Key Issue 3 Where are other language families distributed? Chapter 5 Key Issue 3 Where are other language families distributed?

Language Families Indo-European: 48% of world, English Sino-Tibetan: 26% of world, Mandarin Afro-Asiatic: 6%, Arabic Austronesian: 5%, Southeast Asia Dravidian: 4%, India Altaic: 3%, Asia Niger-Congo: 3%, Africa Japanese: 2%, Japan 100 smaller families: 3%

Sino-Tibetan Family People’s Republic of China: world’s most populous state Smaller countries of Southeast Asia Smaller branches of Sino-Tibetan family: Austro-Thai and Tibetan-Burman

Sinitic Branch No single Chinese language Mandarin: most important, ¾ of Chinese people, official language of China & Taiwan Country is imposing Mandarin to other Sinitic speakers (Wu, Min, Yue, etc) Small number of languages = national strength & unity Languages all written the same way, pronounced differently

Chinese Languages 420 one-syllable words Each sound denotes more than one thing Ex: jian has more than 20 meanings “shi” means lion, corpse, house, poetry, ten, swear, or die Listener must infer the meaning of the word

Chinese Languages One-syllable words can be combined into two-syllable words, forming a new word “Shanghai” – “above” and “sea” Written language: collection of thousands of characters Some represent sounds Most are ideograms: represent ideas/concepts Makes it difficult to learn because so many characters 16% of population can’t read or write

Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches Sino-Tibetan Language Family Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches Branch Main Language Location Austro-Thai Thai Laos, Thailand, Vietnam Tibeto-Burman Burmese Myanmar

Other East & Southeast Asian Language Families Japanese & Korean form distinctive language families Reason: Isolation Japan-island country Includes some Chinese ideograms Two systems of phonetic symbols

Korea-peninsular state Not written with ideograms Hankul: each letter represents a sound Half of Korean vocab derives from Chinese words Most vocab for new technology derives from Japan & Korea

Vietnamese Written with Roman alphabet Written alphabet developed by Roman Catholic missionaries, 7th Century

Afro-Asiatic Language Family Fourth largest language family Languages of Northern Africa & Southwestern Asia Used to write the holiest of books of the major religions Judeo-Christian Bible & Islamic Quran Hebrew Arabic: official language in 24 countries, 200 million speakers Many Muslims throughout the world know some Arabic

Altaic & Uralic Language Families Altaic: between Turkey and Mongolia & China Turkish: most widely used Formerly written in Arabic, 1928: transition to Roman alphabet Help modernize economy & culture, increase communication with Western world Under Soviet policy: people forced to use Russian Cyrillic alphabet After collapse of Soviet Union: languages clustered among new countries

Uralic Language Family Estonia, Finland and Hungary Non-Indo-European languages of Europe Originated in Ural mountains of Russia Migrants carried language to Europe

African Language Families Number of languages-unknown More than 1,000 languages, several thousand dialects Minimal interaction b/t cultural groups thousands of years ago Each group with own language & religion Europeans began to record languages with Roman & Arabic alphabet

Niger-Congo Family More than 95% of Sub-Saharan Africa Swahili-Tanzania Developed from interaction between African groups & Arab traders Learned as a 2nd language to communicate with other groups

Nilo-Saharan Family North-Central Africa 6 branches Subdivided into even more branches Total number of speakers for each language is small

Khoisan Family Southwest Africa 3rd most important language family in Africa Distinctive characteristic: clicking sounds Europeans called it “Hottentot” Khoisan Language

Austronesian Family Mostly spoken in Indonesia, 4th most populous country 739 actively used languages dispersed among the islands Javanese: most widely spoken (2/3 pop on Java) Indonesian: used as a 2nd language for communication Malay: Malaysia Malagasy: Madagascar

Nigeria: Conflict among speakers of different languages Nigeria: Africa’s most populous country 493 languages, only 3 have wide-spread use Cultural diversity between language. Different groups often battle

Key Issue 3 Where are other language families distributed? Summary: Other language families with a large number of speakers include Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Dravidian. Each has a distinctive distribution, as with Indo-European, which is a result of a combination and isolation