1. Key Issue 3 Where are other language families distributed?
Chapter 5
Key Issue 3
Where are other language families distributed?

2. Language Families Indo-European: 48% of world, English
Sino-Tibetan: 26% of world, Mandarin
Afro-Asiatic: 6%, Arabic
Austronesian: 5%, Southeast Asia
Dravidian: 4%, India
Altaic: 3%, Asia
Niger-Congo: 3%, Africa
Japanese: 2%, Japan
100 smaller families: 3%

3. Sino-Tibetan Family People’s Republic of China: world’s most populous
state
Smaller countries of Southeast Asia
Smaller branches of Sino-Tibetan family:
Austro-Thai and Tibetan-Burman

4. Sinitic Branch No single Chinese language
Mandarin: most important, ¾ of Chinese people, official language of China & Taiwan
Country is imposing Mandarin to other Sinitic speakers (Wu, Min, Yue, etc)
Small number of languages = national strength & unity
Languages all written the same way, pronounced differently

5. Chinese Languages 420 one-syllable words
Each sound denotes more than one thing
Ex: jian has more than 20 meanings
“shi” means lion, corpse, house, poetry, ten, swear, or die
Listener must infer the meaning of the word

6. Chinese Languages
One-syllable words can be combined into two-syllable words, forming a new word
“Shanghai” – “above” and “sea”
Written language: collection of thousands of characters
Some represent sounds
Most are ideograms: represent ideas/concepts
Makes it difficult to learn because so many characters
16% of population can’t read or write

8. Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches
Sino-Tibetan Language Family
Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches
Branch
Main Language
Location
Austro-Thai
Thai
Laos, Thailand, Vietnam
Tibeto-Burman
Burmese
Myanmar

9. Other East & Southeast Asian Language Families
Japanese & Korean form distinctive language families
Reason: Isolation
Japan-island country
Includes some Chinese ideograms
Two systems of phonetic symbols

10. Korea-peninsular state
Not written with ideograms
Hankul: each letter represents a sound
Half of Korean vocab derives from Chinese words
Most vocab for new technology derives from Japan & Korea

11. Vietnamese
Written with Roman alphabet
Written alphabet developed by Roman Catholic missionaries, 7th Century

12. Afro-Asiatic Language Family
Fourth largest language family
Languages of Northern Africa & Southwestern Asia
Used to write the holiest of books of the major religions
Judeo-Christian Bible & Islamic Quran
Hebrew
Arabic: official language in 24 countries, 200 million speakers
Many Muslims throughout the world know some Arabic

13. Altaic & Uralic Language Families
Altaic: between Turkey and Mongolia & China
Turkish: most widely used
Formerly written in Arabic, 1928: transition to Roman alphabet
Help modernize economy & culture, increase communication with Western world
Under Soviet policy: people forced to use Russian Cyrillic alphabet
After collapse of Soviet Union: languages clustered among new countries

14. Uralic Language Family
Estonia, Finland and Hungary
Non-Indo-European languages of Europe
Originated in Ural mountains of Russia
Migrants carried language to Europe

15. African Language Families
Number of languages-unknown
More than 1,000 languages, several thousand dialects
Minimal interaction b/t cultural groups thousands of years ago
Each group with own language & religion
Europeans began to record languages with Roman & Arabic alphabet

16. Niger-Congo Family More than 95% of Sub-Saharan Africa
Swahili-Tanzania
Developed from interaction between African groups & Arab traders
Learned as a 2nd language to communicate with other groups

17. Nilo-Saharan Family North-Central Africa 6 branches
Subdivided into even more branches
Total number of speakers for each language is small

18. Khoisan Family Southwest Africa
3rd most important language family in Africa
Distinctive characteristic: clicking sounds
Europeans called it “Hottentot” Khoisan Language

19. Austronesian Family
Mostly spoken in Indonesia, 4th most populous country
739 actively used languages dispersed among the islands
Javanese: most widely spoken (2/3 pop on Java)
Indonesian: used as a 2nd language for communication
Malay: Malaysia
Malagasy: Madagascar

20. Nigeria: Conflict among speakers of different languages
Nigeria: Africa’s most populous country
493 languages, only 3 have wide-spread use
Cultural diversity between language.
Different groups often battle

21. Key Issue 3 Where are other language families distributed?
Summary: Other language families with a large number of speakers include Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Dravidian. Each has a distinctive distribution, as with Indo-European, which is a result of a combination and isolation