What Religion and Where in the World?

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What Religion and Where in the World?

• Eastern Orthodox
• Latvia

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Ch 5 Language

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Why geographers study language

• Provides the single most common variable by which
  cultural groups are identified
• Provides the main means by which learned customs
  skills pass from one generation to the next
• Facilitates cultural diffusion of innovations
• Because languages vary spatially, they reinforce
  the sense of region and place
• Study of language called linguistic geography and
  geolinguistics by geographers

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Terms used in the study of language

• Language tongues that cannot be mutually
  understood
• Dialects variant forms of a language that have
  not lost mutual comprehension
• A speaker of English can understand the various
  dialect of the language
• A dialect is distinctive enough in vocabulary and
  pronunciation to label its speaker
• Some 6,000 languages and many more dialects are
  spoken today

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Terms used in the study of language

• Pidgin language results when different
  linguistic groups come into contact
• Serves the purposes of commerce
• Has a small vocabulary derived from the various
  contact groups
• Why it develops Speakers of different languages
  need to communicate but don't share a common
  language.
• Where Official language of Papua, New Guinea is
  a largely English-derived pidgin language, which
  includes Spanish, German, Papuan words
• Example Spanglish

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Terms used in the study of language

• Lingua franca a language that spreads over a
  wide area where it is not the mother tongue
• A language of communication and commerce
• Swahili language has this status in much of East
  Africa
• English is Lingua franca of international
  business world-wide

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Kenya
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Kenya

• Kenya has two official languages Swahili
  English. These lingua franca facilitate
  communication among Bantu, Nilotic, Cushitic
  language speakers.
• Swahili developed along the coast of East Africa
  where Bantu came in contact with Arabic spoken by
  Arab sea traders.

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Kenya

• English became important during the British
  colonial period and is still associated with high
  status.
• This shopping center caters to Maasai herders who
  speak a Nilotic language Kikuyu farmers who
  speak a Bantu language.
• Jambo means hello in Swahili.-gt

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On your copy outline with hi-liter countries that
speak Swahili
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On your Colonial Chloropleth language map of
Africa- Color the countries the following
colors French- Blue English - Red Portuguese-
Yellow Italian- Green, Spanish - Orange -
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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• isoglosses borders of individual word usages or
  pronunciations
• No 2 words, phrases, or pronunciations have
  exactly the same spatial distribution
• Spatially isoglosses crisscross one another
• Typically cluster together in bundles
• Bundles serve as the most satisfactory dividing
  lines among dialects languages

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English dialects in the U.S.

• Dialects reveal a vivid geography
• American English is hardly uniform from region to
  region
• At least 3 major dialects, corresponding to major
  culture regions, developed in the eastern United
  States by the time of the American Revolution
• Northern
• Midland
• Southern

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Dialect Activity http//polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare
/Audio.html
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English dialects in the United States

• The three subcultures expanded westward their
  dialects spread and fragmented
• Retained much of their basic character even
  beyond the Mississippi River
• Have distinctive vocabularies and pronunciations
• Drawing dialect boundaries is often tricky

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English dialects in the United States

• Today, many regional words are becoming
  old-fashioned, but new words display regional
  variations
• The following words are all used to describe a
  controlled-access divided highway
• Freeway a California word
• Turnpike and parkway mainly northeastern and
  Midwestern words
• Thruway, expressway, and interstate

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English dialects in the United States

• Many African-Americans speak their own form of
  English Black English
• Once dismissed as inferior substandard English
• Grew out of a pidgin that developed on early
  slave plantations
• Today, spoken by about 80 of African-Americans
• Used by ghetto dwellers who have not made their
  compromises with mainstream American culture
• Many features separate it from standard speech,
  for example
• Lack of pronoun differentiation between genders
• Use of undifferentiated pronouns Not recognized
  as part of the proper grammar of a separate
  linguistic group
• Considered evidence of verbal inability or
  impoverishment
• In the Southern dialect, African-Americans have
  made substantial contributions to speech
• Southern dialect is becoming increasingly
  identified with African-Americans
• Caucasians in the Southern region are shifting to
  Midland speech

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English dialects in the United States

• American dialects suggest we are not becoming a
  more national culture by overwhelming regional
  cultures
• Linguistic divergence is still under way
• Dialects continue to mutate on a regional level
• Local variations in grammar pronunciation
  proliferate
• The homogenizing influence of radio, television,
  and other mass media is being defied

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Pop vs Soda http//www.popvssoda.com/
What Patterns can you identify? Why do they
exist?
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London, England

• While English is spoken in many parts of the
  world, all English words are not mutually
  intelligible.
• This London tube (subway) sign say that anyone
  performing there (eg singing or playing for
  money) is subject to a fine of subsection.
• Are tubes, subway, and busking dialect words?

