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

2. 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?????

3. 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

4. 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

6. 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?

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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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?

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