The Mosaic of Languages

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Chapter 5
• The Human Mosaic

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Why geographers study language

• Provides the single most common variable by which
  cultural groups are identified
• Provides the main means by which learned customs
  and skills pass from one generation to the next
• Facilitates cultural diffusion of innovations
• Because languages vary spatially, they reinforce
  the sense of region and place
• Study of language called linguistic geography and
  geolinguistics by geographers

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Terms used in the study of language

• Language tongues that cannot be mutually
  understood
• Dialects variant forms of a language that have
  not lost mutual comprehension
• A speaker of English can understand the various
  dialect of the language
• A dialect is distinctive enough in vocabulary and
  pronunciation to label its speaker
• Some 6,000 languages and many more dialects are
  spoken today

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Terms used in the study of language

• Pidgin language results when different
  linguistic groups come into contact
• Serves the purposes of commerce
• Has a small vocabulary derived from the various
  contact groups
• Official language of Papua, New Guinea is a
  largely English-derived pidgin language, which
  includes Spanish, German, and Papuan words

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Terms used in the study of language

• Lingua franca a language that spreads over a
  wide area where it is not the mother tongue
• A language of communication and commerce
• Swahili language has this status in much of East
  Africa

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Kenya
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Kenya

• Kenya has two official languages Swahili and
  English. These lingua franca facilitate
  communication among Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic
  language speakers.
• Swahili developed along the coast of East Africa
  where

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Kenya

• Bantu came in contact with Arabic spoken by Arab
  sea traders.
• English became important during the British
  colonial period and is still associated with high
  status.

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Kenya

• This shopping center caters to Maasai herders who
  speak a Nilotic language and Kikuyu farmers who
  speak a Bantu language.
• Jambo means hello in Swahili.

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• isoglosses borders of individual word usages or
  pronunciations
• No two words, phrases, or pronunciations have
  exactly the same spatial distribution
• Spatially isoglosses crisscross one another
• Typically cluster together in bundles
• Bundles serve as the most satisfactory dividing
  lines among dialects and languages

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Overlap of languages complicates drawing of
  linguistic borders
• In any given area more than one tongue may be
  spoken Ecuador
• Language barriers are rarely sharp

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Geographers encounter a core/periphery pattern
  rather than a dividing line
• Dominance of language diminishes away from the
  center of the region
• Outlying zone of bilingualism
• Linguistic islands often further complicate the
  drawing of language borders

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Dialect terms often overlap considerably, making
  it difficult to draw isoglossess
• Linguistic geographers often disagree about how
  many dialects are present
• Disagreement also occurs on where lines should be
  drawn
• Boundaries are necessarily simplified and at best
  generalizations

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Language families

• The Indo-European language family
• Largest most wide-spread family
• Spoken on all continents
• Dominant in Europe, Russia, North and South
  America, Australia, and parts of southwestern
  Asia and India
• SubfamiliesRomance, Slavic, Germanic, Indic,
  Celtic, and Iranic
• Subfamilies are divided into individual languages
• Seven Indo-European tongues are among the top 10
  languages spoken in the world
• By comparing vocabularies in various languages
  one can see the kinship

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Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family
• Has two major divisionsSemitic and Hamitic
• Semitic covers the area from Tigris-Euphrates
  valley westward through most of the north half of
  Africa to the Atlantic coast
• Domain is large but consists of mostly sparsely
  populated deserts
• Arabic is the most widespread Semitic language
• Arabic has the most number of native
  speakersabout 186 million
• Hebrew was a dead language used only in
  religious ceremonies
• Today Hebrew is the official language of Israel
• Amharic a third major Semitic tongues has 20
  million speakers in the mountains of East Africa

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Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family
• Has two major divisionsSemitic and Hamitic
• Smaller number of people speak Hamitic languages
• Share North and East Africa with Semitic speakers
• Spoken by the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria
• Spoken by the Tuaregs of the Sahara and Cushites
  of East Africa
• Originated in Asia but today only spoken in
  Africa
• Expansion of Arabic decreased the area and number
  of speakers

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Other major language families