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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Indo-European diffusion

• Earliest speakers apparently lived in southern
  and southeastern Turkey (Anatolia) about eight or
  nine thousand years ago
• Diffused west and north into Europe
• Represented expansion of farming people at
  expense of hunters and gatherers
• As people dispersed and lost contact, different
  variant forms of the language caused
  fragmentation of the family

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Indo-European diffusion

• Later language diffusion occurred with the spread
  of great political empires, especially Latin,
  English, and Russian
• Relocation and expansion diffusion were not
  mutually exclusive
• Relocation diffusion by conquering elite
  implanted their language
• Implanted language often gained wider acceptance
  by expansion diffusion
• Conquerors language spread hierarchically
• Spread of Latin with Roman conquests
• Spanish in Latin America

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Austronesian diffusion

• Presumed hearth in the interior of Southeast Asia
  5,000 years ago
• Initially spread southward into the Malay
  Peninsula
• In a process lasting several thousand years,
  people sailed in tiny boats across the. uncharted
  vast seas to New Zealand, Easter Island, Hawaii,
  and Madagascar
• Sailing and navigation was the key to
  Austronesian spread, not agriculture

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Austronesian diffusion

• The remarkable diffusion of the Polynesian
  people
• Form the eastern part of the Austronesian culture
  region
• Occupy hundreds of Pacific islands in a
  triangular-shaped realm
• New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii form the
  three apexes of the realm
• Made a watery leap of 2,500 miles from the South
  Pacific to Hawaii
• Used outrigger canoes
• Went against prevailing winds into a new
  hemisphere with different navigational stars
• No humans had previously found the isolated
  Hawaiian Islands
• Sailors had no way of knowing that land existed
  in the area

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Austronesian diffusion

• Geographers John Webb and Gerard Ward studied the
  prehistoric Polynesian diffusion
• Their method involved the development of a
  computer model building in data on
• Winds
• Ocean currents
• Vessel traits and capabilities
• Island visibility
• Duration of voyage, etc.
• Both drift and navigated voyages were considered

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Austronesian diffusion

• Over one hundred thousand voyage simulations were
  run through the computer
• Their conclusions
• Triangle was probably entered from the
  westdirection of the ancient Austronesian hearth
  area
• Island hoppingmigrated from one visible island
  to another
• Core of eastern Polynesia likely reached by
  navigated voyages
• Outer arc from Hawaii through Easter Island to
  New Zealand reached by intentionally navigated
  voyages

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Searching for the primordial tongue

• Using controversial techniques, linguists seek
  the more elusive prehistoric tongues
• Nostraticancestral speech of the Middle East
  12,000 to 20,000 years ago
• Ancestral to nine modern language families
• A 500-word dictionary has been compiled
• Contemporary with Nostratic were other ancient
  tongues including Dene-Caucasian

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Searching for the primordial tongue

• Dene-Caucasian reputedly gave rise to
  Sino-Tibetan, Basque, and one form of early
  Native-American called Na-Dene
• Scholars are attempting to find the original
  linguistic hearth area from which all modern
  languages have derived
• It is believed the original language hearth arose
  in Africa perhaps 250,000 years ago and diffused
  from there

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The Mosaic of Languages

• Linguistic Culture Regions
• Linguistic Diffusion
• Linguistic Ecology
• Culturo-Linguistic Integration
• Linguistic Landscapes

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The environment and vocabulary

• How the environment affects vocabulary
• Spanish language derived from Castile
• Rich in words describing rough terrain (Table
  5.3)
• Distinguishes subtle differences in shape and
  configuration of mountains
• Scottish Gaelic
• Describes types of rough terrain
• Common attribute spoken by hill people
• Romanian tongue
• Also from a region of rugged terrain
• Words tend to be keyed to use of terrain for
  livestock herding

