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Language Geography

Language Geography. 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

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Language Geography

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  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 • Preliterate societies – no written language; no foundation for cultural preservation • Before writing there were 5,000-6,000 languages (some became written, many are extinct)

  3. 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 • Animals communicate w/ gestures and vocalization – is it language? NO!

  4. Isogloss – a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs • e.g. “Pop” vs. “Soda” • Isoglosses tend to move over time Pop? Soda? Coke? You vs. y’all

  5. 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. World Languages: Æ Å Ñ Ä Ê Ó õ ã è ç ÿ ü å ΏЖώץשאتخصيكﷲﻉﻻﻈэפ • 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,…

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

  8. Major World Languages English Indo-European Spanish Chinese Sino-Tibetan Japanese Japanese-Korean Afro-Asiatic Arabic Malay-Polynesian Indonesian Dravidian (India) Telugu Altaic Turkish Niger-Congo Bantu (group)

  9. Indo-European Languages

  10. Non-Indo-European Languages

  11. India • 4 language families – only Indo-European & Dravidian have significant numbers • Close relationship b/w regional languages and political divisions

  12. Africa • N. Afr. – mostly Afro-Asiatic • Sub-Saharan - largest familyis Niger-Congo • Language mosaic is intensely fragmented • More than 1,000 languages, most are unwritten

  13. Diffusion of Languages

  14. Diffusion • Sound Shifts – charting of the diversification of languages over time; e.g. octo (Latin), otto (Ita), ocho (Spa), … • Deep Reconstruction – find vocabulary of an extinct language and go backward; Proto-Indo European • William Jones (>200 yrs. ago) – Sanskrit similar to Greek and Latin • Jacob Grimm – related languages have similar, but not identical consonants; e.g. vater (Ger) … vader (Dut), father (Eng) – softening over time • 4 Tasks: Reconstruct the ancient language, find the hearth, routes of diffusion, and peoples’ ways of life

  15. The Language Tree – “Mother Tongue” (Indo-European branch is highlighted)

  16. Divergence – differentiation over time and space; languages branch into dialects, become isolated, then new languages • Convergence – linked to human mobility (relocation diffusion); complicates rules of reconstruction • Replacement – modification of a language by stronger cultures (acculturation); e.g. Hungarian surrounded by Ind-Eur, Basque? • Clues: Linguists look for environmental vocabulary (landforms, vegetation,…)

  17. Conquest Theory: Hearth is Ukraine (>5,000 yrs. ago); people used horses, wheel, and trade, spread language westward • Agriculture Theory: Hearth is Anatolia (Turkey - >10,000 yrs. ago); Ukraine relied on pastoralism, not farming • Farming people of Anatolia moved N & W • Distance decay from source area; some non-farming people held out (Basque in Spain) • Drawbacks: Anatolia not ideal for farming, some evidence states Proto-Indo-European language spread eastward first • Renfrew Model – 3 hearths: Anatolia - Eur, Fertile Crescent (West) – N. Afr. & Arabia, Fert. Cres. (East) – Iran through India

  18. 3 Maps Illustrating Possible Routes of Language Diffusion as Stated by the Agriculture Theory

  19. Nostratic – Pre-Proto-Indo-European, speakers were hunters-gatherers, source of many other language families

  20. Pacific Diffusion – Austronesian starts in China to Taiwan (>6,000 yrs. ago) then SE to New Zealand as people moved from island to island

  21. American Diffusion – Joseph Greenberg’s Hypothesis: • Amerind – oldest, largest • Na-Dene • Eskimo-Aleut

  22. Modern Language Mosaics – influenced by: • literacy, • technology (printing press - Gutenberg), • political organization (rise of nation-states)

  23. Modern Language Mosaics

  24. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – “longest place name in the world”

  25. US is changing – Hispanics are now the largest minority (“Hispanicization”) • > ½ are functionally illiterate in English (many early US immigrants were as well)

  26. One Global Language? • Esperanto Experiment • occurred in early 1900s • based on Latin & other Indo-Eur. languages • failed – not a global tongue; lacked practical utility • English – becoming a lingua franca of the world (commerce, science & technology)

  27. Lingua Franca • Ancient Mediterranean - “Frankish language” • Today - “common language”; second language • Pidgin – a language that has been simplified and modified through contact w/ other languages • Creole • Caribbean – mixing during slavery & colonizing • Today – pidgin later adopted as mother tongue • Creolization – a language gets mixed and simplified – becomes a pidgin – then becomes a creole language (when adopted as a mother tongue)

  28. Three African Lingua Francae

  29. Language & Culture • Monolingual states – Japan, Venezuela, Iceland, Portugal, Poland,… • Multilingual states – all others • Canada – Quebec (French by law), English everywhere else • Belgium – Dutch vs. French (Brussels officially bilingual) • Nigeria – over 230 local tongues; adopted English (colony)

  30. Quebec vs. Canada

  31. Official Language – often selected by the educated and politically elite to promote national cohesion; commonly language of colonial power • Angola – Portuguese; Nigeria – English; Côte d’Ivoire - French • **Allows people w/ different languages to communicate & keep their own language • Toponymy – systematic study of place-names (can elicit strong passions) • Leningrad – St. Petersburg; Bombay – Mumbai; Zaire – Dem. Rep. of the Congo

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