Transcript Language - TypePad

“Language is like luggage, people
carry it with them when they move
from place to place”



How many languages do you speak?
Dutch schools require learning at least 2
foreign languages
Only 30% of American high school students
graduate with 3 or more years of a foreign
language


17% have never taken a foreign language
There are an estimated 7,299 languages spoken
worldwide

System of communication
through speech, a collection of
sounds that a group of people
understands to have the same
meaning.


Some languages have a literary
tradition, system of written
communication
Official Language: language
officially used by the
government for laws, reports
and public objects such as road
signs, money and stamps
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.


English has been diffused mostly through
English colonialism
English is a Germanic language, influenced by
years of invasions



Celtic people pushed north
German invasion
Norman invasion
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.
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.

A dialect is a regional variation of a language
distinguished by distinctive vocabulary,
spelling and pronunciation


Generally, speakers of one dialect can understand
speakers of another
Dialects reflect distinctive features of the
environment in which groups live

Vocabulary and Spelling
Check/cheque
 Catalog/catalogue
 Color/colour
 Theater/theatre


Pronunciation


US dialects originated because of the difference
between original settlers
Isogloss: a boundary that separates regions in
which different language usages predominate

Different dialects might use different words
 Soda/pop/coke
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).