1. Chapter 6: Languages
By: Alex B and Allison S

2. What are languages, and what role do languages play in cultures?
Language: is a set of sounds, combinations of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication
Language binds cultural identity, often unifies people of a country
Language reveals how people view their culture and cultures of other countries
Standard Language: is published, widely distributed and purposefully taught, sometimes decided by the govt.

3. Dialect: is variants of a standard language along with regional or ethnic lines
Isogloss: is a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs, but rarely a simple line
Mutual intelligibility: is when 2 people can understand each other when speaking
Cannot be measured
Dialect chains: are a set of contiguous dialects nearest to each other at any place in the chain are most closely related

4. Why are languages distributed the way they are?
Language families: are a group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin
20 different language families
Language subfamilies: are further divisions of Language families
Sound shift: is a slight change in a word across languages within subfamily or through a language family from the present
Backward reconstruction: is a tracking sound shifts and hardening of consonants “back” to the original language

5. Extinct Language: has no native speakers
Proto-Indo-European: linguistic hypothesis proposing the existence of an ancestral Indo-European language that is near the hearth of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit
Nostratic: ancient ancestor of Proto-Indo-European only
1. Spanish
59.9%
2. Chinese
4.3%
3. French
3.5%
4. German
2.9%
5. Tagalog
2.6%
6. Vietnamese
2.1%
7. Italian
8. Korean
1.9%
9. Russian
1.5%
10. Polish
Top ten languages, besides English, spoken in the United States

6. Renfrew Hypothesis: claims that’s from Anatolia diffused Europe’s Indo-European languages
From the western arc of the Fertile Crescent came the languages of North Africa and Arabia
From the Fertile Crescent eastern arc ancient languages spread into present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, later to be replaced by Indo- European languages.
Dispersal hypothesis: claims that the Indo-European languages that arose from Proto-Indo-European …
- First carried eastward into Southwest Asia, next around the Caspian Sea, and then across the Russian- Ukrainian plains and on into the Balkans.

7. Sub-Saharan African languages-
European languages-
Romantic: coming from areas controlled by the Roman Empire (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese)
Germanic: reflect expansion of people out of Northern Europe (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish)
Slavic: coming from when Slavic people migrated (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Slovenian)
Sub-Saharan African languages-
Niger-Congo language family dominate
Oldest languages from Khoisan Language family
Nigeria has over 400 languages

8. How do languages diffuse?
Lingua Franca: a “common language” used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce
Pidgin Language: when two or more languages are combined in a simplified structure and vocabulary
Creole Language: begins as a pidgin language but is later adopted as the mother tongue by a group.

9. Multilingualism
Multilingual states: countries with more than one language spoken
Ex. United States and Canada
Monolingual states: countries in which only one language is spoken
Ex. Japan and Portugal

10. Languages
Global Language: the language used most commonly around the world
Defined by the number of speakers
Defined by the prevalence of use in commerce and trade
Official Languages: the language selected to be used to promote internal cohesion
Usually the language of the courts and the government
Often chosen by the educated and politically powerful elite

11. What role does language play in making places?
Toponyms- place names given to certain features on the land such as settlements, terrain features, and streams
Descriptive ex. Rocky Mountains
Associative ex. Mill Valley, California
Commemorative ex. San Fransisco
Commendatory ex. Paradise Valley, Arizona
Incidents ex. Battle Creek, Michigan
Possession ex. Johnson City, Texas
Folk Culture ex. Plains, Georgia
Manufactured ex. Truth, New Mexico
Mistakes ex. Lasker, North Carolina (Alaska)
Shift names ex. Lancaster, Pennsylvania (England)

12. When people change the toponym of a place… - they have the power to “wipe out the past and call forth the new” - Toponyms are part of the cultural landscape - The changes in the place-name clarifies the cultural landscape -- Post-Colonial --Postrevolution -- Memorial