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The environment and vocabulary

• English
• Developed in wet coastal plains
• Very poor in words describing mountainous terrain
• Abounds with words describing flowing streams
• Rural American Southriver, creek, branch, fork,
  prong, run, bayou, and slough

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The environment and vocabulary

• Vocabularies develop for features of the
  environment that involve livelihood
• Detailed vocabularies are necessary to
  communicate sophisticated information relevant to
  the adaptive strategy

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The environment provides refuge

• Inhospitable environments offer protection and
  isolation
• Provide outnumbered linguistic groups refuge from
  aggressive neighbors
• Linguistic refuge areas
• Rugged bill and mountain areas
• Excessively cold or dry climates
• Impenetrable forests and remote islands
• Extensive marshes and swamps
• Unpleasant environments rarely attract conquerors
• Mountains tend to isolate inhabitants of one
  valley from another

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Examples of linguistic refuge areas

• Rugged Caucasus Mountains and nearby ranges in
  central Eurasia are populated by a large variety
  of peoples
• Alps, Himalayas, and highlands of Mexico are
  linguistic shatter belts areas where diverse
  languages are spoken
• American Indian tongue Quechua clings to a refuge
  in the Andes Mountains of South America
• In the Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico, an
  archaic form of Spanish survives due to isolation
  that ended in the early 1900s

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Examples of linguistic refuge areas

• The Dhofar, a mountain tribe in Oman, preserve
  Hamitic speech that otherwise has vanished from
  Asia
• Tundra climates of the far north have sheltered
  certain Uralic, Altaic, and Inukitut (Eskimo)
  speakers
• On Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina
  and Georgia, some remnant of an African language,
  Gullah, still are spoken

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Switzerland

• Switzerland has four recognized national
  languages French, German, Italian, and Romansch.
  
• Romansch, a language of Latin origin, is spoken
  by only 1.1 of the population.

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Switzerland

• Nevertheless, it has survived in the alpine
  linguistic refuge of the upper Rhine and Inn
  Rivers and was given official recognition in 1938.

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Switzerland

• This traditional Engadine (Inn valley) house is
  decorated by sgraffito whereby designs are
  scratched through a white limewash coating to
  expose the underlying grey plaster.

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Linguistic Ecology

• Today environmental isolation is no longer the
  linguistic force it once was
• Inhospitable lands and islands are reachable by
  airplanes
• Marshes and forests are being drained and cleared
  by farmers
• The world is interactive

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The environment guides migration

• Migrants were often attracted to new lands that
  seemed environmentally similar to their homelands
• They could pursue adaptive strategies known to
  them
• Germanic Indo-Europeans chose familiar temperate
  zones in America, New Zealand, and Australia
• Semitic peoples rarely spread outside arid and
  semiarid climates
• Ancestors of modern Hungarians left grasslands of
  inner Eurasia for new homes in the grassy Alföld,
  one of the few prairie areas of Europe

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The environment guides migration

• Environmental barriers and natural routeways
  guided linguistic groups along certain paths
• Indo-Europeans traveled through low mountain
  passes to the Indian subcontinent, avoiding the
  Himalayas and barren Deccan Plateau
• In India today, the Indo-European/Dravidian
  language boundary seems to approximate an
  ecological boundary

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The environment guides migration

• Mountain barriers frequently serve as linguistic
  borders
• In part of the Alps, speakers of German and
  Italian live on opposite sides of a major ridge
• Portions of mountain rim along the northern edge
  of the Fertile Crescent form the border between
  Semitic and Indo-European tongues

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The environment guides migration

• Linguistic borders that follow such physical
  features tend to be stable and endure for
  thousands of years
• Language borders that cross plains and major
  routes of communication are frequently unstable
  Germanic-Slavic boundary on the North European
  Plain

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Overlap of languages complicates drawing of
  linguistic borders
• In any given area more than one tongue may be
  spoken Ecuador
• Language barriers are rarely sharp

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Geographers encounter a core/periphery pattern
  rather than a dividing line
• Dominance of language diminishes away from the
  center of the region
• Outlying zone of bilingualism
• Linguistic islands often further complicate the
  drawing of language borders

