Bell Ringer

19. A Hindu temple located in Texas is most likely the result of which kind of diffusion?A. ExpansionB. HierarchicalC. ContagiousD. RelocationE. Stimulus

20. Compared to popular cultures, folk cultures areA. More cosmopolitanB. More homogeneousC. More diffuseD. More transitoryE. More contagious

Bell Ringer21. Which of the following terms best describes the geographic boundary of one particular linguistic feature?A. Language borderB. ToponymC. Choropleth intervalD. Linguistic hearthE. Isogloss

22. The predominance of English as the preferred language spoken at many international business meetings and political summits could be sited to support the claim that English is a popularA. Creole LanguageB. Pidgin languageC. Language branchD. DialectE. Lingua franca

Bell Ringer23. The English language belongs to which of the following branches of the Indo-European Language family?A. RomanicB. HellenicC. CelticD. GermanicE. Armenian

CH III.1: Cultural Patterns and Processes (Language)

Language

• Language is a set of sounds and symbols that is used for communication– Language is important to culture,

reflecting, shaping, and influencing out thoughts

• Loss of a language (Assimilation) can destroy a cultural identity

• Language is also personal, explains how people view reality, and can be used as a weapon – Quebec (French Canada) largely has

French as the “at home” language, and force business to operate in French, advertisements to be in French, and have attempted to succeed from Canada on multiple occasions.

• Languages are not so simple• Monolingual Countries have only one

official language that is spoken for all government business (France, Thailand, Brazil)

• Multilingual countries have more than one official language (Canada, Belgium, Switzerland)

• The USA has no official language, but notably only teaches in English

• English has become the default language for the world, especially when multiple languages are involved. It is the new Lingua Franca (Airline Pilots ALWAYS speak English with a mixed passengers or flying from one language to another)

• Can you communicate without speaking the same language. Short answer, Yes (sorta)– Mutual Intelligibility: argues that two

people speaking to each other will understand each other (two people speaking different dialects)• Tricky because different languages and

dialects prove exceptions• Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese

Chinese speakers can not communicate with one another though they both speak CHINESE

• Some Danish and Norwegian speakers CAN understand each other though you would think that those are two different languages.

Dialects & Standard Languages• Variants of the same language along regional or

ethnic lines are called dialects (English & PROPER ENGLISH)– Dialects are unique in sound, speed, syntax, and

vocabulary (lexicon Snow)– Isogloss is the boundary of a dialect [in which a

particular linguistic feature occurs] (which can be hard to determine) Dialect chains acknowledge that languages CLOSE to each other will be more similar, but while distance increases dialects become less recognizable

• Standard Languages– Is a language that is widely published, distributed,

and purposefully taught– Standard languages could be maintained through

state examination– France pushes French, Ireland pushes Irish, China

pushes Mandarin Chinese even though it is just called Chinese

Language Families• Languages are broken into families to

help differentiate them.– Subfamilies are used to show

commonalities are more definite and origin is more recent

– Language Groups refer to people whose language descended from the same common tongue (Romance Languages)

• There are 20 major Language families– The Indo-European language family

stretches the farthest– Chinese has the most speakers– Some languages are spoken in

relatively few places, and survive in just 1 or part of 1 country (Laos, Cambodia)

– Madagascar speaks a language from the Austronesian family (Southeast Asia), not the African Language Family as there is a believe that Madagascar & SEAsia one traded.

Language Formation

• Languages are grouped into families based on similarities and differences– A Sound Shift is a slight change in

a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family • Family: Indo-European • Subfamily: Romance (All from Latin)• Languages: Italian, Spanish, French• Example: Milk

– Latin: Lacte– Italian: Latta– Spanish: Leche– French: Lait

Proto-Indo European

(PIE)

• William Jones (1700s)– Studied Sanskrit in South Africa– After a period of time he became convinced that

Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were all connected• Jakob Grimm (19th Century- Yes the Fairytale

guy)– Explained that languages have similar, but not

identical, consonants– He suggested that consonants were “harder” the

farther back towards the hearth a language went• Jones’ & Grimm’s ideas were combined

together to suggest the existence of a Proto-Indo European language. This would suggest a common hearth for Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit– This would link languages from Sandinavia to

Africa, and from North America to Asia & Australia.

