Language

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Language

• Key Issues
• Where are English language speakers distributed?
• Why is English related to other languages?
• Where are other language families distributed?
• Why do people preserve local language?

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Key Issue 1 Where are English-language speakers
distributed?

• Language- a system of communication through
  speech, or other conventional methods, that
  groups of people understand to have the same
  meaning.
• Language (another definition)- Organized system
  of spoken words by which people communicate with
  one another with mutual comprehension (Getis,
  1985).
• Official language- language designated for use by
  a countrys government.

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Roots of Language

• Literary tradition- a system of written
  communication.
• Many languages lack a literary tradition,
  therefore impeding advancement and documentation.

IdeogramsIdeogram- letters that represent
ideas or concepts, not specific
pronunciations.-Chinese Japanese - Sumerian and
Egyptian have both ideographic and phonetic
components.
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How to Write Down a Language?

• Phonetic
• Most languages, including Romance languages
• Symbols (letters) generally represent sounds,
  not ideas. A phonetic alphabet is the key
  innovation.

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Language as Element of Cultural Diversity

• 6000 Languages spoken today, not including
  dialects
• 1500 Spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa alone
• 400 in New Guinea alone
• 100 in Europe
• However, this diversity is diminishing
• 2000 Threatened or Endangered Languages

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Geographers Perspective on Language

• Language is an essential element of culture,
• possibly the most important medium by which
  culture is transmitted.
• Languages even structure the perceptions of
  their speakers. Attitudes, understandings, and
  responses are partly determined by the words
  available.
• Languages are a hallmark of cultural diversity
  with distinctive regional distributions.

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• English is spoken by one-half a billion people
  across the globe.
• It is the official language of at least 42
  countries two billion people live in one of
  these countries.
• The widespread diffusion of English is thanks to
  the colonial practices of the British.
• Through their colonization of the Earth, English
  was spread eventually to N. America, Ireland, S.
  Asia, S. Pacific, S. Africa, and numerous other
  remote locations.

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Germanic Branch - English
Diffused throughout the world by hundreds of
years of British colonialism. Brought to New
World by British colonies in 1600s. Has become an
important global lingua franca.( Universal
Language)
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Indo-European Language Family - Germanic Branch

• West Germanic
• English (514 million)
• German (128)
• Dutch (21)
• East Germanic
• Danish (5)
• Norwegian (5)
• Swedish (9)

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Germanic Branch - Icelandic
Iceland colonized by Norwegians in AD 874.
Largely unchanged because of isolation combined
with literary tradition. Highly developed
literary tradition. Ancient sagas can be read by
modern speakers of Icelandic.
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Development of English

• British Isles until the Celts arrived around 2000
  B.C., speaking languages that we appropriately
  call, Celtic.
• Around 450 B.C. Germanic tribes, the Anglos,
  Saxons, and Jutes, invaded and pushed the Celts
  farther north and ruled England for several
  hundred years.
• Modern English would resemble German to a large
  degree had not the Normans invaded in 1066 A.D.
• These French ruled for nearly 300 years, and
  made their language the official language of the
  Isles.
• King Richard spoke French as his primary language
  and the royal court spoke French for many years
  after the invasion
• Once they were driven out, few people wished to
  speak the enemys language anymore, but the
  French influence on the language had already
  taken place.
• Todays English can be seen as a hybrid of the
  original Germanic languages, with some Celtic and
  French mixed in. (along with varying degrees of
  influence from a large number of other
  languages.)
• English is seen as a very ugly language due to
  this mesh up

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Development of English

• Germanic Tribes (Germany/Denmanrk)
• Jutes
• Angles
• Saxons
• Vikings (Norway)
• 9th - 11th Centuries
• Normans (French)
• Battle of Hastings, 1066
• French was official language for 150 years.