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Language characteristics used to define
linguistic culture regions

• Dialect terms often overlap considerably, making
  it difficult to draw isoglossess
• Linguistic geographers often disagree about how
  many dialects are present
• Disagreement also occurs on where lines should be
  drawn
• Boundaries are necessarily simplified and at best
  generalizations

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Language families

• The Indo-European language family
• Largest most wide-spread family
• Spoken on all continents
• Dominant in Europe, Russia, North and South
  America, Australia, and parts of southwestern
  Asia and India
• SubfamiliesRomance, Slavic, Germanic, Indic,
  Celtic, and Iranic
• Subfamilies are divided into individual languages
• Seven Indo-European tongues are among the top 10
  languages spoken in the world
• By comparing vocabularies in various languages
  one can see the kinship

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Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family
• Has two major divisionsSemitic and Hamitic
• Semitic covers the area from Tigris-Euphrates
  valley westward through most of the north half of
  Africa to the Atlantic coast
• Domain is large but consists of mostly sparsely
  populated deserts
• Arabic is the most widespread Semitic language
• Arabic has the most number of native
  speakersabout 186 million
• Hebrew was a dead language used only in
  religious ceremonies
• Today Hebrew is the official language of Israel
• Amharic a third major Semitic tongues has 20
  million speakers in the mountains of East Africa

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Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family
• Has two major divisionsSemitic and Hamitic
• Smaller number of people speak Hamitic languages
• Share North and East Africa with Semitic speakers
• Spoken by the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria
• Spoken by the Tuaregs of the Sahara and Cushites
  of East Africa
• Originated in Asia but today only spoken in
  Africa
• Expansion of Arabic decreased the area and number
  of speakers

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Other major language families

• Africa south of the Sahara Desert is dominated by
  the Niger-Congo family
• Spoken by about 200 million people
• Greater part of the Niger-Congo culture region
  belongs to the Bantu subgroup
• Includes Swahilithe lingua franca of East Africa

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Other major language families

• Altaic language family
• Includes Turkic, Mongolic, and several other
  subgroups
• Homeland lies largely in deserts, tundras, and
  coniferous forests of northern and central Asia
• Uralic family
• Finnish and Hungarian are the two most important
  tongues
• Both have official status in their countries

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Other major language families

• Austronesian language family
• Most remarkable language family in terms of
  distribution
• Speakers live mainly on tropical islands
• Ranges from Madagascar, through Indonesia and the
  Pacific Islands, to Hawaii and Easter Island
• Longitudinal span is more than half way around
  the world
• Latitudinally, ranges from Hawaii and Taiwan in
  the north to New Zealand in the south
• Largest single language in this family is
  Indonesian 5O million speakers
• Most widespread language is Polynesian

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Other major language families

• Sino-Tibetan language family
• One of the major language families of the world
• Extends throughout most of China and Southeast
  Asia
• Han Chinese is spoken in a variety of dialects as
  a mother tongue by 836 million people
• Han serves as the official form of speech in China

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Other major language families

• Japanese/Korean language family
• Another major Asian family with nearly 200
  million speakers
• Seems to have some kinship to both the Altaic and
  Austronesian

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Other major language families

• Austro-Asiatic language family
• Found in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia,
  Thailand, and spoken by some tribal people of
  Malaya and parts of India
• Occupies a remnant peripheral domain
• Has been encroached upon by Sino-Tibetan,
  Indo-European, and Austronesian

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Other major language families

• Occupy refuge areas after retreat before rival
  groups
• Khoisan found in the Kalahari Desert of
  southwestern Africa, characterized by clicking
  sounds
• Dravidian spoken by numerous darker-skinned
  people of southern India and northern Sri Lanka
• Others include Papuan, Caucasic, Nilo-Saharan,
  Paleosiberian, Inukitut, and a variety of
  Amerindian
• Basque spoken on the borderland between Spain
  and France is unrelated to any other language in
  the world

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London, England

• This display of newspapers illustrates the fact
  that London is an international city as well as a
  major migration destination.
• In South Kensington, sizable foreign contribute
  complexity

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London, England

• to the linguistic landscape.
• Both Indo-European (e.g. French, Spanish and
  Swedish) and Afro-Asiatic (Arab) language
  families are represented here.