Diffusion of Language Theories and Language Families

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Diffusion of Language Theories and Language
Families
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What Clues Can Diffusion of Language Give Us?

• Offers clues to past history of culture groups,
  migration, contact/isolation, past distribution
• Good indicator of human migrations but language
  is also a barrier.
• Language Branches collection of languages
  related through a common ancestor that existed
  several thousands of years ago

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Classification of Language
Language Family Major Language Location
Indo-European Germanic, Romance, Baltic Slavic, Indo-Iranian Americas, Europe, SW Asia, Australia, South Africa
Sino-Tibetan Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese China, SE Asia
Japanese Korean Japanese and Korean Japan, Korea
Afro-Asiatic Arabic, Hebrew North Africa, Arabian Peninsula
Dravidian Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil India
Austronesian Malay Indonesian, Sudanese Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Madagascar
Altaic and Uralic Mongolian, Kazah, Turkish, Uzbek Russia, Northern Asia, Finland, Turkey
Khoisan Bantu Sub-Saharan Africa
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Indo- European Diffusion

• Conquest Theory vs. Agricultural Theory

Conquest Theory Other groups from Central Asia
brought over languages through conquests Kurgan
Migration starting in 4000BC
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Agricultural Theory Language followed
agricultural innovations from Turkey into Europe
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Indo European Family
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Germanic Branch

• Invading tribes in Europe (North and West)
• West Germanic

High Germanic
North Germanic (Scandinavia)
Low Germanic
German
English Dutch Flemish Afrikaan
Swedish Danish Norwegian Icelandic
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Indo Iranian Branch
Indic (Eastern) India, Pakistan
Iranian (Western) Iran/ Afghanistan/ Pakistan
Hindi (India) Urdu (Pakistan)
Persian Farsi Kurdish (Kurds only) All write in
Arabic alphabet
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Balto Slavic Branch
East Slavic Baltic Groups
West South Slavic Groups
East Slavic Russian Ukrainian (border)
Belarusian (white) Baltic Latvian Lithuanian

Polish Czech Slovak Serbo-Croatian Bulgarian
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Romance Branch
Language evolved from Latin during Roman era
2,000 years ago
Romance Languages (Latin)
Romansh (Switzerland)
Portuguese
Spanish
Italian
French
Romanian
Creole (Port. And African)
Catalan
Occitan (South France)
Ladin
Sardinian
Castilian
Friulian
Creole (LA)
Vulgar Latin spoken form of Latin that the
masses knew. Vulgar Latin helped set the stage
for the current language spoken in the regions.
HORSE CABALLUS (Vulgar Latin) CAVALLOR
(Italian), CABALLO (Spanish), CAVALO
(Portuguese), CHEVAL (French)
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Sino Tibetan Family
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Sinitic Branch
Chinese Language
Mandarin Chinese (official lang in China and
Taiwan)
Cantonese Chinese (South China)
Wu
Min
Hakka (Kejia)
In the Chinese language, there are 420 single
syllable sounds that could have multiple
meanings. The listener must use the context to
figure out the meaning of the sound. Example
shi lion, corpse, house, poetry, ten, swear, or
die. Two one syllable words can be combined to
create a meaning. Example Shanghai means
above and sea
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Austro-Thai Tibeto-Burman Branches
Austro-Thai
Tibeto-Burman
Thai (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam) Lao ( Laos)
Burmese (Myanmar)
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Japan Korea Family

• Japanese is distinct because Japan is an isolated
  country due to being an island. Japanese written
  language is similar to Chinese ideograms.
• Korean language is distinct because Korea is a
  country along a peninsula. Korean language is
  written using symbols called hankul but each
  symbol is a sound similar to Western languages.

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Afro-Asiatic Family (Semito Hamitic)
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Arabic Hebrew

• Arabic and Hebrew are known as the languages used
  to write the holiest of the books of 3
  monotheistic religions Judeo-Christian Bible and
  the Islamic Quran.
• Arabic is the official language in over 2 dozen
  countries. Over 200 million people speak Arabic
  due to being Muslim.

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Altaic and Uralic Family
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Altaic Branch
Russian Cyrillic Alphabet and Arabic
Turkish ( written in Roman Alphabet)
Azerbaijani Bashkir Chuvash Kazakh Kyrgyz Mongolia
n Tatar Turkmen Uighur Uzbek
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Uralic Branch
Estonian Finnish Hungarian
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African Family
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Niger-Congo Branch
Benue Congo
Swahili
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Nilo-Saharan Branch
Songhai
Chari-Nile
Fur
Koma
Maba
Saharan
Berta
Central Sudanic
East Sudanic
Kunama
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Khoisan Branch
Mostly in Southwest Africa, language that has the
clicking sound white settlers called this
language HOTTENTOT
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Austronesian Branch
Malay-Indonesian (mostly used in the Pacific
sphere)
Malagasy (Madagascar)
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Conflicts Due to Language Differences

• Countries in which more than one language is in
• use are called multilingual states.
• Multilingualism takes on many forms. In
• bilingual Canada, regional divisions can be found
• between French-speaking Quebec and the rest of
• the country. The Quebecois have been diligent in
• passing several language laws (e.g. French signs,
• menus, etc).

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• Nigeria is a much more complicated case study
  than either
• Canada or Belgium. It has three major languages,
  more than a
• dozen major local languages, and around 230 local
  tongues! The
• three major languages are strongly associated
  with regional cultures
• and are unsuitable as national languages. When
  Nigeria became
• independent, its leaders chose English as its
  official language

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Language Trees

• Take your notes and draw out a language tree.