Language Key issues Where are English – language speakers distributed? Why is English related to other languages?

Language Earth has 7,299 languages Only 10 are spoken by 100 million people (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, Japanese)

How Geographers View it 1st look at where different languages are used, and how these languages can be logically grouped in space 2nd and 3rd why languages have distinctive distributions Language is spread through migration – they bring it with them and when they arrive they merge theirs with the new language. Distribution is due to interaction and isolation

Key issue #1 Where are English Language Speakers distributed? Origins of Diffusion of English Compare pg. 172 to 274 Classified as a Germanic Language Celts arrived in 2000BC 450 AD European tribes invaded German Invasion Angles, Jutes, Saxons Viking invasion Norman Invasion England conquered by the Normans who spoke French

Differences Between British and American English (New English) Vocabulary and spelling Result from isolation 200 years of little contact allowed them to develop independently Names borrowed by Native Americans New inventions were given new names Want of separation created American Dictionary Webster believed that spelling and grammar reforms would help establish a national language. Pronunciation

Dialects in the United States Change due to original settlers Settlements in the East Originally, majority were from England Came from all different parts of England and merged their accents Current dialect differences in the East Northern, Midlands, and Southern Language differences are more common in rural areas Pronunciation differences New England and Southern accents sound odd to the rest of the states because most Western settlers came from the Mid-Atlantic regions Gold rush is credited with the relatively uniform language in the West

Key question #2 Why is English Related to other Languages? Part of the Indo European language family World’s most extensive spoken language family

Indo European Branches; pg 150 Indo-Iranian; South Asia Romance; southwestern Europe and Latin America Germanic; northwestern Europe and North America Balto-Slavic; Eastern Europe 4 others are Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Celtic

Indo-Iranian Branch Most speakers – more than 100 individual languages and over 1 billion people Divided into Eastern and Western group Eastern = Indic Western = Iranian

Indic (Eastern) India, Pakistan, Bangladesh India; Hindi – Devanagari (written) Pakistan; Urdu – Arabic (written) Turn to page 151 India has 18 official languages and 10 million other people in India don’t speak any of these

Iranian Persian (Farsi) – Iran Pashto – Afghanistan and Pakistan Kurdish – Western Iran, Northern Iraq, eastern Turkey All written in Arabic

Romance Evolved from Latin with the Romans Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian Separated by mountains Intervening obstacle

Germanic Branch West Germanic; English and German North Germanic Low Germanic; Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans High Germanic; English and German North Germanic Scandinavia; Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic,

Balto Slavic Eastern Europe East West South Russian, Ukrainian, Belarus West Polish, Czech, Slovak South Slavic - Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia

Origin and diffusion of the Indo-European Language page 156-157 Gimbuta’s Kurgan Hearth theory Renfrew’s Anatolia Hearth theory Kurgan people were the 1st to speak Indo-European in 4300 B.C. Lived between Russia and Kazakhstan Nomadic herders, domesticated cattle, went West in search of grazing lands diffused through warfare and conquests using their domesticated horses Anatolian people were the 1st to speak Indo-European 6700 B.C. Lived in Turkey Went West because speakers became more numerous due to farming practices, which lead to migration Diffused through peaceful sharing of food

Proto-Indo-European

Chapter 5 continued Key Issue #3 Where are other Language Families Distributed?

Classification of Languages Pg. 145 Highest is Indo-European – 48% 2nd is Sino-Tibetan (China) 26% Pg. 144-145 Language Families form the trunks of the trees, and individual languages form the leaves. The branches represent language branches

Distribution of Language Families Sino-Tibetan Family Sintic Branch Mandarin – ¾ of China; most used in the world 420 one-syllable words. Humans cannot make that many different syllables, therefore there are multiple words for each syllable Can combine syllables Shanghai – above and sea Written language; 1,000s of characters. Some represent sounds, others are ideograms – represent ideas or concepts (pg 147) Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches Thailand and Vietnam

Afro-Asiatic Language Family; 4th largest Arabic and Hebrew Languages were used to write the holiest books of the 3 major religions; Judeo Christian Bible and the Islamic Quran

African Language Families; pg 149 More than 1,000 languages and several thousand dialects Pg. 165 shows why it can be a problem Reason; 5,000 years of minimal interaction among thousands of cultural groups Groups developed their own culture independently Researchers continue to add newly discovered African languages to the list from the Niger-Congo language family

Nigeria 493 languages; 3 have widespread use 55% of the population use 490 languages Leads to political unrest; wars, wanting to secede, discrimination, etc Speakers of one language are unlikely to understand any of the others in the same family, let alone languages from other families

Key issue #4 Why do people preserve local languages? English has become the principal language of communication and interaction around the world due to globalization, however, local languages are also being protected and preserved

Preserving Language Diversity Extinct languages- ones used in the recent past but no longer spoken or read Peru went from 500-92 and 14 of those fewer than 100 people speak them European Union – European Bureau for lesser Used Languages (EBLUL)

Nearly Extinct languages Hebrew Kept due to religion and the creation of Israel in Palestine after WWII Celtic Political reasons dismantled it, additionally job prospects Survives through music Wales has gone to extremes to preserve it

Global Dominance of English English has become the most universal language Lingua Franca; language of international communication to facilitate trade between two individuals who cannot speak each others main language. Pidgin language; no native speakers, always spoken in addition to ones own native language

Ways to Preserve Local Languages Factor Promoting Revival Process/Example Groups resist diffusion of English    Government gives power to small groups. Those groups can operate separately from that Government.  Government policies promote unity in multicultural state Nationalism – policies to increase patriotism. Improved communication allows small groups to keep in touch Tourism Government policies support Language passed down through oral traditions Government allows for a minority within the state to use a different language or nationalist use it to separate and resist the central government. Government adopts an official language States gain independence and re-establish old languages. Phone, internet, photocopier, TV, specialized newspapers and magazines all in the original folk language People visit from around the world to experience these minority languages and cultures European Union’s Bureau for Little Used Languages. End forced assimilation of Native Americans