• Africa south of the Sahara Desert is dominated by
  the Niger-Congo family
• Spoken by about 200 million people
• Greater part of the Niger-Congo culture region
  belongs to the Bantu subgroup
• Includes Swahilithe lingua franca of East Africa

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Other major language families

• Altaic language family
• Includes Turkic, Mongolic, and several other
  subgroups
• Homeland lies largely in deserts, tundras, and
  coniferous forests of northern and central Asia
• Uralic family
• Finnish and Hungarian are the two most important
  tongues
• Both have official status in their countries

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Other major language families

• Austronesian language family
• Most remarkable language family in terms of
  distribution
• Speakers live mainly on tropical islands
• Ranges from Madagascar, through Indonesia and the
  Pacific Islands, to Hawaii and Easter Island
• Longitudinal span is more than half way around
  the world
• Latitudinally, ranges from Hawaii and Taiwan in
  the north to New Zealand in the south
• Largest single language in this family is
  Indonesian 5O million speakers
• Most widespread language is Polynesian

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Other major language families

• Sino-Tibetan language family
• One of the major language families of the world
• Extends throughout most of China and Southeast
  Asia
• Han Chinese is spoken in a variety of dialects as
  a mother tongue by 836 million people
• Han serves as the official form of speech in China

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Other major language families

• Japanese/Korean language family
• Another major Asian family with nearly 200
  million speakers
• Seems to have some kinship to both the Altaic and
  Austronesian

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Other major language families

• Austro-Asiatic language family
• Found in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia,
  Thailand, and spoken by some tribal people of
  Malaya and parts of India
• Occupies a remnant peripheral domain
• Has been encroached upon by Sino-Tibetan,
  Indo-European, and Austronesian

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London, England

• This display of newspapers illustrates the fact
  that London is an international city as well as a
  major migration destination.
• In South Kensington, sizable foreign contribute
  complexity

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London, England

• to the linguistic landscape.
• Both Indo-European (e.g. French, Spanish and
  Swedish) and Afro-Asiatic (Arab) language
  families are represented here.

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Other major language families

• Occupy refuge areas after retreat before rival
  groups
• Khoisan found in the Kalahari Desert of
  southwestern Africa, characterized by clicking
  sounds
• Dravidian spoken by numerous darker-skinned
  people of southern India and northern Sri Lanka
• Others include Papuan, Caucasic, Nilo-Saharan,
  Paleosiberian, Inukitut, and a variety of
  Amerindian
• Basque spoken on the borderland between Spain
  and France is unrelated to any other language in
  the world

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English dialects in the United States

• Dialects reveal a vivid geography
• American English is hardly uniform from region to
  region
• At least three major dialects, corresponding to
  major culture regions, developed in the eastern
  United States by the time of the American
  Revolution
• Northern
• Midland
• Southern

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English dialects in the United States

• The three subcultures expanded westward and their
  dialects spread and fragmented
• Retained much of their basic character even
  beyond the Mississippi River
• Have distinctive vocabularies and pronunciations
• Drawing dialect boundaries is often tricky

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English dialects in the United States

• Today, many regional words are becoming
  old-fashioned, but new words display regional
  variations
• The following words are all used to describe a
  controlled-access divided highway
• Freeway a California word
• Turnpike and parkway mainly northeastern and
  Midwestern words
• Thruway, expressway, and interstate

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English dialects in the United States

• Many African-Americans speak their own form of
  English Black English
• Once dismissed as inferior substandard English
• Grew out of a pidgin that developed on early
  slave plantations
• Today, spoken by about 80 percent of
  African-Americans
• Used by ghetto dwellers who have not made their
  compromises with mainstream American culture
• Many features separate it from standard speech,
  for example
• Lack of pronoun differentiation between genders
• Use of undifferentiated pronouns

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English dialects in the United States

• Many African-Americans speak their own form of
  English Black English
• Not recognized as part of the proper grammar of a
  separate linguistic group
• Considered evidence of verbal inability or
  impoverishment
• In the Southern dialect, African-Americans have
  made substantial contributions to speech
• Southern dialect is becoming increasingly
  identified with African-Americans
• Caucasians in the Southern region are shifting to
  Midland speech

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English dialects in the United States

• American dialects suggest we are not becoming a
  more national culture by overwhelming regional
  cultures
• Linguistic divergence is still under way
• Dialects continue to mutate on a regional level
• Local variations in grammar and pronunciation
  proliferate
• The homogenizing influence of radio, television,
  and other mass media is being defied

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London, England
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London, England

• While English is spoken in many pats of the
  world, all English words are not mutually
  intelligible.
• This London tube (subway) sign say that anyone
  performing there (eg singing or playing for
  money) is subject to a fine of subsection.
• Are tubs, subway, and busking dialect words?