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• Dialect- a regional variation of a language
  distinguished by a distinctive vocab, spelling,
  and pronunciation.
• English has the largest of dialects b/c of its
  wide diffusion.
• Due you have a dialect? How about Coach Serina?
• Standard language- a dialect well-established and
  recognized for government use.
• Which way are we taught in school
• British Received Pronunciation- the official
  dialect of English used by politicians,
  broadcasters, and actors in Great Britain.

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• My Fair Lady was a musical in the 50s that
  depicted social effects of dialect.
• Differences between British and American English
  are
• Vocab- different mainly because settlers in
  America encountered new objects and experiences,
  many of which were assigned Native American
  names.
• Grammar- distinctly different because Americans
  had a strong national feeling for an independent
  identity.
• The first American dictionary, published by Noah
  Webster was purposely altered from British
  spelling to differentiate the two languages.
• Pronunciation- the most obvious reason for
  differences is that large expanse of water that
  seems to separate the U.S. from the U.K. The
  extreme physical separation caused the language
  to diverge into two very distinct dialects.

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• Dialects within the States are numerous and
  varied due to the number of people in the U.S.,
  the wide land area across which the language is
  spoken, the historical mobility of the American
  people as they ventured across the West, and the
  varied ethnicity of the English-speakers within
  this country.
• Three main dialects exist in England
• -Northern
• -Midland
• -Southern
• These are used to classify many of the dialects
  within the U.S.
• What are some words that are different for each
  of these regions?
• Isogloss- the word-usage boundary that can be
  constructed for any word.

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Key Issue 2 Why is English related to other
languages?

• Language family- a collection of languages
  related through a common ancestor that existed
  long before recorded history.
• Language branch- a collection of languages within
  a family that are related through a common
  ancestor that existed several thousand years ago.
• Language group- collection of languages within a
  branch that share a common origin in relatively
  recent history.
• Largest family is Indo-European, spoken by nearly
  3 billion people.

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Indo-European Language Family (50 of World)

• Main Branches
• Germanic - Dutch, German
• Romance - Spanish, French
• Baltic-Slavic - Russian
• Indo-Iranian - Hindu, Bengali

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Indo-European Language Branches
Non-Indo-European Language Families and Branches
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• Vulgar Latin- the Latin that people in the
  provinces learned substandard.
• Evidence exists that a super family language
  once was used, known as Proto-Indo-European.
• little conclusive evidence has been found, and
  the issue is hotly debated among linguists. Most
  theories on the diffusion of language are
  conjecture and invalidated.

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Which languages share a common ancestor?
Some Indo-European Shared Words
Many Indo-European languages have common words
for snow, winter, spring for dog, horse, cow,
sheep bear but not camel, lion, elephant, or
tiger for beech, oak, pine, willow, but not palm
or banyan tree.
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Indo-European Language Family - Romance Branch

• Like English these languages have been spread by
  Colonialism.
• Spanish (425 million)
• Portuguese (194) - most in Brazil

• French (129)
• Italian (62)
• Romanian (26)

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Indo-European Family - Romance Branch
The Roman Empire, at its height in 2nd century
A.D., extinguished many local languages. After
the fall of Rome in the 5th century,
communication declined and languages evolved
again.

• Literature was all written in Latin until the
  13th and 14th centuries.
• Dante Alighieris 1314 Inferno written in vulgar
  latin (Florentine).

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Key Issue 3 Where are other language families
distributed?

