Ch a 5

1
Ch a 5
Chapter 5

• Language

2
Maps What can they reveal?

• Mountain Ranges
• Population
• Rivers
• Spread of disease
• Political boundaries
• Voting preferences

3
Division In Belgium

• Maps can hide the complexities of life.
• Look at maps with a questioning eye
• Look at a European map of language, and zero in
  on Belgium.
• Neat line divides Flemish speakers (Germanic
  Language) in the north region (Flanders) and
  French (Romance language) in the south (Wallonia)

4
Belgium Language Map

Fig. 5-1 English is the official language in 42
countries, including some in which it is not the
most widely spoken language. It is also used and
understood in many others.
5
Divisive Issue Language

• During the 19th century, French speakers
  controlled the industrial economy and government
  of the country.
• The French-speaking elite in Brussels and other
  Flemish cities began a process of
  Frechification
• By the 20th Century, the majority of the people
  in Brussels spoke French, although people in the
  surrounding Brussels area continued to speak
  Flemish
• By the 1960s, a fixed partition scheme came in
  to beingdividing he country into
  Flemish-speaking Flanders in the north and
  French-speaking Wallonia in the south.
• The government recognizes Brussels as a distinct
  region, a bilingual capital, but places strict
  limits on the use of French in the rest of
  northern Belgium

Fig. 5-2 The groups that brought what became
English to England included Jutes, Angles,
Saxons, and Vikings. The Normans later brought
French vocabulary to English.
6
Language Issues

• Tied in with politics
• Socioeconomic status

Fig. 5-3 The main dialect regions of Old English
before the Norman invasion persisted to some
extent in the Middle English dialects through the
1400s.
7
What are languages, and what role do they play in
cultures?

Le Big Mac
8
The French Government

• Passed a law in 1975 banning the use of foreign
  words in advertisements, television, and radio
  broadcasts, and official documents, unless no
  French Equivalent could be found.
• Americans may think this oddif we can
  communicate, what is the need for laws?
• Answer is more complex, language is an integral
  part of culture, reflecting and shaping it.

9
To understand the role of language in
culturelook at those who have lost their
languages

• American
• Canadian
• Australian
• Russian
• New Zealand

Governments who forced indigenous people to speak
another language
10
Example Native Americans
No one was allowed to speak the language-the
Denaina language. They (the American
Government) didnt allow it in schools, and a lot
of the women had married non-native men, and the
men said, Youre American now so you cant
speak the language. So, we became invisible in
the community. Invisible to each other. And,
then, because we couldnt speak the languagewhat
happens when you cant speak your own language is
you have to think with someone elses words, and
thats a dreadful kind of isolation.
Clare Swan, an elder in the Kenaitze band of the
Denaina Indians in Alaska.
11
Official Language Policies in The US

• Spanish-speaking people are growing
• Some Spanish speakers and their advocates are
  demanding the use of Spanish in public affairs
• In response, some people are opposed to the use
  of Spanish in the United States, and are leading
  counter-movements to promote Official English
  policies
• More than 25 States today have declared English
  the official language of the State, either by
  statute or by amending the State constitution

12
Canada A country of two languages

• Quebec has a focus of passing laws that promote
  the use of the French language
• They have even periodically, called for
  independence from Canada!
• In 1993, the Quebec government passed a law
  requiring the use of French in advertising.
• The Quebec law allows the inclusion of both
  French and English translations on signs, as long
  as the French letters are twice the size of the
  other languages letters, or the French appears
  first.

13
(No Transcript)
14
Standard Language

• One that is published, widely distributed, and
  purposefully taught.
• In some countries, the standard language is
  sustained through official state examinations for
  teachers and civil servants.
• Ireland promotes the use of the Irish (Celtic)
  language by requiring all government employees to
  pass an Irish-language examination before they
  can be hired.

15
Dialects

• Variant of a standard language along regional or
  ethnic lines are called dialects.
• Differences in vocabulary, syntax,
  pronunciation, cadence (the rhythm of the speech,
  and even the pace of speech all mark a speakers
  dialect.
• To people in the southern US, the word Horse
  spoken by a New Englander sounds like Hahse
• To New Englanders, the word oil spoken by a
  southerner sounds like all
• An isogloss is a geographic boundary within
  which a particular linguistic feature occurs, but
  such a boundary is rarely a simple line.

16
Dialects in the Eastern U.S.
Fig. 5-4 Hans Kurath divided the eastern U.S.
into three dialect regions, whose distribution is
similar to that of house types (Fig. 4-9).
17
Why are languages distributed the way they are?

