1. Language
Chapter 6

2. Language
Language – a set of sounds, combinations of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication.

3. Mutual Intelligibility
Means two people can understand each other when speaking.
Problems:
Cannot measure mutual intelligibility
Many “languages” fail the test of mutual intelligibility
Standard languages and governments impact what is a “language” and what is a “dialect”

4. How Languages are Formed?
Can find linkages among languages by examining sound shifts – a slight change in a word across languages over time.
eg. Milk = lacte in Latin
latta in Italian
leche in Spanish
lait in French

5. How are Languages Formed?
Language divergence –
when a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and then new languages.
Language convergence –
when peoples with different languages have consistent spatial interaction and their languages collapse into one.

6. Monolingual State a country in which only one language is spoken Multilingual State a country in which more than one language is in use Official Language should a multilingual state adopt an official language?

7. Dialect variants of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines - vocabulary -syntax - pronunciation - cadence - pace of speech
Isogloss
A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs

8. How do Linguists Study Historical Languages?
Backward reconstruction – tracking sound shifts and the hardening of consonants backward to reveal an “original” language.
Can deduce the vocabulary of an extinct language.
Can recreate ancient languages (deep reconstruction)

9. Language and Cultural Identity

10. Language and Culture
“No one was allowed to speak the language – the Dena’ina language. They [the American government] didn’t allow it in the 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 [emphasis added].”
- Clare Swan, elder, Kenaitze band, Dena’ina Indians

11. Language and Cultural Identity

12. Language and National Identity
Standard Language
a language that is published, widely distributed, and purposefully taught.
Government usually plays a big role in standardizing a language.

13. Language and Political Conflict
Belgium:
Flanders (Flemish language)
Wallonia (French language)

14. Percent of People 5 Years and Older Who Speak a Language other than English at Home

16. How Languages Diffuse?

17. Causes of Languages Diffusion
human interaction
print distribution
migration
trade
rise of nation-states
colonialism

18. Spatial Interaction helps create:
Lingua franca –
A language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce.
Pidgin language –
a language created when people combine parts of two or more languages into a simplified structure and vocabulary.
Creole language –
a pidgin language that has developed a more complex structure and vocabulary and has become the native language of a group of people.

19. Historical Linkages among Languages
Indo-European language family
Proto-Indo-European language
Nostratic Language: Pre-proto-Indo European
Mother Tongue

20. The Three Major Language Subfamilies of Europe
Romance languages
Germanic languages
Slavic languages

21. Renfrew Hypothesis:
Proto-Indo-European began in the Fertile Crescent, and then:
Europe’s Languages diffused from Anatolia
North Africa and Arabia’s languages diffused from the
Western Arc of Fertile Crescent (
Southwest Asia and South Asia’s languages diffused from
the Eastern Arc of Fertile Crescent.

22. Agriculture Theory
With increased food supply and increased population, speakers
from the hearth of Indo-European languages migrated into Europe.

23. Dispersal Hypothesis
Indo-European languages first moved from the hearth eastward into present-day Iran and then around the Caspian and into Europe.

24. Nostratic Language
Pre-proto-Indo European Language: Maybe a direct successor of the Proto-World language
Svytitch and Dogopolosky: Russian scholars who studies independently of each other and came to similar conclusions.
Source area: North of the Black Sea
Results of Research:
- No names for domestic plants
- Hunters/gathers not farmers
- Links widely separated languages
- May date back as far as 14,000 years

25. Diffusion to the Americas
The Americas are dominated by the Indo-
European languages
Pre-Columbian population did not exceed
40 million
As many as 200 million languages have been
identified
Believed that first American languages
diverged into the most intricately divided
branches of the Language Tree

26. Greenberg Hypothesis Three major Language families:
- Amerind: Most widely distributed
- Na-Dene: NW Canada and Alaska
- Eskimo-Aleut: Arctic area
Implies a migration across the Bering Land
Bridge approximately 40,000 years ago

27. Criticism of Greenberg Hypothesis
Criticism: Did not use conventional linguistic
research methods and proper procedures
Compared similar sounding words today
Relies on genetic testing/archaeological dating
of dental data to prove hypothesis of early
migration occurring prior to 12,000 years ago
- Pennsylvania 16,000 B.P
- Chile (approx.) 33,000 B.P.

28. Euskera
The Basque speak the Euskera language, which is in no way related to any other language family in Europe.
How did Euskera survive?

29. World Language Families

30. Linguistic Culture Regions
What is the Geographical patterning of languages?
Do the various languages provide the basis for formal and functional culture regions?

31. The Ten Leading Languages in Numbers of Native Speakers
Family
Speakers (in Millions)
Main Areas Where Spoken
Mandarin
Sino-Tibetan
885
China, Taiwan, Singapore
Hindi/Urdu
Indo-European
426
Northern India, Pakistan
Spanish
358
Spain, Latin America, Southwestern U.S.A.
English
343
G. Br., U.S.A., N.Z., Aus., S. Africa, Philippines
Arabic
Afro-Asiatic
235
Middle East, North Africa
Bengali
207
Bangladesh, Eastern India
Portuguese
176
Portugal, Brazil, S. Africa
Russian
167
Russia, Kazakhstan, part of Ukraine
Japanese
Japanese/Korean
125
Japan
German
100
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, eastern France, north Italy

32. Origin and Diffusion of Four Major Language Families in Eastern Hemisphere

33. Language Families Indo-European Family
largest; most widespread language
spoken on all continents
Subfamilies: Celtic, Romance, Anatolian, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Indic, Iranic, Greek
Languages: Germanic-English, Dutch, Swedish, German
Commonalities in Family: Mother (English)
Polish: matka, Greek: meter, Spanish: madre, Farsi: madar, Sinhalese: mava

34. Languages in India Assamese Bengali Bodo Dogri Gujarati Hindi
Kannada Kashmiri
Konkani Maithili
Malayalam Manipuri
Marathi Nepali
Oriya Punjabi
Sanskrit Santhali
Sindhi Tamil
Telugu Urdu

35. Indian Languages
Hindi is the official and main link language of India. Its homeland is mainly in the north of India, but it is spoken and widely understood in all urban centers of India. It is written in the Devanagri script, which is phonetic and, unlike English, is pronounced as it is written.
Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages that exists in the world today.
The oldest Indo-Aryan language is Vedic Sanskrit, which is said to date as far back as 1500 BC.

