Este artículo es la transcripción del Dr. Bright en el auditorio Alfonso Caso de la UNAM, donde trató la clasificación de lenguas indias. En la historia de las clasificaciones de las lenguas hay muchas tendencias: unos separan a las lenguas nativoamericanas en familias diferentes, otros agrupan  a la mayoría (superagrupadoras). El autor insiste en la importancia del estudio de las lenguas indias dentro del marco general de la antropología y da cuenta de diversas formas en las que el análisis lingüístico puede ser útil para entender problemas antropológicos en México.This article is the transcript of Dr. Bright inaugural lecture in the Alfonso Caso chair of visiting researchers at UNAM. The classification of the indian languages of Meso and Northamerica has been a field of linguistics with much recent research. Several tendencies appear in the history classifications: some have tended to separate languages in different families. Other have tended to group or lump together most native american languages and within this group a few can be called superlumpers. Comparative studies of the situation of regions of the world where many languages coexist have shown interesting mechanisms of how languages evolve. Studies done in India and China have thrown light into some processes that remained unexplained for the Americas. The importance of the study of indian languages within the general framework of Anthropology is stressed by the author, who shows several ways in which linguistic analysis can be useful to understand anthropological problems in Mexico.