1. Language

2. Why do geographers study language?
Provides the single most common variable by which cultural groups are identified
Provides the main means by which learned customs and skills pass from one generation to the next
Facilitates cultural diffusion of innovations
Because languages vary spatially, they reinforce the sense of region and place
Study of language called linguistic geography and geolinguistics by geographers

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD1mZKqq9QE Top Words of 2012
F-Bomb Dictionary

4. Geographer’s Perspective on Language
Language is an essential element of culture,
possibly the most important medium by which culture is transmitted.
Languages even structure the perceptions of their speakers.
Attitudes, understandings, and responses are partly determined by the words available.
Languages are a hallmark of cultural diversity with distinctive regional distributions.

5. Invasions of England
Vikings 9th century brought new words and the Normans in the 11th Century.
The first speakers of the language that became known as English were tribes that lived in present day Germany and Denmark. They invaded England in the 5th Century.
Figure 5-3

6. Where Are English Language Speakers Distributed?
Dialects of English
Dialect = a regional variation of a language
Isogloss = a word-usage boundary
Standard language = a well-established dialect
Dialects
In England
Differences between British and American English

7. Where Are English Language Speakers Distributed?
Dialects of English
Dialects in the United States
Settlement in the eastern United States
Current differences in the eastern United States
Pronunciation differences

8. Why is English in the United States different from English in England?
Isolation
Immigration
Vocabulary
New Animal
New Inventions
Spelling

9. Soft Drink Differences
Reflects voting from Popvs.Soda.com, but it is updated. Does this reflect what you know to be true? Example of isogloss.
Figure 5-8

10. Presidential Top Ten administration (Washington)
lunatic fringe (Theodore Roosevelt)
caucus (John Adams)
bloviation (Harding)
lengthy (John Adams)
normalcy (Harding)
lengthily (Jefferson)
misunderestimate (G. W. Bush)
belittle (Jefferson)
embetterment (G. W. Bush)
muckraker (Theodore Roosevelt)

11. American Dialect Society
Decade
2008
Google
Bailout
2010
2007
App
Subprimed
2009
2006
Tweet
Plutoed
In its 17th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “plutoed”
as the word of the year, in a run-off against climate canary. To pluto is to demote or devalue
someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of
the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

12. English Speaking Countries

13. Terms used in the study of language?
Language — tongues that cannot be mutually understood

15. Terms used in the study of language?
Dialects — variant forms of a language that have not lost mutual comprehension
A speaker of English can understand the various dialect of the language
A dialect is distinctive enough in vocabulary and pronunciation to label its speaker
Some 6,000 languages and many more dialects are spoken today

16. Terms used in the study of language?
Pidgin language — results when different linguistic groups come into contact
Serves the purposes of commerce
Has a small vocabulary derived from the various contact groups
Speakers of different languages need to communicate but don't share a common language.
Official language of Papua, New Guinea is a largely English-derived pidgin language, which includes Spanish, German, and Papuan words

17. Terms used in the study of language?
Lingua franca — a language that spreads over a wide area where it is not the mother tongue
A language of communication and commerce
Swahili language has this status in much of East Africa
English is Lingua franca of international business world-wide

18. Kenya
Kenya has two official languages: Swahili and English. These lingua franca facilitate communication among Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic language speakers.
Swahili developed along the coast of East Africa where Bantu came in contact with Arabic spoken by Arab sea traders.

19. Kenya
English became important during the British colonial period and is still associated with high status.
This shopping center caters to Maasai herders who speak a Nilotic language and Kikuyu farmers who speak a Bantu language.
Jambo means “hello” in Swahili.

20. English-Speaking Countries
English is the official language in 57 countries. It is interesting to note that while English is predominantly spoken in the United States and Australia, it has not been declared the official language.
Figure 5-2

21. Why Is English Related to Other Languages?
Indo-European branches
Language branch = collected of related languages
Indo-European = eight branches
Four branches have a large number of speakers:
Germanic
Indo-Iranian
Balto-Slavic
Romance

22. Branches of the Indo-European Family
Figure 5-9

24. Languages of the World

25. Anatolia (modern day Turkey)
Renfrew’s Hypothesis sedentary farmer

26. Western arc of Fertile Crescent came the languages of North Africa and Arabia

27. From the Fertile Crescent’s eastern arc ancient languages spread into present day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Later, they would be replaced by Indo-European languages

28. Proto-Indo-European Language Hearth
Stephen Oppenheimer argues that people came out of Central Africa
People traveled along the now-flooded coastlines of East Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, and into India about 80,000 years ago.
Oppenheimer’s research supports theories by some linguists indicating that the heart of the Proto-Indo-European language could lie in India.
If there is more research that supports this hypothesis other linguists may rethink the origins and hearth of the Proto-Indo-European language.

29. Proto-Indo-European Language Diffusion
Renfrew Hypothesis
Conquest Theory
East to West on
horseback
Dispersal Hypothesis

32. Ideograms Ideogram- “letters” that represent ideas or concepts, not specific pronunciations.-Chinese; Japanese
- Sumerian and Egyptian have both ideographic and phonetic components.

33. Most languages, including Romance languages
Phonetic
Most languages, including Romance languages
Symbols (letters) generally represent sounds, not ideas. A phonetic alphabet is the key innovation.

35. 6000+ Languages spoken today, not including dialects
1500+ Spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa alone
400+ in New Guinea alone
100+ in Europe
However, this diversity is diminishing:
2000+ Threatened or Endangered Languages

36. Where Are Religions Distributed?
Universalizing religions
Seek to appeal to all people
Ethnic religions
Appeal to a smaller group of people living in one place