1. WHERE ARE OTHER LANGUAGE FAMILIES DISTRIBUTED? Chapter 5: Language Key Issue 3

2. Distribution of Language Families Sino-Tibetan Family Mandarin is the most used language in this family 420 one-syllable words make up language Ex. Shi – lion, corpse, house, etc. How it is used and said gives meaning Combining one-syllable words gives new meaning and clarity Thousands of characters make up the written language This makes it tough to learn Ideograms – represent ideas or concepts not sounds Ex.

3. Other E. & SE Asian Families Austronesian Found mostly in Indonesia Javanese the most popular form Madagascar – Malagasy is the dominant language from this family Austro-Asiatic Vietnamese most popular Uses familiar alphabet Japanese Uses Chinese ideograms Have adopted two phonetic systems (often with foreign words) Korean Uses phonetic alphabet (hankul) Shows influence from Chinese and Japanese

4. Middle East & Central Asia Languages Afro-Asiatic Arabic – 200+ million speakers Known by most Muslims (Quran) Altaic Turkish is the most common Rise and fall of USSR shows in language Uralic Three European countries don’t belong to Indo-European language Family: Estonia, Finland, & Hungary Beginnings in the Ural Mountains 7000 years ago

5. African Language Families Africa is hard to study because of: Little written history Relative isolation of native populations N. Africa Arabic dominates (an Afro-Asiatic language) Sub-Saharan Africa Niger-Congo (approx. 95% can speak some form of this) Swahili is most common form of language Local languages still persist Nilo-Saharan Found in north-central Africa Not many speakers and lots of diversity Khoisan “clicking” languages found in Africa