• The main language families of the world, other
  than Indo-European (spoken by 50 of world
  population) are
• -Sino-Tibetan spoken by 20 of pop in China and
  S.E. Asia
• -Afro-Asiatic spoken by 5 of pop N. Africa and
  S.W. Asia and Mid East
• -Austronesian spoken by 5 of pop S.E. Asia
• -Niger-Congo spoken by 5 of pop sub-Saharan
  Africa
• -Dravidian spoken by 5 of pop in India
• -Remaining 10 speak one of following
• -Nilo-Saharan
• -Amerindian
• -Caucasian (Georgian)
• -Altaic
• -Uralic
• -Japanese
• -Korean
• -Ausro-Asiatic

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Languages and Language Families
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World Languages

• 6000 Languages spoken today, not including
  dialects
• 1500 Spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa alone
• 400 in New Guinea alone
• 100 in Europe
• However, this diversity is diminishing
• 2000 Threatened or Endangered Languages

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Sino-Tibetan Language Family (20)

• Branches
• Sinitic - Mandarin (1075),Cantonese (71),
• Austro-Thai (77) - Thai, Hmong
• Tibeto-Burman - Burmese (32)

Chinese languages based on 420 one syllable words
with meaning infered from context and tone.
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Language Families of Africa
Fig. 5-14 The 1,000 or more languages of Africa
are divided among five main language families,
including Austronesian languages in Madagascar.
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Afro-Asiatic Language Family

• Main Branch
• Semitic
• Arabic (256)
• Language of the Koran spread by Islamic Faith
  and Islamic (Ottoman) Empires
• Hebrew (5)
• Language of the old Testament (with Aramaic)
  completely revived from extinction in Israel,
  1948.

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Niger-Congo Difffusion

• proto-Bantu peoples originated in
  Cameroon-Nigeria
• They spread throughout southern Africa AD 1 -
  1000
• Bantu peoples were agriculturalists who used
  metal tools
• Khoisan peoples were hunter-gatherers and were
  no match for the Bantu.
• Pygmies adopted Bantu tongue and retreated to
  forest
• Hottentots and Bushmen retained the clicks of
  Khoisan languages

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Polyglot States
In Switzerland, four official languages, a
history of peace and tolerance, and a political
system that puts power in the hands of local
leaders help ensure peace.
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Polyglot States
Nigeria has more than 200 individual languages!
English is the official language. Even though
only 20 speak standard English, 80 speak pidgin
English.
In Nigeria ethnic conflict between southern Ibos
and western Yoruba led the government to move
the capital to a more neutral central location
(Abuja). Many other ethnic battles rage
continuously.
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Polyglot States
India has 16 official languages. Hindi is spoken
in the north by about 400 million, but the
majority in the south speak Dravidian languages
(Tamil) and resist Hindi. English functions as a
lingua franca for government, education, and big
business.
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How about the U.S.?
The U.S. Constitution specifies no official
language. The Supreme Court has consistently
ruled that governments must assist in the
learning of English, especially in the schools.
However, many states and local jurisdictions
provide ballots and information in multiple
languages.
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Key Issue 4 Why do people preserve local
languages?

• Extinct language- language no longer spoken or
  used in daily activities by anyone in the world.
• Isolated language- a language unrelated to any
  other and not attached to any specific branch.
• Ex. Basque, spoken by over 1 million people in
  the Pyrenees Mts. of Spain.
• Icelandic, spoken by the Norwegians who
  originally emigrated to Iceland and remained
  isolated for several hundred years.

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Other Variations

• Lingua franca- a universal language understood
  globally.
• Pidgin language- a simplified version of a lingua
  franca, used to communicate typically in areas
  where contact is just beginning.
• Ebonics- the dialect spoken by many blacks who
  migrated from the South to the large cities in
  the North who wished to preserve their
  distinctive accents.
• Franglais- the hybrid English-French language
  resulting from a combination of the two.
• Spanglish- similar to franglais, only a
  English-Spanish hybridization.

