1. The Geography of Language

2. Three Major Cultural Traits: Language Religion Ethnicity
Where are English-language speakers distributed?
Why is English related to other languages?
Where are other language families distributed?
Why do people preserve local languages?
Three Major Cultural Traits:
Language
Religion
Ethnicity
Language
A system of communication through speech, a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meaning.
Ethnologue estimates that the world has 7,299 languages.
100 Languages are spoken by at least 5 million people!
Another 70 are spoken by between 2 and 5 million people.
Most are preliterate

3. Without language, culture cannot be passed on!
Many languages also have a literary tradition:
A system of written communications.
Preliterate → no system of writing

4. An Institutional Language is used in education, work, mass media, and government.
An official language is one used by the government for laws, reports, and public objects, like road signs.
A developing language is spoken in daily use by people of all ages. It also has a literary tradition but it may not be widely distributed.
A vigorous language is spoken in daily use by people of all ages, but it lacks a literary tradition.
Types of Language

7. Language Classification
How do we classify language and measure relationships between languages?

10. Language Family
Branch
Group
Dialect
To understand this classification, let’s use English as our example…

11. The Origin of English Germanic Invasion
School
and
University
Germanic Invasion
Angles, Jutes, and Saxons invaded the British Isles and pushed back the Celts.
As other peoples invaded ,they added their languages to English.
Vikings
NORMAN INVASION

13. Language Family:
a collection of languages related through a common prehistoric ancestor.
English is part of the Indo-European Language Family

16. Brain Teaser Hungarian is a linguistic island.
Hungary is part of the Uralic Language Family.
BUT it surrounded by languages that are part of the Indo-European Language Family.
Why might this be?
Brain Teaser
The original Hungarians moved westward into Europe from their homeland east of the Ural Mountains and reached their present settlement area in the Danube basin west of the Carpathian Mountains in the ninth century.

18. English is part of this branch.
Indo-European has eight branches.
Germanic
Balto-Slavic
A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousands years ago.
Differences not as extensive or as old as with families.
Romance
Indo-Iranian
Celtic
Hellenic
Armenian
Albanian

19. Language Groups What is it?
A language group is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and are more similar in grammar and vocabulary.
English?
There are two major language groups of the Germanic branch:
West Germanic
High Germanic
Low Germanic
North Germanic
Language
Groups
subgroups!

20. So… Indo-European Family
Germanic Branch
West Germanic Group
Low Germanic Subgroup
English

21. Another good one to know… Indo-European Family
Romance Branch
Spanish

22. Dialects
A Dialect
Is a regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Usually occurs because of the migration of a language.
Ex. English to North America…

23. Dialect Details Standard Language
In a language with multiple dialects, one may be recognized as the standard language.
A dialect that is well-established and widely recognized as most acceptable for government, etc.
Vulgar Dialects
Regional accents
Dialects marked by differences in vocab.
Isogloss = line separating two diff. words for same concept
Dialect Details
In English, this standard language is called British Received Pronunciation (BRP)

24. Super Fun and Wonderful Regional Dialect Quiz!

25. English Dialects Hiberno-English Northern English
East Midlands English
West Midlands English
East Anglian
Southern
West Country
Scottish English
Welsh English
Ulster English
*Just a sampling since there are HUNDREDS
Hiberno-English
Pennsylvania Dutch English
Northern
Western New England
Californian
Appalachian
Ozark
Boston
Broad Australian

26. The Spanish Language Mexico (103) Colombia (41) Spain (38.6)
Argentina (38.8)
US (34.2)
Major Dialects:
Castilian
Andalusian
Latin American
Other Language Groups in Spain…
Catalan (Barcelona, Andorra)
Basque (Basque Region)
Galician (Portuguese influenced)

31. If two dialects become “mutually unintelligible” and two separate languages emerge...
→ “language divergence”

32. How does language divergence happen?
The basic process
Separation
Time & isolation → branch into dialects
Dialects remain isolated
Pronunciations change, new words created for new discoveries
More time & isolation → dialects become discrete languages → “mutually unintelligible”
Think: Time Distance Decay!
How does language divergence happen?

33. More Important Concepts Related to Language...

34. Mixing Languages Creole Language Pidgin Language
Simplified means of communication between two groups that do not share a common language.
Simple grammar and vocabulary; easy to learn.
Ex. Spanglish, Franglais
Creole Language
Creolization: When pidgin language becomes a mother tongue.
Creole: a stable natural language developed from a mixture of different languages.
Stable over time, complex grammar and vocab, etc.
Often a blend of colonizers and indigenous peoples.
Ex. Afrikaans
Mixing Languages

36. Lingua Franca
a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
adopted for the purposes of having a common language for business, trade, and politics.
Historically, French was a global lingua franca. Today, it is English.
Ex. Russian in the Soviet Union Ex. Swahili in East Africa
Next Lingua Franca?

37. Think about how geo. factors influence language!
Isolated Language
A language that is unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family.
Can be vigorous or endangered!
Vigorous → Sustainable
Ex. Basque
Extinct Language
A language that was once used by people in daily life but is no longer in use.
Ethnologue: 367 have become extinct in 1950.
Ex. Clallam, WA State
Ex. Liv, Latvia
Think about how geo. factors influence language!