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Indo-European diffusion

• Earliest speakers apparently lived in southern
  and southeastern Turkey (Anatolia) about eight or
  nine thousand years ago
• Diffused west and north into Europe
• Represented expansion of farming people at
  expense of hunters and gatherers
• As people dispersed and lost contact, different
  variant forms of the language caused
  fragmentation of the family

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Indo-European diffusion

• Later language diffusion occurred with the spread
  of great political empires, especially Latin,
  English, and Russian
• Relocation and expansion diffusion were not
  mutually exclusive
• Relocation diffusion by conquering elite
  implanted their language
• Implanted language often gained wider acceptance
  by expansion diffusion
• Conquerors language spread hierarchically
• Spread of Latin with Roman conquests
• Spanish in Latin America

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Austronesian diffusion

• Presumed hearth in the interior of Southeast Asia
  5,000 years ago
• Initially spread southward into the Malay
  Peninsula
• In a process lasting several thousand years,
  people sailed in tiny boats across the. uncharted
  vast seas to New Zealand, Easter Island, Hawaii,
  and Madagascar
• Sailing and navigation was the key to
  Austronesian spread, not agriculture

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Austronesian diffusion

• The remarkable diffusion of the Polynesian
  people
• Form the eastern part of the Austronesian culture
  region
• Occupy hundreds of Pacific islands in a
  triangular-shaped realm
• New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii form the
  three apexes of the realm
• Made a watery leap of 2,500 miles from the South
  Pacific to Hawaii
• Used outrigger canoes
• Went against prevailing winds into a new
  hemisphere with different navigational stars
• No humans had previously found the isolated
  Hawaiian Islands
• Sailors had no way of knowing that land existed
  in the area

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Austronesian diffusion

• Geographers John Webb and Gerard Ward studied the
  prehistoric Polynesian diffusion
• Their method involved the development of a
  computer model building in data on
• Winds
• Ocean currents
• Vessel traits and capabilities
• Island visibility
• Duration of voyage, etc.
• Both drift and navigated voyages were considered

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Austronesian diffusion

• Over one hundred thousand voyage simulations were
  run through the computer
• Their conclusions
• Triangle was probably entered from the
  westdirection of the ancient Austronesian hearth
  area
• Island hoppingmigrated from one visible island
  to another
• Core of eastern Polynesia likely reached by
  navigated voyages
• Outer arc from Hawaii through Easter Island to
  New Zealand reached by intentionally navigated
  voyages

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Searching for the primordial tongue

• Using controversial techniques, linguists seek
  the more elusive prehistoric tongues
• Nostraticancestral speech of the Middle East
  12,000 to 20,000 years ago
• Ancestral to nine modern language families
• A 500-word dictionary has been compiled
• Contemporary with Nostratic were other ancient
  tongues including Dene-Caucasian

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Searching for the primordial tongue

• Dene-Caucasian reputedly gave rise to
  Sino-Tibetan, Basque, and one form of early
  Native-American called Na-Dene
• Scholars are attempting to find the original
  linguistic hearth area from which all modern
  languages have derived
• It is believed the original language hearth arose
  in Africa perhaps 250,000 years ago and diffused
  from there

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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The environment and vocabulary

• How the environment affects vocabulary
• Spanish language derived from Castile
• Rich in words describing rough terrain (Table
  5.3)
• Distinguishes subtle differences in shape and
  configuration of mountains
• Scottish Gaelic
• Describes types of rough terrain
• Common attribute spoken by hill people
• Romanian tongue
• Also from a region of rugged terrain
• Words tend to be keyed to use of terrain for
  livestock herding

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The environment and vocabulary