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PIDGIN - a form of speech that adopts simplified
grammar and limited vocabulary from a lingua
franca, used for communication between speakers
of two different languages.
Examples include Hawaiian Pidgin, Haitian Patois,
and the creoles of West Africa that resulted from
the slave trade.
No eat da candy, Bruddah, it's pilau. Da thing
wen fall on da ground.
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Give us da food we need fo today an every
day.Hemmo our shame, an let us goFo all da kine
bad stuff we do to you,Jalike us guys let da
odda guys go awready,And we no stay huhu wit
demFo all da kine bad stuff dey do to us.No let
us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,But take us
outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.Cuz you
our King.You get da real power,An you stay
awesome foeva.Dass it! Matthew 69-13 The
Lords Prayer - Taken from Da Jesus Book, a
twelve year effort by 6 linguists to translate
the New Testament into Hawaiian Pidgin, published
2001
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DIALECT - a regional variety of a language
distinguished by pronunciation, spelling, and
vocabulary. Social Dialects - can denote social
class and standing. Vernacular Dialects - the
common, slang, speech of a region.
Term Is he fair dinkum? Why I declare!Down by
the crickbludger mosquito hawknappies
MeaningIs he real or genuine? Thats
remarkable!Down by the stream freeloader
welfare dragon flydiapers
LocationAustraliaDeep South (U.S.)Middle
Atlantic StatesAustraliaSouth (U.S.)Britain
Brit. Colonies
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Endangered Languages

• As recently as 3,000 years ago, there were 10,000
  to 15,000 languages in the world.
• Now about 6000 left.
• Of those, 1/2 will be gone by the year 2100 and
  all but 500 of the rest will be endangered.
• More than 90 percent of the languages in
  existence today will be extinct or threatened in
  little more than a century if current trends
  continue.

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Extinct or Endangered Languages - Cameroon (11)

BISHUOBUNG BUSUU DULIGEY LUO NAGUMI NDAI NGON
G YENI ZUMAYA
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Extinct Languages - USA (93)
ABNAKI-PENOBSCOT ACHUMAWI AHTENA APACHE,
KIOWA APACHE, LIPAN ATAKAPA ATSUGEWI
BILOXI CADDO CAHUILLA CATAWBA
CHEHALIS, LOWER CHEROKEE CHETCO CHINOOK
CHINOOK WAWA CHITIMACHA CHUMASH
CLALLAM COEUR D'ALENE COOS COQUILLE
COWLITZ CUPEÑO EYAK FLATHEAD-KALISPEL
GALICE GROS VENTRE HAN HAWAI'I PIDGIN
SIGN LANGUAGE HOLIKACHUK HUPA IOWA-OTO
KALAPUYA KANSA KASHAYA KATO KAWAIISU
KITSAI KOYUKON LUMBEE LUSHOOTSEED
MAIDU, NORTHEAST MAIDU, NORTHWEST MAIDU,
VALLEY MANDAN MARTHA'S VINEYARD SIGN
MATTOLE MENOMINI MIAMI MIWOK MOBILIAN
MOHEGAN MONO NANTICOKE NATCHEZ
NISENAN NOOKSACK OFO OSAGE POMO
POWHATAN QUAPAW QUILEUTE QUINAULT
SALINAN SALISH SERRANO SHASTA SIUSLAW
SNOHOMISH TANAINA TILLAMOOK TOLOWA
TONKAWA TÜBATULABAL TUNICA TUSCARORA
TUTELO TUTUTNI TWANA UNAMI WAILAKI
WAMPANOAG WAPPO WASCO-WISHRAM WINTU
WIYOT WYANDOT YANA YOKUTS YUKI
YUROK

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Endangered Languages
Why are they disappearing? Globalization and
Economic Change Migration (Urbanization) Defor
estation Economic Development - Lingua
Francas Media Internet (Requires Arabic
Character Set)

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• The most obvious, and the main, reason for
  preserving a language is to preserve language
  diversity and to promote a self-identity.
• Many groups have revived their languages recently
  in order to help preserve an integral part of
  their culture
• Examples include Hebrew and Celtic

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• Rubenstein, James- Cultural Landscape An
  Introduction to Human Geography
• http//www.glendale.edu/geo/reed/cultural/cultural
  _lectures.htm
• http//www.quia.com/pages/mrsbellaphg.html
• Google