Indo-European Language Family The main branches of the Indo-European language family include Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.

Indo-European is the largest and most widespread language family.

Languages of Europe Dominated by Indo- European. Subfamilies include: Germanic Romance Slavic Celtic There is a high correlation between languages and political organization. Pockets of Ural-Altaic Germanic (Northwest and Central Europe) includes-English, German, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish Romance( South and Southwest Europe) includes-French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. (derived from Latin the old Roman tongue hence the name Romance. Slavic-(Eastern Europe) Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Slovenian and Bulgarian Celtic-(Western margins) the old language that dominated Europe, but was pushed to the periphery by invasions-Breton, Welsh and Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland. Anomalies include-Pockets of Ural-Altaic such as Magyar in Hungary, Finnish and Estonian-spread into Europe about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. Greek in Greece, Euskara in Basque area of Spain and France.

Romance Branch of Indo-European Fig. 5-8: The Romance branch includes three of the world’s 12 most widely spoken languages (Spanish, French, and Portuguese), as well as a number of smaller languages and dialects.

Invasions of England 5th–11th centuries Sutton Hoo Helmet-7th Century Anglo-Saxon Noble’s helmet Viking Long Ship 10th century 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.

Germanic Branch of Indo-European Lorchhausen and vineyards on the Rhine Fig. 5-6: The Germanic branch today is divided into North and West Germanic groups. English is in the West Germanic group.

Euskera The Basque speak the Euskera language, which is in no way related to any other language family in Europe. How did Euskera survive?

Languages of China Chinese has the most speakers of any language. It is one of the world’s oldest languages spoken by the greatest contiguous population on Earth. Southern China-the most variety and dialects-most are mutually unintelligible. Some scholars argue that for this reason-it is not one language, but several. Mandarin-the dominate language of the North spoken by 700 million including Beijing. Wu is next with 100 million speakers in Shanghai area. Yue-or Cantonese is spoken by 70 million in the SE. Pinyin is a system of phonetically spelling Chinese characters as spoken in Mandarin in the Latin alphabet. Translation from Chinese to English is often a problem: The floor of the bathroom was wet and the sign warned people about the slippery tiles.  Beneath the Chinese, the sign had English subtitles that said: “Fall down carefully.”

Languages of China Note the complexity of the language map in the southern part of China. Why? Proximity to many other lands across the water and other cultures to the south?

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.

Street scene in Hong Kong, Now known as Xianggang Since 1997 take over by Red China. How does it feel to be illiterate? This is a cultural landscape that is very unfamiliar to Westerners. All literate Chinese-no matter which of the many languages of China they speak, recognize the same ideographs for house, rice and tree.

Translation from Chinese to English is sometimes problematic Translation from Chinese to English is sometimes problematic. A photo from a 2007 visit to China. Bottom right-another Chinese translation gone bad/

Languages of India India had 4 language families with the largest being Indo-European and Dravidian. There are 15 major languages-all but 4 are Indo-European. Over 1,600 lesser languages. The largest Indo-European language is Hindi Largest Dravidian tongue is Telugu. Of India’s 1 billion people most speak either an Indo-European or a Dravidian language. Notice that the Dravidian language family is confined to the south which resulted from the Aryan invasion of Indo-European speakers in ancient times. Northern India is predominantly Indo-European with the largest group being Hindi. There are 15 major languages-all but 4 are Indo-European, but 1,600 minor languages, some spoken by only a few thousand. Telagu, the largest Dravidian language is concentrated in the province of Andra Pradesh. Tamil is spoken by 75 million, mostly in Tamil Nadu. There are also Tamil speakers on the island nation of Sri Lanka. India’s federal government divisions closely follow the linguistic isoglosses (lines that divides linguistic features or groups).

South Asian Languages & 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.