WHY IS ENGLISH RELATED TO OTHER LANGUAGES? Chapter 5 Section 2

Language Families and Branches A language family is a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history A language branch is a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago within a language family A language group is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and often similar grammar/vocabulary The largest language family is Indo-European- about 50% of the world speak a language in this family

Language Families of the World Fig. 5-11: Distribution of the world’s main language families. Languages with more than 50 million speakers are named.

The Indo-European Language Family Branches of Indo-European  Germanic branch  Indo-Iranian branch  Balto-Slavic branch  Romance branch  Albanian  Armenian  Greek  Celtic

Indo-European Language Family Fig. 5-5: The main branches of the Indo-European language family include Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.

The Indo-European Language Family Germanic Branch: includes English and German This also includes several other languages from central Europe and Scandinavia like Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans in South Africa, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic Divided up even into groups: North Germanic (includes Scandinavian languages, West Germanic (includes English and German), and East Germanic, which pretty much was assimilated into the other two before the Middle Ages (languages of the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians) It is even divided into sub-groups like High Germanic and Low Germanic subgroups

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.

The Indo-European Language Family Indo-Iranian Branch: this is the branch of the language family with the most speakers- over 1 billion people It can be divided into an eastern group: Indic and a western group: Iranian Indic: languages spoken in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh like Hindi (many different forms, one literary tradition- Devanagari) and Urdu (from Pakistan that is like Hindi but written in Arabic) India has a lot of language diversity with many different families and branches represented (over 1600 languages reports in the most recent census- combined into 200 related ones).

South Asian Languages & 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.

Indian Languages Four major language families Indo-European was introduced by Aryan herdsmen who came from Central Asia between 1500 and 500 BC- most common in the northern plains, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives Munda languages are spoken by the tribal hill peoples in the remote hill regions of India Dravidian languages are spoken in Southern India and northern Sri Lanka Tibeto-Burmese languages are spoken in the Himalayan region

Indian Languages Many Indian states were partitioned based on language No single language is spoken or understood by more than 40 % of the population Many want to establish Hindi- the most prevalent language- as the national language but many resist English is spoken fluently by less than 6 % but it serves as a link amongst the people and states It is the language of higher education, business, and government It is a class-divider socio-economic-politically speaking

The Indo-European Language Family Indo-Iranian Branch: this is the branch of the language family with the most speakers- over 1 billion people It can be divided into an eastern group: Indic and a western group: Iranian Iranian: spoken in Iran and neighboring countries of southwestern Asia like Farsi (Persian) in Iran, Pashto in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Kurdish in parts of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey (they use the Arabic alphabet)

The Indo-European Language Family Balto-Slavic Branch: once a single language- split around the 600s AD, divided into East, West, and South Slavic groups and the Baltic East Slavic and Baltic: Russian, Ukranian, and Belarusan are very important West and South Slavic groups: Polish, Czech, and Slovak are very important in the west and Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian in the south (some differences between Christians and Muslims in the region) There are many similarities in these groups

Russian Sign Russian is an Indo-European language written in the Cyrillic alphabet, originally brought to Russia by Greek missionaries

The Indo-European Language Family Romance Branch: evolved from Latin spoken by the Romans over 2000 years ago, four most common are Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian Another is Romanian, separating the people of Romania and Moldova from the Slavic languages There are groups with each too Ladino is a mix of Spanish, Greek, Turkish, and Hebrew is spoken by 100,000 Sephardic Jews

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.

Signs in Barcelona, Spain Signs in Barcelona are written both in Catalán (top) and Spanish (bottom).

Indo-European Family Albanian- predominantly in Albania- one language Armenian- predominantly in Armenia- one language Celtic- predominantly in the rural, remote areas of the British Isles- one main language, a few variations Greek- predominantly in Greece- one language These four are much less widespread and varied and far fewer in number of speakers than the other branches.

The Indo-European Language Family Like English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, among others, are spoke in each quadrant of the world as a result of colonization They have blended with local languages and the languages of other colonial power over time in some cases, resulting in some differences in dialect between Spain and Mexico and the Philippines The French form in Haiti and parts of the southern US- creole- is very different from traditional French A creole or creolized language is a language that results from the mixing of the colonizer’s language with the native language of the people who lived in the colonial region before colonization

Port-au-Prince, Haiti Haitian Creole and French are both official languages in Haiti, although English is also used.

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and four other languages originally descended from one common ancestral language since they are all part of the Indo-European language family The evidence of this is from the physical attributes of words from those languages structure of the languages Many basic words are similar and reflect what must have been common thousands of years before written record (at least before 2000 BC)

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European Linguists and anthropologists agree that a Proto- Indo-European language existed but argue over when and where it originated and how it diffused Two main hypotheses disagree

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European Marija Gimbutas’s theory is that the first speakers were the Kurgan people who lived in the steppes near the border between Russian and Kazakhstan who were in that region as early as 4300 BC The were nomadic herders who moved to find grasslands for their animals- this caused them to cover great expanses of land- from Europe to Siberia Between 3500 and 2500 BC, using their domesticated horses to fight, the Kurgans conquered much of Europe and South Asia

Kurgan Theory of Indo-European Origin Fig. 5-9: In the Kurgan theory, Proto-Indo-European diffused from the Kurgan hearth north of the Caspian Sea, beginning about 7000 years ago.

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European Colin Renfrew argues that the first speakers lived 2000 years before the Kurgans in eastern Anatolia (Turkey present-day) Renfrew hypothesizes that they diffused from Anatolia westward to Greece and from Greece to the rest of Europe and northward to Scandinavia, and eastward to South Asia Renfrew argues that these people and their culture diffused throughout Europe and Asia to farm and by spreading agricultural practices rather than by military conquest like the Kurgans

Anatolian Hearth Theory of Indo- European Origin Fig. 5-10: In the Anatolian hearth theory, Indo-European originated in Turkey before the Kurgans and diffused through agricultural expansion.

Indo-European Language Diffusion Regardless of which theory is correct, Indo- European had a prototype language that diffused throughout Europe and Asia and, after years of isolation in different pockets, developed into several distinct, modern languages

Literary Tradition Alphabets- most of the languages native to Europe use the Roman (26 letter alphabet) Some use(d) the Greek alphabet (24 letters) Some use the Cyrillic alphabet Some use the Arabic alphabet

Distribution of the Cyrillic Alphabet

Distribution of the Latin Alphabet

Distribution of the Arabic Alphabet

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