Chapter 8 A Geography of Language

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Chapter 8 A Geography of Language

• ..is the essence of culture, and no culture
  exists without it. When a peoples language is
  threatened, the response often is passionate and
  protective

Merci (French)
Takk (Icelandic)
Mahalo (Hawaiian)
To-Sia
Dankon(Esperanto)
Trugarez, Mersi dit (Breton)
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Where is the bathroom?

• Choo kiko wapi?

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Anti-English????

• French are aggressively protective of their
  language
• Pompidou - It is through our language that we
  exist in the world other than as just another
  country
• 1975 -French government banned foreign-language-ad
  vertisements
• 1992 - French the official language of the
  Republic
• 1994- Law passed to stop using English words in
  French

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Preliterate societies

• People who speak their language but do not write
  are at a disadvantage - no written literature
  that can serve as a foundation for cultural
  preservation
• They are on the verge of extinction
• Vanishing Voices
• A total of 76 worlds languages is disappearing
  from the world at an astounding rate -- as many
  as half might become extinct in the next century.
  Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine, 2000
• Trends has been accelerating in recent decades
  thanks to the global economic juggermaut
• No language is better or more efficient than any
  other?

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Nearly extinct languages

• 417 languages are classified as nearly extinct
  when only a few elderly speakers are still
  living
• Africa 37
• The Americas 161
• Asia 55
• Europe 7
• The Pacific 157

source of data SIL.org
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Defining Language -1

• Websters Dictionary - a systematic means of
  communicating ideas or feelings by the use of
  conventionalized signs, gestures, marks, or
  especially articulate vocal sounds.
• Communication of sound (vocalization) is the
  crucial part of this definition
• Non-human languages- elephants, dolphins,
  chimpanzees - basic and static unlikely evolving
  into complex languages.
• Languages are not static but change continuously
• Modern English - computer expands the vocabulary
  of commonly used words.

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Defining Language -2 Standard Language

• Paris French
• Beijing Hua (PuTongHua)
• dialects - regional variants of a standard
  language, differences in a)vocabulary b) syntax
  c) pronunciation d)cadence (rhythm) and e)pace of
  speech
• Isogloss - a geographic boundary within which a
  particular linguistic feature occurs (retreat or
  advance) (figure 8-1)

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Internet languages

• c ya,
• r u ?
• yeh, duhhhhhh
• Tada

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Classification and Distribution of Languages

• Language families - have a shared, but fairly
  distant, origin
• Language subfamilies - commonality is more
  definite
• Language groups - sets of individual languages
• There are 20 major language families and only
  Indo-European is broken down into subfamilies
• Indo-European - most widely dispersed language
  family - its origin --Proto-Indo-European (from
  Black Sea or eastcentral Europe) no longer
  exists.
• Migration brought the language to other regions
  in the world.

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Number of Speakers of Major Languages

• Chinese - more than 1 billion speakers
• English - may be more than the estimated
• Statistics based on population data are not
  reliable
• Subsaharan - 600 million with more than 1000
  languages
• Austro-Asiatic languages - survivors of ancient
  languages spoken before modern invasions and
  cultural diffusion took place (eastern India and
  Cambodia (Khmer))
• Madagascar
• - Long ago settled by seafarers from islands of
  Southeast Asia
• - Predominant languages belong to the
  Malay-Polynesian family
• - Difference between place names on Madagascar
  and Africa reveals a piece of historical geography

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The Language of Europe -1

• Other than Indo-European, Ural-Altaic in Finland
  and adjacent area, Hungary, and west of Turkey.
• Indo-European

Greek, Albanian Armenian
Indo-Iranian
(Persian in Iran, Pathan in Afghanistan and
Kurdish)
Celtic
Germanic
Slavic
Romance
(Breton, Welsh, and Gaelic)
(Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian)
(Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian and
Portuguese)
(English,German,Danish,Norwegian, and Swedish)
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The Language of Europe - 2, Linguistic and
Political Map

• A high correlation between linguistic and
  political boundaries
• Exceptions - 1) Celtic tongue in a) Brittany
  Peninsula b)Wales c) Western Ireland and d)
  Scotland 2) French extends into Belgium,
  Switzerland and Italy 3) Romania extends well
  into Moldavia
• Ural-Altaic - 1) represented by Finnish, Estonian
  and Hungarian, 2) extends across Eurasia to
  Pacific coast (figure 8-2) and includes Turkish,
  Kazakh, Uigur, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek, 3) spread into
  Europe between 7000 and 10000 years ago, then
  taken over by Indo-European language 4) now
  survive as the national languages of Finland and
  Hungary

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Germanic (click here to link to figure

• North Germanic - Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and
  Icelandic.
• West Germanic - English and German and Frisian.

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Branches of Indo-European Lang(link).
Afghanistan Dari 50 Pashto 35 Arabic alphabet
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The Language of India

• Indo-European and Dravidian family
• Three exceptional areas 1) Northwest Tibetan
  speakers 2) border with Maynmar (Burma) Naga
  (Burmese) speakers and 3) east small groups of
  Austro-Asiatic speakers
• 15 Major languages (11 Indo-European), and 1600
  lesser languages
• Four Dravidian languages in south of Indian
  Peninsula, there were older and pushed
  southward by Indo-European, 80 mi. speaks Telugu,
  75 mi.-Tamil, 35 mil.-Karnataka and 35
  mi-Malayalam
• Hindi spoken by 300 million Indo-European
  (Map of Indian languages)

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African Languages

• Africas past from the reconstruction of the
  languages
• Niger-Congo from West African to the south,
  divided into five subfamilies Bantu is the
  largest spoken by people near the equator and
  south of it.
• The oldest language Khoisan, includes a click
  sound, speakers reduced by Bantu
• Language development the more time elapse, the
  greater the individuality of each language, so
• If the peoples of a large region speak languages
  that are somewhat different but still closely
  related, it is reasonable to conclude that they
  have migrated into the region relatively
  recently.
• The languages of Bantu subfamily are much more
  closely related than those of other subfamilies
  - shorter history than West Africans

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Chinese

• 700 million speakers Mandarin
• 100 million Wu
• 70 million Yue
• Dialects are mutually unintelligible more than
  one languages?
• Hakka

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Map of Native American Languages (link)
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• Foreign Languages for Travelers
• Http//www.travlang.com/languages/
• UCLA language materials project
• http//www.lmp.ucla.edu/proflng.htm