Human Geography By James Rubenstein

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Human Geography By James Rubenstein

• Chapter 5
• Key Issue 3
• Where Are Other Language Families Distributed?

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• About 50 of all people in the World speak a
  language in the Indo European Family.
• About 20 of the World speak a language in the
  Sino-Tibetan family

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20 Speak one of these four language families.

• Afro-Asiatic (Middle East)
• Austronesian (Southeast Asia)
• Niger-Congo (Africa)
• Dravidian (India)

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Language Family Tree

• Divided into language families, branches, and
  groups.
• Families form trunks.
• Individual languages form leaves.
• Branches with less then 5 million speakers and
  dialects are not shown.

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Sino-Tibetan Family

• Spoken in China and several Southeast Asian
  countries.
• Sinitic Branch
• Austro-Thai Branch
• Tibetan-Burman Branch

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Chinese

• Mandarin (Pu tong bua common speech) is the
  most important.
• - Spoken by 3/4ths all Chinese.
• - Official language of Peoples Republic of
  China and Taiwan.
• Others Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Jinyu,
  and Gan.

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Sinitic Structure

• Based on 420 one-syllable words with multiple
  meanings.
• Meanings must be inferred from context and tone.
• The written form relies on ideograms.

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Ideograms

• Characteristics that represent ideas or concepts,
  not specific pronunciations.

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Key characters may be built into more complex
words.
Ideogram Examples
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Japanese

• A distinctive language family.
• As an island, developed language in isolation.
• Written language of Ideograms (from china)
• Foreign terms are written with on of two systems
  of phonetic symbols.

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Korean

• Often classified as a separate language family.
• Written with phonetic characters (referred to as
  Hankul).
• Over half of Korean words are derived from
  Chinese.

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Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches

• The Thai branch is spoken in Laos, Thailand and
  parts of Viet Nam.
• The Burman branch is spoken in Myanmar (formerly
  Burma)

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Vietnamese

• Most spoken tongue of Austro-Asiatic language
  family.
• Written with Roman alphabet, which was devised
  by 7th century Roman Catholic missionaries.

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Afro-Asiatic Language Family

• Includes Arabic and Hebrew.
• Spoken in North Africa and Southwest Asia.
• 4th largest language family.
• Languages used to write holiest books of 3 major
  religions.

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Altaic and Uralic Language Families

• Once thought to be of the same family.

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Altaic Languages

• Spoken in a 5000 mile band between Turkey and
  Mongolia.
• Turkey is the most widely used example.
• Originally written with Arabic letters, switched
  to Roman letters in 1928.
• Include Azerbaijani, Mongolian, and Usbek among
  others.

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Uralic Languages

• Estonians, Finish, and Hungarians are among the
  speakers.
• Common root first spoken in the Ural Mountains
  7000 years ago, north of the Kurgan homeland.

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African Language Families

• Nearly 1000 distinct languages and several
  thousand dialects have been documented.
• Result of 5000 years of minimal interaction.
• Most lack written tradition.
• North African language patterns are relatively
  clear, but sub-Saharan are more complex.

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Niger-Congo Language Family

• More than 95 of sub-Sahara speak languages of
  this family.
• Benue-Congo is the most important branch, which
  includes Swahili.
• Swahili is official language of Tanzania, was
  originally a mixture of Arabic and African
  languages.

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Nilo-Saharan Language Family

• Spoken by a few million people in north-central
  Africa.
• Divided into six branches, each of which are
  divided into several groups.
• Total number of speakers in each group is
  extremely small.

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Khoisan Language Family

• Concentrated in the southwest.
• Distinctive use of clicking sounds.
• Hottentot is most important Khoisan language.

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Austronesian Language Family

• Once known as the Malay-Polynesian family.
• Malay-Indonesian is spoken in Indonesia and is
  most frequently used example of this family.
• Malagasy is spoken in Madascar, which is 1900
  miles from other languages of the same family.

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Nigerias Language Conflict

• More than 200 distinct languages.
• English is the official language, but only 2 of
  the people speak it.
• Speakers of one language are unlikely to
  understand any others of the same language.

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