Transcript Ch_ 5 ppt 14 - Annapolis High School

Chapter 5
Ch a 5
Language
Maps: What can they reveal?
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Mountain Ranges
Population
Rivers
Spread of disease
Political boundaries
Voting preferences
Division In Belgium
• Maps can hide the complexities of life.
• Look at maps with a questioning eye
• Look at a European map of language, and
zero in on Belgium.
• Neat line divides Flemish speakers
(Germanic Language) in the north region
(Flanders) and French (Romance language)
in the south (Wallonia)
Belgium Language Map
Fig. 5-1: English is the official language in 42 countries, including some in which it is
not the most widely spoken language. It is also used and understood in
many others.
Divisive Issue: Language
During the 19th century, French speakers controlled the
industrial economy and government of the country.
The French-speaking elite in Brussels and other Flemish
cities began a process of “Frechification”
By the 20th Century, the majority of the people in Brussels
spoke French, although people in the surrounding Brussels
area continued to speak Flemish
By the 1960’s, a fixed partition scheme came in to being—
dividing he country into Flemish-speaking Flanders in the
north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south.
The government recognizes Brussels as a distinct region, a
bilingual capital, but places strict limits on the use of French in
the rest of northern Belgium
Fig. 5-2: The groups that brought what became English to England included Jutes, Angles,
Saxons, and Vikings. The Normans later brought French vocabulary to English.
Language Issues
Tied in with politics
Socioeconomic status
Fig. 5-3: The main dialect regions of Old English before the Norman invasion
persisted to some extent in the Middle English dialects through the 1400s.
What are languages, and what
role do they play in cultures?
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Le Big Mac
The French Government
Passed a law in 1975 banning the
use of foreign words in advertisements,
television, and radio broadcasts, and
official documents, unless no French
Equivalent could be found.
Americans may think this odd…if we
can communicate, what is the need for
laws?
Answer is more complex, language
is an integral part of culture, reflecting
and shaping it.
To understand the role of
language in culture—look at those
who have lost their languages—
American
Canadian
Australian
Russian
New Zealand
Governments who
forced indigenous
people to speak
another language
Example: Native Americans
“No one was allowed to speak the language-the
Dena’ina language. They (the American Government)
didn’t allow it in schools, and a lot of the women had
married non-native men, and the men said, “ You’re
American now so you can’t speak the language.” So,
we became invisible in the community. Invisible to
each other. And, then, because we couldn’t speak the
language—what happens when you can’t speak your
own language is you have to think with someone
else’s words, and that’s a dreadful kind of isolation.
Clare Swan, an elder in the Kenaitze band of the Dena’ina
Indians in Alaska.
Official Language Policies in
The US
Spanish-speaking people are growing
Some Spanish speakers and their advocates are
demanding the use of Spanish in public affairs
In response, some people are opposed to the
use of Spanish in the United States, and are
leading counter-movements to promote “Official
English” policies
More than 25 States today have declared English
the official language of the State, either by statute
or by amending the State constitution
Canada: A country of two
languages
Quebec has a focus of passing laws that
promote the use of the French language
They have even periodically, called for
independence from Canada!
In 1993, the Quebec government passed a law
requiring the use of French in advertising.
The Quebec law allows the inclusion of both
French and English translations on signs, as
long as the French letters are twice the size of
the other language’s letters, or the French
appears first.
Standard Language
o One that is published, widely distributed,
and purposefully taught.
o In some countries, the standard language is
sustained through official state examinations
for teachers and civil servants.
o Ireland promotes the use of the Irish (Celtic)
language by requiring all government
employees to pass an Irish-language
examination before they can be hired.
Dialects
 Variant of a standard language along regional or
ethnic lines are called dialects.
 Differences in vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation,
cadence (the rhythm of the speech, and even the pace
of speech all mark a speaker’s dialect.
To people in the southern US, the word “Horse”
spoken by a New Englander sounds like “Hahse”
To New Englanders, the word “oil” spoken by a
southerner sounds like “all”
 An isogloss is a geographic boundary within which
a particular linguistic feature occurs, but such a
boundary is rarely a simple line.
Dialects in the Eastern U.S.
Fig. 5-4: Hans Kurath divided the eastern U.S. into three dialect regions,
whose distribution is similar to that of house types (Fig. 4-9).
Why are languages distributed the way they are?