• English
• Developed in wet coastal plains
• Very poor in words describing mountainous terrain
• Abounds with words describing flowing streams
• Rural American Southriver, creek, branch, fork,
  prong, run, bayou, and slough

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The environment and vocabulary

• Vocabularies develop for features of the
  environment that involve livelihood
• Detailed vocabularies are necessary to
  communicate sophisticated information relevant to
  the adaptive strategy

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The environment provides refuge

• Inhospitable environments offer protection and
  isolation
• Provide outnumbered linguistic groups refuge from
  aggressive neighbors
• Linguistic refuge areas
• Rugged bill and mountain areas
• Excessively cold or dry climates
• Impenetrable forests and remote islands
• Extensive marshes and swamps
• Unpleasant environments rarely attract conquerors
• Mountains tend to isolate inhabitants of one
  valley from another

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Examples of linguistic refuge areas

• Rugged Caucasus Mountains and nearby ranges in
  central Eurasia are populated by a large variety
  of peoples
• Alps, Himalayas, and highlands of Mexico are
  linguistic shatter belts areas where diverse
  languages are spoken
• American Indian tongue Quechua clings to a refuge
  in the Andes Mountains of South America
• In the Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico, an
  archaic form of Spanish survives due to isolation
  that ended in the early 1900s

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Examples of linguistic refuge areas

• The Dhofar, a mountain tribe in Oman, preserve
  Hamitic speech that otherwise has vanished from
  Asia
• Tundra climates of the far north have sheltered
  certain Uralic, Altaic, and Inukitut (Eskimo)
  speakers
• On Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina
  and Georgia, some remnant of an African language,
  Gullah, still are spoken

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Switzerland

• Switzerland has four recognized national
  languages French, German, Italian, and Romansch.
  
• Romansch, a language of Latin origin, is spoken
  by only 1.1 of the population.

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Switzerland

• Nevertheless, it has survived in the alpine
  linguistic refuge of the upper Rhine and Inn
  Rivers and was given official recognition in 1938.

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Switzerland

• This traditional Engadine (Inn valley) house is
  decorated by sgraffito whereby designs are
  scratched through a white limewash coating to
  expose the underlying grey plaster.

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Linguistic Ecology

• Today environmental isolation is no longer the
  linguistic force it once was
• Inhospitable lands and islands are reachable by
  airplanes
• Marshes and forests are being drained and cleared
  by farmers
• The world is interactive

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The environment guides migration

• Migrants were often attracted to new lands that
  seemed environmentally similar to their homelands
• They could pursue adaptive strategies known to
  them
• Germanic Indo-Europeans chose familiar temperate
  zones in America, New Zealand, and Australia
• Semitic peoples rarely spread outside arid and
  semiarid climates
• Ancestors of modern Hungarians left grasslands of
  inner Eurasia for new homes in the grassy Alföld,
  one of the few prairie areas of Europe

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The environment guides migration

• Environmental barriers and natural routeways
  guided linguistic groups along certain paths
• Indo-Europeans traveled through low mountain
  passes to the Indian subcontinent, avoiding the
  Himalayas and barren Deccan Plateau
• In India today, the Indo-European/Dravidian
  language boundary seems to approximate an
  ecological boundary

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The environment guides migration

• Mountain barriers frequently serve as linguistic
  borders
• In part of the Alps, speakers of German and
  Italian live on opposite sides of a major ridge
• Portions of mountain rim along the northern edge
  of the Fertile Crescent form the border between
  Semitic and Indo-European tongues

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The environment guides migration

• Linguistic borders that follow such physical
  features tend to be stable and endure for
  thousands of years
• Language borders that cross plains and major
  routes of communication are frequently unstable
  Germanic-Slavic boundary on the North European
  Plain

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Urumchi, China

• Urumchi is the capital of Xinjian Uyghur
  Autonomous Region.
• Uyghurs are one of Chinas 55 minority groups.
• Because this resource-rich area is also a
  strategically significant borderland,

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Urumchi, China

• official policy has been one of Sinicization
  whereby Chinese have been encouraged to move to
  the region.
• However, most of the Chinese are concentrated in
  the capital city where

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Urumchi, China

• sinage is in two languages.
• Ugyhur, written in Arabic script, belongs to the
  Altaic language family while Chinese, written in
  characters is part of the Sino-Tibetan language
  family.
• Together, they produce an alien linguistic
  landscape for most visitors.

