the father, a respected columnist for the Sacramento Register, Joan, his wife for about 25 years, and the eight children of the couple, all of them were very normal but quite independent. Unexpectedly, actress Diana Hyland died of cancer and was written off the series after 5 episodes.
Let's first take a closer look at the linguistic diversity that existed five hundred years ago. In 1500 there were probably about 7 thousand languages spoken across the earth, most still groupable into the 25 or so major families represented today.
Language distribution around the world is not uniform, as there are parts of the world that are more diverse than others. If we use the total languages in the world based on the 2014 catalogue of Ethnologue, there are 2,303 languages spoken in Asia while in Europe, there are only 285.