1. Mindjog
Based on the languages provided on the paper, answer the following questions.
(1) Compare and contrast the words provided for the languages… which languages are most similar and most different?
(2) There are four groups of 2 which are most closely related to each other… group them and be prepared to defend the grouping
(3) Do you think that it is possible that all 8 languages are related?

2. Objective
TWW analyze particular words of various languages in order to evaluate the manner in which language was diffused throughout the worlds

3. Indo-European Language Family
a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history
World’s most extensive spoken language family by a wide margin
nearly 3 billion people speak an Indo-European language as their first language

5. Indo-European Language Family
LANGUAGE BRANCH – a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago.
(1) Germanic Branch
(2) Indo-Iranian Branch
(3) Balto-Slavic Branch
(4) Romance Branch
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

6. Discussion Question
Using your understanding of cultural diffusion, develop 5 “theories” as to how all 8 of these languages are part of the same language family

7. Germanic Branch Language A – English Language E – German
English’s relationship to the Germanic Branch because of the German Tribes that invaded England 1,500 years ago.

8. Indo-Iranian Branch Language C – Hindi Language H – Urdu
Language branch with the most speakers
100 individual languages spoken by 1 billion people
Hindi – actually a collection of various different languages with one official script
Urdu – spoken very similar to Hindi but written with Arabic alphabet

10. Balto – Slavic Branch Language B – Russian Language F – Ukranian
Growth of Slavic Languages (primarily Russian) is the result of USSR’s political importance in the 20th century
Soviet officials forced native speakers of other languages to learn Russian as a way of fostering cultural unity among the country’s diverse peoples

11. Romance Language Language D – Italian Language G – Portuguese
Expansion of the Roman Empire and the use of Latin
Vulgar Latin – spoken form of Latin that diffused throughout the empire
Collapse of Roman Empire – lack of communication, increasing the regional variation
Geography – rugged mountains mirror the modern boundaries of many Romance Language Countries

13. Proto-Indo-European Language
Developed by William Jones and Jakob Grimm (did not work together)
Jones – sound shifts between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin… all had to spring from one common source that no longer existed
Grimm – sound shifts, especially the hard consonants, could change over time in a predictable manner
Vater Vader Father

14. How to Discover language hearths!
Backward Reconstruction Intense analysis of sound shifts and hardening of consonants backward through the original language
Deep Reconstruction - Extinct Language or its preceding Language
Nostraic – ancient ancestor of Proto-Indo European… hunter gatherers

15. Backward Reconstruction Categories
Divergence… a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and discrete language when isolation is maintained.

16. Backward Reconstruction Categories
Convergence… collapsing two languages into one, which occurs when interaction increases between the people of the two languages

17. EXIT DISCUSSION
How do the concepts of convergence and divergence permit the Indo-European Language Family to include all of the languages (and even more) that we analyzed today?