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World Languages

World Languages. History of Language. What is language? Write your own definition. “The words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community”. The study of language. Linguists are scientists who study the many aspects of language.

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World Languages

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  1. World Languages

  2. History of Language • What is language? • Write your own definition. • “The words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community”

  3. The study of language • Linguists are scientists who study the many aspects of language. • Linguists agree the origin of human speech is a mystery. • Some theories are that language is a gift from the gods or that it started as imitating sounds heard in nature (like a dog bark).

  4. Language families • Indo-European family • Almost ½ of the world’s population speaks a language that belongs to the Indo-European family. • Probably originated in Central Russia. • Because of natural disaster, famine, and wars, some people left Russia and lost contact with each other. • The languages began to evolve and change due to the distance between the groups of people.

  5. Indo-European languages • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________ • ________ __________ ___________

  6. Indo-European • Some languages are very similar to each other. • An Italian, a Portuguese and Spanish speaker could probably understand each other. • They would have trouble, however, understanding French.

  7. Examples • English Spanish Italian • information Información informazioni • person persona persona • nature naturaleza natura • bear oso orso

  8. English • Belongs to the Germanic language family. • Anglo-saxon, an old German language forms the “backbone” of English. • In 1066, the Normans invaded England from France and brought their language with them. This is why there are man French and Latin words in English.

  9. Borrowed words into English Anglo-saxon French bat (batt) a la carte bake (bacan) adieu daughter (dohtor) cuisine

  10. Semito-Hemetic family • Originates from Africa and the Middle East. • Two most widespread languages are Arabic and Hebrew.

  11. Ural-Altaic family • Finnish • Estonian • Hungarian • Turkish • Mongol

  12. Sino-Tibetan • Chinese • Thai • Burmese • Tibetan • Japanese • Korean

  13. Questions… • 1. Explain why is it possible to group many of the world’s languages into families. • 2. It is said that some languages are like first cousins. Others are more like distant cousins. Explain why. • 3. Does anyone in your family speak a language other than English?

  14. What is language day 2 • Book • Das Buch (German) • El libro (Spanish) • Kitabu (Swahili) • Liber (latin) • Hon (Japanese) • Shu (Chinese) • il libro (Italian)

  15. What are words? • Write your own definition. • Defined as: the most elementary unit of meaning.

  16. Rich languages • A language is considered a “rich language” if it has an extensive vocabulary. • The Oxford English dictionary lists over 500,000 words!

  17. Making new words • The vocabulary of a language constantly changes. • As technology changes, words must be made to describe and work with the new technology. • Can you think of any new words we have added to English recently due to new technology?

  18. Dropping old words • Just as words are added to English, other words and phrases become outdated and eventually get dropped from the language. • Can you think of any words or phrases that have been dropped from our language?

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