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Language is intertwined with all aspects of
culture

• Comparative social, demographic, political, and
  technological characteristics groups are needed
  to understand the linguistic map
• Linguistic cultural integration can reflect the
  dominance of one group over another a dominance
  based in culture

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Technology and linguistic dominance

• Technological superiority is usually involved in
  allowing one group to gain dominance over another
• Importance of the development of alphabets
• Certain cultures became more complex and dominant
• Written languages advanced at the expense of
  illiterate cultures
• Were invariably the invention of agricultural
  societies
• Greek, Latin, and Chinese, along with other
  tongues, enjoyed early advantages because of
  literacy

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Technology and linguistic dominance

• Importance of the development of alphabets
• Facilitated record keeping, allowing government
  to develop
• With empire building, languages tend to spread
  with imperial expansion
• Imperial expansion of European and U.S. power
  altered the linguistic patterns among millions of
  people
• Superimposed Indo-European tongues in the tropics
  and subtropics
• Areas most affected were Asia, Africa, and the
  Austronesian island world

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Technology and linguistic dominance

• In South America, the expanding empires of Spain
  and Portugal clashed in the fifteenth century
• Signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494
• Spain received control over all colonial lands
  west of a certain meridian
• Portugal gained control over lands east of the
  line
• Brazil eventually became Portuguese speaking
• In most of the rest of South America Spanish
  prevailed

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Technology and linguistic dominance

• When imperial nations gave up their colonial
  empires, their languages remained
• English is still spoken in much of Africa, the
  Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, and certain
  areas of the Pacific islands
• French persists in north, west and central
  Africa, Madagascar, and Polynesia
• In most areas English and French function as
  languages of the educated elite and of
  government, commerce, and higher education
• Often hold status as legal languages, serving has
  link languages
• Help hold countries together where native
  languages are multiple and divisive

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Technology and linguistic dominance

• Affect of transportation technology on geography
  of languages
• Ships, railroads, and highways usually spread
  languages of cultural groups who build them
• Sometimes spells doom for the speech of peoples
  whose lands are opened to outside contacts
• Trans-Siberian Railroad spread Russian language
  eastward to Pacific Ocean
• Presently highway construction into Brazils
  Amazonian interior threatens Indian languages

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The social morale model

• Model built by geographer Charles Withers
• Explains the process of language loss incurred by
  conquered cultural groups
• Placed in a lower social class
• Lose pride in their language and culture,
  eventually abandoning both
• Education system based solely on socially
  dominant language produces bilingualism
• Monoglots, or persons speaking one tongue decline

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The social morale model

• If conquered group literate, they will usually
  start to become illiterate in their traditional
  language
• Often no legal or religious status is accorded
  the conquered language
• Old way of speech considered primitive and its
  use socially degrading
• Denying the oppressed language access to
  broadcast facilities can hasten process of decline

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United States reveals decline of languages other
than English

• Native Americans subjected to linguistic assaults
  from dominant culture
• Indian children taken from families and placed in
  boarding schools
• Indian children were forbidden to speak their own
  languages
• In 1910, one out of every four Americans could
  fluently speak some language other than English
  (14 percent could in 1990)
• Only Spanish speakers have had long-term success
  in keeping their speech

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Morale is not always broken by conquest and
subsequent discrimination

• Greeks have suffered periods of rule by Romans
  and Turks
• Have kept their language
• Remained convinced their culture was superior
• Chinese absorbed Mongol invaders and made Chinese
  out of them
• Sometimes languages of conquered and conqueror
  blend

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The economic development model

• Also developed by Charles Withers
• Industrialization accompanied by urbanization
  breaks up social structure needed to perpetuate
  an indigenous language
• Transition from subsistence farmer to factory
  laborer is destructive to minority tongues
• Particularly destructive when factory language is
  not that of the farm

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The economic development model

