Chapter 5: Language Rayan Hyder, Catherine Rubio, Valeria Guerra, Emery Feliciano, Rachel Torres, & Judith Herrera

Vocabulary Official language: The language which is used by the government for laws,reports, and public objects Examples: road signs, money, and stamps

Vocabulary Language Family: A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Vocabulary Language branch: A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed thousands of years ago.

Vocabulary Language group: A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary. Ex. The Indo-European group of languages including English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Logogram: A sign or character representing a word or phrase VOCABULARY Logogram: A sign or character representing a word or phrase

Vocabulary Language: A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

Vocabulary Literary Tradition: A language that is written as well as spoken. Ex’s- Korean, Japanese, Spanish, are some examples of languages that are both written and spoken.

Where are Languages Distributed? Foreign languages are studied more frequently in English- speaking countries than in the U.S One of the most obvious examples of culture diversity is Earth’s large variety of languages The world’s languages are all organized into language families, branches, and groups

Classification of Languages Many languages can be organized in a family of languages. And larger language trees can have several branches of other sub-languages. The larger the trunk and leaves are, the greater the number of speakers of those family of languages. ⅔ of the world speakers belong to the Greater part of Europe and Asia languages.

Distribution of Language Families Indo-European Indo-European is the most used language family in North and Latin America, South Asia, and Europe Sino-Tibetan Every language of China belong in the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan family 3/4 of the Chinese people speak Mandarin, for it is the most used Chinese language Before, Mandarin used to be known as “Language of the Emperors” but now, it is the official language of the People’s Republic of Taiwan and China, being one of the six main languages Wu, Min, Yae, Jinyu, Xiang, Hakkun, and Gan are most of the southern and eastern parts of the country that 20 million people have people speaking

Languages of Southwest Asia & North Africa and Central Asia Afro-Asiatic The official language in 24 countries of Southwest Asia and North Africa and one of the six official languages of the United Nations is Arabic A large percentage of the world’s Muslims, including the 200 million-plus native speakers of Arabic have a bit of knowledge of the language because of the holiest book, The Quran(Koran), was written in Arabic in the the 7th century Altaic Was thought to have originated in the steppes, bordering the Qilian Shan and Altai mountains between Tibet and China The Altaic family is by far the most spoken Turkish Altaic became official in several newly independent countries such as: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Languages of Southwest Asia and North Africa and Central Asia: Uralic Most European countries are dominated by the Indo-European speakers all but three counties (Estonia, Finland, and Hungary) belong to the Uralic family Altaic and Uralic language families were once thought to be linked as a family but studies point to geographically distinct origins, but not exactly the same Uralic languages go back to common languages, such as Porto-Uralic, which was first used 7000 years ago by people living in Ural Mountains

Other Asian Language Families Austronesian Austronesian languages are mostly spoken by 6 percent of the world’s people, who are mostly in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous country. Indonesia has an exceptionally large number of distinct languages and dialects; Ethnologue identifies 722 actively used languages Most widely used first language of Indonesia, Javanese, spoken by 85 million people most on the island of Java, where two-thirds of the country’s population is clustered. Another language in the Austronesian family is Malagasy because of the migration from Indonesia to madagascar.

Austronesian ethnic group know as the Amis, natives to Taiwan

Other Asian Language Family Austro-Asiatic Austro-Asiatic languages are mostly spoken by 2 percent of the world’s population A most-spoken language by the Austro-Asiatic language family is Vietnamese. The Vietnamese alphabet was concocted in the seventeenth century by Roman Catholic missionaries. Vietnamese is written with the Roman alphabet but, with addition of a large number of diacritical marks above the vowel, meaning serving to indicate different pronunciations of a letter above or below which it is written: ě ò ī ń

The picture of the girls are an example of a tribe in northern Thailand, that still have an official Austro-Asiatic language which may be Khmer or Vietnamese. The colorful map on the right is an example of the language family and where it had been disbursed. The last map with the countries show a green spot which is around China and Vietnam.

Other Asian Language Families Tai Kadai Was known as a branch of Sino-Tibetan Tai Kadai languages are mostly spoken in Thailand and portions of China Linguistic scholars think that people that speak Austronesian languages may have come from the Philippines

Other Asian Language Families Japanese Japanese uses two different phonetic symbols Some chinese cultural traits diffused into Japanese society, like the original form of writing There are many differences between the structure of the two langauges

Korean Korean doesn’t use an logograms, but use a system known as hankul More than half of Korean vocabulary derives from Chinese words Chinese and Japanese are known as the principal sources for making new words to describe new technology and concepts

African Language Families No one knows the exact numbers of languages spoken in Africa. Over 1000 distinct languages and dialects have been documented with Roman and Arabic alphabet.

African Language Families Niger-Congo: 95% of people speak Swahili (the official language of Tanzania) Swahili is spoken by approx. 30 million Africans. Used to communicate with people from the same village and outsiders. Originated from African and Arab traders, so Swahili has Arabic influences Swahili is one of the few African languages with vast literature.

African Language Families Nilo-Saharan: Spoken by a few million people in north-central Africa. (North of Niger- Congo region) It is divided into 6 branches, along with group and subgroups. Small amount of people speaking the Nilo-Saharan language

Khoisan Use of clicking sounds Whites in Southern Africa named the most important Khoisan language Hottentot.

Activity (Extra Credit) What is a Logogram? What are some examples of official Language? What is Language? What is the most commonly used language in the family tree?

A sign or character representing a word or phrase. Answers A sign or character representing a word or phrase. Examples: road signs, money, and stamps. A system of communication through speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning. Indo-European is the most used language in the family tree