36. Brief History of Languages
With over 900 million people and more than one thousand languages
India is one of the multilingual nations in the world today.
It is home to the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families, two of the world's largest.
Languages of the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman language families are also spoken in India
This multitude of languages reflects India's lengthy and diverse history.
During the last few thousand years, the Indian sub-continent has been both united under various empires as well as fragmented into many small kingdoms.
British empire helped to unit India under a common language.
Having attained independence from the British in 1947, Indian leaders chose Hindi as the official language of India.

38. 2. Afro-Asiatic Family: Two language divisions; Semitic and Hamitic
Semitic language region: Middle East west through North Africa
few speakers due to desert biome
Arabic largest Semitic language; many dialects with a standard written form
Hebrew is a Semitic language that was dead until 1948 State of Israel
Amharic language exists in East African mts.
Hamitic languages exist in North and East Africa, originated in Asia (Berbers, Algeria, Tuaregs, Cushites)

39. 3. Niger-Congo Family Sub-Saharan Africa 325 million speakers
greatly fragmented
Bantu, Swahili, Hausa
4000 years ago; moved from Nigeria-west then south to Zimbabwe
People moved in search of a climate change and new agricultural techniques

40. Languages of Subsaharan Africa - extreme language
Languages of Subsaharan Africa - extreme language diversity - effects of colonialism

41. Nigeria more than 400 different languages.

42. 4. Austronesian Family
Dispersed over island from Madagascar to Indonesia to the Pacific Islands to Hawaii and Easter Islands
Largest single language group Malay-polynesian; most widespread Polynesian language

43. 5. Uralic Family
Homeland lies in the grasslands and tundra regions of northern Europe
Finnish and Hungarian

44. 4. Altaic Family
Homeland lies in inhospitable deserts, tundra and coniferous forests of northern and central Asia
Turkic and Mongolic are languages of the Altaic Family

45. 6. Sino-Tibetan Family Region: China, Southeast Asia
Mandarin: mother tongue of China
Burmese, Tibetan

46. 8. Japanese and Korean Family
Unproven ties to the Altaic family
200 million speakers
9. Austro-Asiatic Family
peripheral domain; Austronesian, Indo-
European and Sino-Tibetan
spoken by Vietnamese, Cambodians,
Thais, Malaysians and Indians

47. Social Morale Model by Charles Withers
I. Procedure
A. Imperial conquest or technological advances cause the replacement of indigenous languages
B. Conquered group remains in a low social class until a loss of pride in the language forces its abandonment
C. Formal education system is based on the socially dominant class
D. No official recognition of the conquered language=social inferiority (old language is primitive; socially degrading)

48. Changes in Language

49. Retreat of the Welsh language in the twentieth century

50. Example Language Convergence in Whales
Urbanization/Industrialization contributed to the emigration from rural areas
British education system promoted English
Welsh people relocated in industrial towns where English was spoken
“liquidation of the Welsh culture”
Monoglots began to disappear

51. Welsh language convergence: British Response
British government extended education and media rights to Welsh people
Whales attained political autonomy within the U.K.
The Welsh language began to revive.

52. Native Americans in Canada and the United States
Native Americans were greatly marginalized by a dominant culture
Young Native Americans were relocated to bordering schools outside their communities
- children were not allowed to speak their
native languages
- reduced languages from 148,000 in 1990
to 3 first graders in 2005

53. Examples of Language Convergence
1793 France (New Republican government)
Government is used to mandate the elimination of all regional languages and dialects
Present day analogy: Prohibit oppressed language groups access to broadcast facilities

54. Impact of Language on the Cultural Landscape

55. Probabilities of Selected Polynesian Drift and Navigation Voyages

56. Result of Language Convergence
Languages used to Google
World’ nearly extinct languages

57. The Creation of a Constructed Global Language (Non-natural)
Esperanto
L.L. Zamenhof: Polish oculist in 1880’s
Set out to construct a second language everyone in the world would speak
Slang is not used in this language
Arabic, Greek, Latin-based; stable, not subject to changes natural languages undergo
2 million speakers

58. The Creation of a Constructed Global Language (Non-natural)
Elvish
J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings)
Spoken by the Elvish inhabitants of Middle-Earth
Difficult to pronounce, speak and learn; never intended to replace a natural language
Dictionaries and lessons available

59. Toponym Toponym – a place name A toponym:
Imparts a certain character on a place
Reflects the social processes in a place
Can give us a glimpse of the history of a place

60. Martin Luther King, Jr. Streets
Geographer Derek Alderman asks:
* Where are MLK streets?
* Why are they where they are?
* What controversies surround memorializing MLK with a street name?

61. Where are MLK Streets in the US?

62. Changing Toponyms
When people change the toponym of a place, they have the power to “wipe out the past and call forth the new.”
- Yi-Fu Tuan

63. Changing Toponyms Major reasons people change toponyms:
After decolonization
After a political revolution
To memorialize people or events
To commodify or brand a place

64. Naming place is closely related to claiming place