• The first step in mapping the distribution of
  languages is to classify language.
• Linguists and linguistic geographers classify
  languages in terms that are also used in biology
  and for the same reasons like species, some
  languages are related, and others are not.
• At the global scale, we classify languages into
  language families.
• These are then divided more into
  subfamiliesdivisions within a language family

18
Language Tree
19
The Indo-European Language Family

• Branches of Indo-European
• Germanic branch
• Indo-Iranian branch
• Balto-Slavic branch
• Romance branch

20
Indo-European Language Family
Fig. 5-5 The main branches of the Indo-European
language family include Germanic, Romance,
Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.
21
Germanic Branch of Indo-European
Fig. 5-6 The Germanic branch today is divided
into North and West Germanic groups. English is
in the West Germanic group.
22
South Asian Languages and Language Families
Fig. 5-7 Indo-European is the largest of four
main language families in South Asia. The
country of India has 18 official languages.
23
Romance Branch of Indo-European
Fig. 5-8 The Romance branch includes three of
the worlds 12 most widely spoken languages
(Spanish, French, and Portuguese), as well as a
number of smaller languages and dialects.
24
Distribution of Other Language Families

• Classification of languages
• Distribution of language families
• Sino-Tibetan language family
• Other East and Southeast Asian language families
• Afro-Asiatic language family
• Altaic and Uralic language families
• African language families

25
Language Families of the World
Fig. 5-11 Distribution of the worlds main
language families. Languages with more than 100
million speakers are named.
26
Major Language FamiliesPercentage of World
Population
Fig. 5-11a The percentage of world population
speaking each of the main language families.
Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan together represent
almost 75 of the worlds people.
27
Chinese Ideograms
Fig. 5-13 Chinese language ideograms mostly
represent concepts rather than sounds. The two
basic characters at the top can be built into
more complex words.
28
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.
29
Languages of Nigeria
Fig. 5-15 More than 200 languages are spoken in
Nigeria, the largest country in Africa (by
population). English, considered neutral, is the
official language.
30
Language Diversity and Uniformity

• Preserving language diversity
• Hebrew reviving extinct languages
• Celtic preserving endangered languages
• Multilingual states
• Isolated languages
• Global dominance of English
• English as a lingua franca
• Diffusion to other languages

31
Language Areas in Switzerland
Fig. 5-17 Switzerland remains peaceful with four
official languages and a decentralized government
structure.
32
Internet Hosts
Fig. 5-1-1 A large proportion of the worlds
internet users and hosts are in the developed
countries of North America and western Europe.
33
Internet Hosts, by Language
Fig 5-1-1a The large majority of internet hosts
in 1999 used English, Chinese, Japanese, or
European languages.
34
Monolingual States

• Countries in which only one language is spoken
• Japan
• Uruguay and Venezuela
• Iceland
• Denmark
• Portugal
• Poland
• Lesotho

35
What role does language play in making places?

• Toponyms are place names
• They can give us a quick glimpses into the
  history of a place
• 10 basic types
• Descriptive (Rocky Mountains)
• Associative (Mill Valley)
• Commemorative (San Francisco)
• Commendatory (Paradise Valley)
• Incidents (Battle Creek)
• Possession (Johnson City)
• Folk Culture (Plains, Georgia)
• Manufactured (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico)
• Mistakes (Lasker, North Carolina) (Named for
  Alaska)
• Shift Names, relocated Lancaster, Pennsylvania
  and England

36
(No Transcript)
37
Just to clarify since everyone always gets
confused!
38
Language Branch

• A group of languages that share a common origin
  but have since evolved into individual languages.
  Differences are not as extensive or ols as with
  language families. Branches derived from families.

39
Language Group

• A collection of languages within a branch that
  share a common origin in the relatively recent
  past and display relatively few differences in
  grammar and vocabulary.

40
Vocabulary

• LINGUA FRANCA language used among speakers of
  different languages for trade and commerce a
  bridge language English is the worlds lingua
  franca
• PIDGIN LANGUAGE people speaking two or more
  languages combine parts of the languages into a
  more simplified structure and vocabulary through
  contact with others
• CREOLE LANGUAGE began as a Pidgin but later
  adopted in place of the mother language. More
  complex structure and vocabulary
• Isogloss-Word usage boundary
• Examples Pop vs Soda, Ass yo at AHS

41
Indo-European Group
42
Language Family

• A collection of languages related to each other
  through a common ancestor long before recorded
  history.

43
AAP Human Geography
More fun than a root canal!