• Industrialization tends to draw population from
  rural linguistic refuge area leaving fewer
  speakers of minority languages behind process
  called the clearance model
• If industrial development occurs in refuge area,
  speakers of dominant language are drawn in
  producing a changeover model native speakers
  are overwhelmed by intrusion of foreigners

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The economic development model

• Plight of Welsh language in Great Britain
• Illustrates Withers social morale, economic
  development, clearance, and changeover models
• Now stands at the threshold of extinction
• Speakers were long denigrated
• British educational system promoted English
• Urbanization and industrialization knocked holes
  in spatial fabric of Welsh
• Massive rural emigration followed to
  English-speaking towns and factories

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The economic development model

• Geographer Keith Buchanan referred to decline of
  Welsh and other Celtic languages as a
  liquidation by ruling English to produce a
  loyal, obedient work force for mines and
  factories
• Recently the Welsh language has been granted
  educational and media privileges by British
  government
• Social morale of its speakers is broken
• Largely aged speakers survive
• The day nears when inhabitants may not know what
  the names of towns, rivers, and mountains mean
• The Welsh may not even be able to understand
  their family names

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The economic development model

• The ongoing achievement of independence by
  various linguistic minority groups could rescue
  some languages previously endangered examples of
  Estonia and Latvia

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Language and religion

• Occasionally a language is linked to a particular
  religious faith heightening cultural identity
• Example of Arabic
• Spread from a core area on the Arabian peninsula
  with the Islamic faith
• Without the evangelical fervor of the Muslims,
  Arabic would not have diffused so widely

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Language and religion

• Other Semitic languages also correspond to
  particular religious groups
• We can attribute the preservation and revival of
  Hebrew to the tenacity of the Jewish faith
• Amharic speakers in Ethiopia are Coptics, or
  Eastern Christians

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Language and religion

• Link between speech and faith can be seen within
  very small areas
• Example of Pakistan studied by German
  geographer Hermann Kneutzmann
• Studied 17 languages in isolated mountain valleys
  in northernmost part of country
• Over 90 percent of speakers of 12 of the
  languages belonged to one of four local Muslim
  sects
• Language a mountain person speaks usually helps
  determine religious denomination

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Language and religion

• Latin survived mainly as the ceremonial language
  of the Roman Catholic Church
• In Iran, a non-Arabic Muslim land, Arabic is
  still used in religious ceremonies

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Language and religion

• Religious books can shape languages by providing
  a standard form
• Luthers translation of the Bible led to
  standardization of German language
• The Koran is the model for written Arabic
• Early Welsh translation of a hymnal and the Bible
  helped the language survive
• In Fiji, the Bible published in one of the 15
  local dialects elevated it to the dominant native
  language

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Language and religion

• Linkage of language and religion increase chance
  of nationalistic conflict
• Greek/Christian - Turkish/Muslim problem in
  Cyprus
• Armenian/Christian - Azeri/Muslim war
• Battle against Nio-Saharan/Christian and animist
  tribal groups in Sudan

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Linguistic landscapes

• 1. Cultural landscape bears the imprint of
  language in various ways
• Example-road signs, billboards, graffiti, etc.
• Can be a visual index to bilingualism or
  linguistic oppression of minorities
• 2. Differences in alphabets render many foreign
  linguistic landscapes vividly alien

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Samoan, a Polynesian language
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Were?
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Messages

• Both friendly and hostile messages are sent by
  linguistic landscapes
• Often have political contentdeal with power,
  domination, subjugation, or freedom (Figure 5.13)
• Example of Turkey
• Kurdish or Arabic speakers are not allowed any
  visual display of their languages
• Linguistic landscape displays only Turkish
• Linguistic minorities are visually reminded of
  their inferior position
• Québec has tried to eliminate English-language
  signs

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Toponyms

• Place-names
• Often directly reflect spatial patterns of
  language, dialect, and ethnicity
• Become part of the cultural landscape when they
  appear on signs and placards
• Highway signs such as Huntsville, Harrisburg,
  Ohio River, Newfound Gap, etc. often provide a
  visible index to distribution of other cultural
  traits
• Many place-names consist of two parts the
  generic and the specific
• The specific part of the names listed above (4)
  would be Hunts, Harris, Ohio, Newfound, and
  Hatteras
• The generic parts, which tell what kind of place
  is being described are
• vile, burg, river, gap