• Linguists call the process backward reconstruction, tracing the hardening of consonants “backwards” towards the original language

• Sometimes it is possible to use large parts of extinct languages can be used to re-create the language (The whole process is called deep reconstruction)– Two Russian scholars (Vladislav Illich-Sqitych & Aharon Dolgopolsky)

worked together to reconstruct the Nostratic Language– The Nostratic language is possibly the ancestor of the Proto-Indo-

European, Indo-European, but also Kartvelin, Uralic-Altaic, and the Dravidian languages

• August Schleicher (German) was the first to suggest the idea of the world’s languages as being branches on a tree

• Languages form through language divergence, the breakdown in language first into dialects and then into new languages

• If languages have consistent spatial interaction (are close enough constantly enough) language convergence can occur two languages become one

• If no one speaks a language, a language becomes extinct

Renfrew Hypothesis• Colin Renfrew (British)• Suggests that the three areas near the Fertile

Crescent gave the rise to 3 language families– From Anatolia came the Indo-European Languages, from

Western Fertile Crescent came the languages of North Africa and Arabia, & from Eastern Fertile Crescent came the languages of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India

The Diffusion of Language

• There are multiple theories of how language diffuses (Europe is always the focus Why?)– It is clear that language diffused into Europe– There is significant research and archeological

studies done on the early peopling of Europe• Conquest Theory: The Speakers of (PIE)

spread east to west on horses, conquering and defusing their language as they went

• Agricultural Theory: The diffusion of PIE diffused west with the spread of agriculture– Luca Cavalli-Sforza & Albert Ammerman

proposed that every generation (25 years) the agricultural frontier would me 18 KM (11 Miles). Languages would slowly be replaced, but some languages (Basque language) still survives

• Dispersal Hypothesis: That Indo-European languages that came from PIE were first carries East into Southwest Asia, and then around the Caspian Sea, into the Russian-Ukrainian plains, and then into the Balkans

• The exact hearth of the PIE is still unknown

Languages: Pidgin, Trade, & Creole• Sometimes languages combine to create a new language. A highly

simplified mixture of languages for the purpose of communication between diverse groups is known as Pidgin Languages

• When two groups with different languages need to trade they will create a modified language in order to communicate, known as a trade language. (An extension of Pidgin SPECIFICALLY for trading)

• A stable language resulting from the blending of two or more languages that often do not share features of one another is known as a creole language. (Haitian African Languages & French) [Once a pidgin becomes a native language it becomes Creole]– A Creole is a person who is of European descent who was born in a

European colonial area (Latin America or Carribean)

Languages: Families & Examples

• Indo European Language Family • Subfamilies: Romance (French, Spanish,

Italian, Romanian, Portuguese), Germanic (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish), Slavic (Russian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian)

• Largest in the world• There is a high correlation between

language and political organization of space in Europe

• Celtic survives in some places ( Parts of France, Wales, Ireland, & Scotland) but was largely overtaken by other languages

• The Basque language has remained almost unchanged for 100s of years, and it strongly linked to the regions autonomy. The mountains of the region are credited with helping the language survive.

Sino-Tibetan Language Family

• Examples: Chinese, Thai, Cantonese (Chinese), Burmese

• About 20% of the world’s population

• The most widely spoken language comes from this family Mandarin Chinese (Han Chinese, which 75% of Chinese people speak)

• The Dialects of this language family can make it next to impossible for individuals to communication (as we discussed)

Afro-Asiatic Family• Predominately spoken

in Northern Africa– Arabic (most common)– Arabic is commonly

spoke in Northern Africa & the Middle East

– Other languages in this family are Hebrew, Somali, and Berber

– Berber is spoken in Morocco and Algeria

Niger Congo Family & Outliers

• The Language family that dominate Sub-Saharan Africa– Important languages are

Swahili and Zulu– Over 9 million speak Zulu as

their native language and 5 million Swahili

• Outliers in Africa– The oldest language in Sub-

Saharan Africa is the Khoisan Language, with are based of “clicks”

– Khoisan was largely overtaken by Bantu after invasions of Bantu speaking people

– Part of South Africa falls in the Indo-European Family for Afrikaans & English (a result of colonialization)

Place & Toponyms• A place is a reflection of people’s

activities, ideas, and tangible creations

• To NAME a place, bringing a certain characteristic indicative to the people or culture that live there. This idea is known as a Toponym– Bayou– Los Angels– Kentucky (Iroquois- Land of

tomorrow)– Cheektowaga (Seneca- Land of

Crabapples– Minnesota (Lakota- sky-tinted water)– Cape of Good Hope (Originally Cape

of Storms)