Why is English Related to Other Languages? Ch.5 Language Why is English Related to Other Languages?

Language Family The global distribution of languages results from a combination of 2 geographic processes; → interaction & isolation Ten thousand yrs ago – 1 million ppl speaking 15,000 languages; now 6000x the people speaking 40% as many tongues Some experts feel that by year 2100, all but 300 languages will be extinct or dying Why?????

Cont’d… Collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed long before recorded history Indo-European is the largest family; spoken by 3 billion people & stretches across greatest land area English dominant language

Indo-European Branches 8 language branches (differences are less than with families, derived from same family) 4 are spoken by large groups Indo-Iranian (S Asia) Romance (SW Europe/L.A.) Germanic (NW Europe/N.A.) Balto-Slavic (E Europe) 4 are less common Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Celtic

Key Issue #2: Why Is English Related to Other Languages? Germanic Branch West Germanic Group North Germanic East Germanic High Low Old Norse Gothic German (high elevations) – spoken in Austrian & German Alps English Swedish Vandalic Dutch Danish Burgundian Flemish (Dutch dialect in N. Belgium) Norwegian *ALL ARE EXTINCT* Yiddish Afrikaans (Dutch-based language in South Africa) Icelandic Frisian (NE Netherlands) – German dialect in northern lowlands Faroese Low Saxon Key Issue #2: Why Is English Related to Other Languages?

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 Language group is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin & few differences in vocab & grammar (most similar) West Germanic – English, German, Dutch Further broken down to High & Low West Germanic North Germanic – spoken in Scandinavia

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.

Indo-Iranian Branch Eastern group (Indic) Branch of Indo-European with most speakers More than 100 individual languages (+1 billion ppl) Eastern group (Indic) Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan (spoken like Hindi, Arabic alphabet), Bengali in Bangladesh World’s 2nd largest language group Language as main element of cultural diversity in India

Cont’d… Western Group (Iranian) Iran & neighbouring countries Persian (Farsi) in Iran, Pathan in E Afghanistan & W Pakistan & Kurdish in W Iran, N Iraq, E Turkey Written using the Arabic alphabet

Balto-Slavic Branch Used to be a single language but as Slavs migrated from Asia → different parts of E Europe, isolation = division into E, W & S Slavic groups & a Baltic group Other group w/ large # of speakers Eastern ones most widely used (Russian*, Ukranian, Belorusian) Western – Polish, Czech & Slovak Southern – Serbo-Croatian & Bulgarian

Romance Branch Evolved from the Latin; Romans 2000 yrs ago Spanish, Portuguese, French* & Italian* (Romanian) Mountains as barriers to communication Isolation after fall of Roman Empire in 5th century

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.

Origin & Diffusion of Indo-European Cannot prove that all of the languages in this family are connected by common ancestor Proto-Indo-European What does ‘ocean’, ‘winter’ and ‘snow’ tells us? Unknown path of diffusion; war? Food? Kurgans? Anatolian?

FIGURE 5-5 DISTRIBUTION OF LANGUAGE FAMILIES Most language can be classified into one of a handful of language families.