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Chapter 6: Languages

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

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Chapter 6: Languages

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  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 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. 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

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