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Wisconsin
109
Wisconsin

• This is a French toponym meaning grassland of
  the dog.
• The French explorers Marquette and Joliet,
  following natural routeways from Montreal,
  reached this prairie site at the

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Wisconsin

• confluence of the Mississipi and Wisconsin Rivers
  in 1673.
• Alim, mean dog was the name of the local Indian
  chief.
• Prairie is the generic and du Chien the

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Wisconsin

• specific part of this placename.
• Developed as a fur trading cener, it indeed
  became a rendezvous or meeting place, a notion
  incorporated in the civic boosterism of modern
  times.

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Toponyms

• Generic toponyms are of greater value to cultural
  geographers than specific names
• They appear again and again throughout a culture
  region
• Every culture or subculture has its own
  distinctive set
• Can be particularly valuable in tracing the
  spread of a culture
• Often aid in reconstructing past culture regions

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Generic toponyms of the United States

• New Englanders, speakers of the Northern dialect,
  frequently used the term center in the name of
  the town or hamlet near the center of township
• Outlying settlements in New England frequently
  bear the prefix east, west, north, or south the
  name of township being the suffix
• Using these generic usages peculiar to New
  England we can locate colonies New Englanders
  founded as they migrated from their homelands
• Westward through upstate New York, Ontario, and
  into the upper Midwest
• Toponymic evidence can be found in Walworth
  County, Wisconsin

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Generic toponyms of the United States

• Other generic place names identified with the
  Northern dialectbrook, notch, and corners
• The trace of New England even reaches Seattle,
  Washington where center and corner are
  frequently used
• Midland American areas can be identified by such
  terms as gap, cove, hollow, knob, and burgh
• Southern speech is recognized by names as bayou,
  gully, and store (for rural hamlets)

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Toponyms and cultures of the past

• Place-names may survive long after a culture has
  vanished, thereby preserving traces of the past
• Australia abounds in Aborigine toponymseven in
  areas where the native peoples have long since
  disappeared
• Toponyms identifying physical geographical
  features seem to last permanently
• Study of archaic names has greater value in the
  Eastern Hemisphere

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Australian Aborigine toponym
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Toponyms and cultures of the past

• Example of eastern Germany
• Suffixes ow, in, and zig are common Slavic
  suffixes in village names
• Suffix distribution accurately reveals the
  culture region peopled by Slavic tribes as late
  as A.D. 800
• Slavic languages have disappeared from most of
  eastern Germany
• Suffix weiler, in names of German villages south
  of the Danube and west of the Rhine, reminds us
  of former Roman rule and Latin usage

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Toponyms and cultures of the past

• Example of Spain and Portugal
• Moorish rule for 700 years left many Arabic
  place-names
• Prefix of guada on river names is a corruption of
  the Arabic wadi

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Toponyms and cultures of the past

• Example of New Zealand
• The Maori, a native Polynesian people, are today
  confined mainly to refuge areas
• The smaller the town the larger the percentage of
  Maori place-names
• Twenty percent of provinces have Maori names
• Fifty-six percent of counties have Maori names
• Nearly all streams, hills, and mountains retain
  Maori names
• ImplicationBritish settlement remains largely an
  urban phenomenon
• Linguistic landscapes can help shape the
  character of places

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Toponyms and environmental modification

• Generic place-names tell us about humankinds
  past alteration of the environment
• Germanic peoples cleared forests from England
  eastward into present-day Poland
• Toponyms sometimes indicate how clearing was
  accomplished
• Suffixes roth and reuth, as in Neuroth and
  Bayreuth, mean rooted out or grubbed out, and
  refer to the practice of digging out roots after
  cutting trees

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Toponyms and environmental modification

• In England, ley or leigh, as in Woodley, means
  clearing or open place in the forest
• In European place-names, brind, brunn, and brand,
  reveal clearing by using fire
• In eastern woodlands of the United States,
  American Indians cleared considerable forest
  areas before the coming of Columbus
• Abandoned grass-covered fields survived
• Europeans recorded these places of deforestation
  by calling them prairie
• Over 200 of these generic terms appear in wooded
  eastern Texas alone