1. Language
Geography

2. Culture – The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society
Language – a systematic way of communicating ideas & feelings with the use of conventional signs and gestures, especially voice
The essence of culture
W/o language – culture couldn’t be transmitted from one generation to another
B/w 5,000-6,000 languages (most are unwritten)

3. Animals communicate w/ gestures and vocalization – is it language? No.
Only humans have developed complex vocal communication systems that change over time and space.
Standard language – the variant of a language that a country’s political & intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm (e.g. King’s English)
Dialect – local or regional characteristics of a language. (More than an accent (pronunciation variation) – distinctive syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and cadence)

4. Preliterate societies – no written language; no foundation for cultural preservation
Isogloss – a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs
e.g. “Pop” vs. “Soda”
isoglosses tend to move over time
Language vs. Dialect
Chinese – viewed as one language (Chinese have maintained a state of several Sino-Tibetan tongues), divided by dialects that are mutually unintelligible
Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish – different (disintegration of empires); perhaps no more similar than Mandarin (874), Wu (75) and Yue (Cantonese – 71)

6. Major World Languages Language Family Major Language
Numbers (in millions)
Indo-European
English
445
Hindi
366
Spanish
340
Sino-Tibetan
Chinese
1,211
Burmese 32
Japanese-Korean
Japanese
125
Korean 78
Afro-Asiatic
Arabic
211
Malay-Polynesian
Indonesian
154
Dravidian (India)
Telugu 69
Altaic
Turkish 61

7. Indo-European Languages

8. Non-Indo-European Languages

9. Europe – dominated by Indo-European
Language Families – have a shared, but fairly distant origin (e.g. Indo-European); Subfamilies – commonality is more definite; Groups – sets of individual languages
Europe – dominated by Indo-European
Germanic: English, German, Swedish, …
Romance: French, Spanish, Italian, …
Slavic: Russian, Polish, Czech, …
Celtic: Welsh, Breton, Gaelic, …

10. Major Indo-European Branches
Germanic
Romance
Slavic
Other Indo-European Branches
Celtic
Baltic
Hellenic
Thracian/Ilyrian
Other Families
Finno-Ugric
Samoyedic
Altaic
Other - Basque

11. India
4 language families – only Indo-Eur. & Dravidian have a significant number of speakers
Close relationship b/w regional languages and political divisions

12. Africa N. Afr. – mostly Afro-Asiatic
Subsaharan - 4 main language families: largest is Niger-Congo
Language mosaic is intensely fragmented
More than 1,000 languages, most are unwritten