 The first step in mapping the distribution of
languages is to classify language.
Linguists and linguistic geographers classify
languages in terms that are also used in biology
and for the same reasons: like species, some
languages are related, and others are not.
At the global scale, we classify languages into
language families.
These are then divided more into subfamilies—
divisions within a language family
Language Tree
The Indo-European Language
Family
• Branches of Indo-European
– Germanic branch
– Indo-Iranian branch
– Balto-Slavic branch
– Romance branch
Indo-European Language Family
Fig. 5-5: The main branches of the Indo-European language family include Germanic,
Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.
Germanic Branch of Indo-European
Fig. 5-6: The Germanic branch today is divided into North and West Germanic
groups. English is in the West Germanic group.
South Asian Languages and
Language Families
Fig. 5-7: Indo-European is the largest of four main language families in South Asia.
The country of India has 18 official languages.
Romance Branch of Indo-European
Fig. 5-8: The Romance branch includes three of the world’s 12 most widely spoken
languages (Spanish, French, and Portuguese), as well as a number of
smaller languages and dialects.
Distribution of Other Language
Families
• Classification of languages
• Distribution of language families
– Sino-Tibetan language family
– Other East and Southeast Asian language
families
– Afro-Asiatic language family
– Altaic and Uralic language families
– African language families
Language Families of the World
Fig. 5-11: Distribution of the world’s main language families. Languages with
more than 100 million speakers are named.
Major Language Families
Percentage of World Population
Fig. 5-11a: The percentage of world population speaking each of the main language
families. Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan together represent almost
75% of the world’s people.
Chinese Ideograms
Fig. 5-13: Chinese language ideograms mostly represent concepts rather than
sounds. The two basic characters at the top can be built into more
complex words.
Language Families of Africa
Fig. 5-14: The 1,000 or more languages of Africa are divided among five main language
families, including Austronesian languages in Madagascar.
Languages of Nigeria
Fig. 5-15: More than 200 languages are spoken in Nigeria, the largest country in Africa (by
population). English, considered neutral, is the official language.
Language Diversity and
Uniformity
• Preserving language diversity
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Hebrew: reviving extinct languages
Celtic: preserving endangered languages
Multilingual states
Isolated languages
• Global dominance of English
– English as a lingua franca
– Diffusion to other languages
Language Areas in Switzerland
Fig. 5-17: Switzerland remains peaceful with four official languages and a
decentralized government structure.
Internet Hosts
Fig. 5-1-1: A large proportion of the world’s internet users and hosts are in the
developed countries of North America and western Europe.
Internet Hosts, by Language
Fig 5-1-1a: The large majority of internet hosts in 1999 used English, Chinese,
Japanese, or European languages.
Monolingual States
Countries in which only one
language is spoken
 Japan
 Uruguay and Venezuela
 Iceland
 Denmark
Portugal
Poland
Lesotho
What role does language play in making places?
 Toponyms are place names
 They can give us a quick glimpses into the history of a place
 10 basic types:
Descriptive (Rocky Mountains)
Associative (Mill Valley)
Commemorative (San Francisco)
Commendatory (Paradise Valley)
Incidents (Battle Creek)
Possession (Johnson City)
Folk Culture (Plains, Georgia)
Manufactured (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico)
Mistakes (Lasker, North Carolina) (Named for Alaska)
Shift Names, relocated: Lancaster, Pennsylvania and England
Just to clarify since everyone
always gets confused!
Language Branch
• A group of languages that share a
common origin but have since
evolved into individual languages.
Differences are not as extensive or
ols as with language families.
Branches derived from families.
Language Group
• A collection of languages within a
branch that share a common origin
in the relatively recent past and
display relatively few differences in
grammar and vocabulary.
Vocabulary
• LINGUA FRANCA – language used among speakers of
different languages for trade and commerce – a “bridge”
language – English is the world’s lingua franca–
• PIDGIN LANGUAGE – people speaking two or more
languages combine parts of the languages into a more
simplified structure and vocabulary through contact with
others
• CREOLE LANGUAGE – began as a Pidgin but later
adopted in place of the mother language. More complex
structure and vocabulary
• Isogloss-Word usage boundary
– Examples: Pop vs Soda, “Ass yo” at AHS
Indo-European Group
Language Family
• A collection of languages related to
each other through a common
ancestor long before recorded
history.
A
AP Human Geography
More fun than a root canal!