Distribution of Language Families: Asia & Africa

1. Distribution of Language Families: Asia & Africa AP Human Geography

2. Sino-Tibetan languages • form a language family composed of, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. • second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of the number of native speakers

3. Sino-Tibetan Language Family Distribution

4. Sino-Tibetan Language Family Tree

5. Sino-Tibetan Language Hearth • the Himalayan plateau, where the great rivers of East and Southeast Asia (including the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, and Irrawaddy) have their source • Language split into two main groups, Chinese and Tibeto-Burman, around 4000 B.C. • In the first century AD, TB peoples started moving south along the Malay peninsula blending with the Austronesian speakers

6. Chinese (ST - Sinitic Branch) • Mandarin • Spoken by 75% of Chinese people • Most spoken language in world • Official language of People’s Republic of China and Taiwan • One of the six official languages of the UN

8. Chinese (ST - Sinitic Branch) • Nine other branches of Chinese, including Cantonese • Cantonese • simplified or traditional Chinese • More common in Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, and US

9. Structure of Chinese Language • Very different structure than Indo-European languages • Based on 420 one-syllable words • Far exceeds one-syllable sounds than humans can make • Use each sound to denote more than one thing (ex. Shi may mean lion, corpse, house, poetry, ten, swear, or die depending on what other syllable it’s coupled with) • Written language – thousands of characters • Most characters are ideograms, represent ideas or concepts • Difficult to learn to write • Educated Chinese know around 4,000 characters

10. Chinese Lesson - Julie

11. Other Sino-Tibetan Branches • Tibeto-Burman • Burmese – principle language • Spoken in Myanmar (previously called Burma) • 32 million speakers • The oldest attested Tibeto-Burman language is Pai-lang, of the 3rd century, followed by Tibetan and Burmese • Austro-Thai • Thai – principle language • Spoken in Laos, Thailand, parts of Vietnam

13. Tibetan Alphabet

14. Afro-Asiatic family • 4th largest language family • Has two major divisions—Semitic and Hamitic • Semitic covers the area from Tigris-Euphrates valley westward through most of the north half of Africa to the Atlantic coast • Domain is large but consists of mostly sparsely populated deserts • Arabic is the most widespread Semitic language and has the highest number of native speakers—about 186 million • Hebrew was a “dead” language used only in religious ceremonies • Today Hebrew is the official language of Israel • Amharic a third major Semitic tongues has 20 million speakers in the mountains of East Africa

15. Arabic • The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. • Arabic is written from right to left. • In Arabic short vowels are generally not written. • Arabic letters change their shape according to their position in a word. • Many dialects, mainstreamed by modern media • Added as the sixth official language of the UN in 1973, Security Council in 1982

16. Afro-Asiatic family • Smaller number of people speak Hamitic languages • Share North and East Africa with Semitic speakers • Spoken by the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria • Spoken by the Tuaregs of the Sahara and Cushites of East Africa • Originated in Asia but today only spoken in Africa • Expansion of Arabic decreased the area and number of speakers

18. Altaic and Uralic Language Families • Altaic • Turkish – most widely spoken by far • Others – languages of Central Asia (Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, etc.) • Uralic • All traceable to a common language, Proto-Uralic, used 7,000 yrs ago in Ural Mountains • Used today in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary (only European nations not speaking Indo-European languages)

20. Sub-Saharan African Language Families • Niger-Congo • Nilo-Saharan • Khoisan • Austronesian

21. Niger-Congo Family • Africa south of the Sahara Desert is dominated by the Niger-Congo family • Spoken by about 200 million people (95%) • Greater part of the Niger-Congo culture region belongs to the Bantu subgroup • Includes Swahili • The first language of only 800,000 people • Official language of Tanzania • the lingua franca of East Africa • One of few African languages with extensive literature

22. Nilo-Saharan • 50 million speakers • 10 branches • Over 15 languages with at least one million speakers each (ex. Dinka (South Sudan), Nubian (southern Egypt), Maasai (Kenya) • 17 nations • Dates back to the paleolithic period

23. Khoisan • two ethnic groups of Southern Africa, who share physical and putative linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. • Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the foraging San and the pastoral Khoi. • Most live isolated in the Kalahari Desert, allowing them to preserve their culture

24. Clicking • Khoisan languages are best known for their use of click consonants • These are typically written with letters such as ǃ and ǂ. • Clicks are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. • the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. • The Juǀʼhoan language has 48 click consonants, among nearly as many non-click consonants, vowels, and four tones. • The ǃXóõ and ǂHõã languages are even more complex.

25. San Bushmen • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c246fZ-7z1w&oq=clicking%20langu&gs_l=youtube..0.5j0.59.1356.0.3998.11.8.0.0.0.0.312.1692.1j2j3j2.8.0.eytns%2Cpt%3D-35%2Cn%3D2%2Cui%3Dt.1.0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.M6G4zyKAqXc

26. Austronesian language family • Most remarkable language family in terms of distribution • 386 million speakers • Speakers live mainly on tropical islands • Ranges from Madagascar, through Indonesia and the Pacific Islands, to Hawaii and Easter Island • Longitudinal span is more than half way around the world • Latitudinally, ranges from Hawaii and Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south • Largest single language in this family is Indonesian —5O million speakers • Most widespread language is Polynesian • Language of the Philippines - Tagalog