Ch a 5

Language

Chapter 5

Maps: What can they reveal?

Mountain Ranges Population Rivers Spread of disease Political boundaries Voting preferences

Division In Belgium

• Maps can hide the complexities of life.• Look at maps with a questioning eye• Look at a European map of language, and

zero in on Belgium. • Neat line divides Flemish speakers

(Germanic Language) in the north region (Flanders) and French (Romance language) in the south (Wallonia)

Belgium Language Map

Fig. 5-1: English is the official language in 42 countries, including some in which it is not the most widely spoken language. It is also used and understood in many others.

Divisive Issue: Language

Fig. 5-2: The groups that brought what became English to England included Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings. The Normans later brought French vocabulary to English.

During the 19th century, French speakers controlled the industrial economy and government of the country.

The French-speaking elite in Brussels and other Flemish cities began a process of “Frechification”

By the 20th Century, the majority of the people in Brussels spoke French, although people in the surrounding Brussels area continued to speak Flemish

By the 1960’s, a fixed partition scheme came in to being—dividing he country into Flemish-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south.

The government recognizes Brussels as a distinct region, a bilingual capital, but places strict limits on the use of French in the rest of northern Belgium

Language Issues

Fig. 5-3: The main dialect regions of Old English before the Norman invasion persisted to some extent in the Middle English dialects through the 1400s.

Tied in with politics

Socioeconomic status

What are languages, and what role do they play in cultures?

•

Le Big Mac

The French GovernmentPassed a law in 1975 banning the use of foreign words in advertisements, television, and radio broadcasts, and official documents, unless no French Equivalent could be found.

Americans may think this odd…if we can communicate, what is the need for laws?

Answer is more complex, language is an integral part of culture, reflecting and shaping it.

To understand the role of language in culture—look at those who have lost their languages—

American

Canadian

Australian

Russian

New Zealand

Governments who forced indigenous people to speak another language

Example: Native Americans

“No one was allowed to speak the language-the Dena’ina language. They (the American Government) didn’t allow it in schools, and a lot of the women had married non-native men, and the men said, “ You’re American now so you can’t speak the language.” So, we became invisible in the community. Invisible to each other. And, then, because we couldn’t speak the language—what happens when you can’t speak your own language is you have to think with someone else’s words, and that’s a dreadful kind of isolation.

Clare Swan, an elder in the Kenaitze band of the Dena’ina Indians in Alaska.

Official Language Policies in The US

Spanish-speaking people are growing

Some Spanish speakers and their advocates are demanding the use of Spanish in public affairs

In response, some people are opposed to the use of Spanish in the United States, and are leading counter-movements to promote “Official English” policies

More than 25 States today have declared English the official language of the State, either by statute or by amending the State constitution

Canada: A country of two languages

Quebec has a focus of passing laws that promote the use of the French language

They have even periodically, called for independence from Canada!

In 1993, the Quebec government passed a law requiring the use of French in advertising.

The Quebec law allows the inclusion of both French and English translations on signs, as long as the French letters are twice the size of the other language’s letters, or the French appears first.

Standard Language

o One that is published, widely distributed, and purposefully taught.

o In some countries, the standard language is sustained through official state examinations for teachers and civil servants.

o Ireland promotes the use of the Irish (Celtic) language by requiring all government employees to pass an Irish-language examination before they can be hired.

Dialects Variant of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines are called dialects.

Differences in vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, cadence (the rhythm of the speech, and even the pace of speech all mark a speaker’s dialect.

To people in the southern US, the word “Horse” spoken by a New Englander sounds like “Hahse”

To New Englanders, the word “oil” spoken by a southerner sounds like “all”

An isogloss is a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs, but such a boundary is rarely a simple line.

Dialects in the Eastern U.S.

Fig. 5-4: Hans Kurath divided the eastern U.S. into three dialect regions, whose distribution is similar to that of house types (Fig. 4-9).

Why are languages distributed the way they are?

The first step in mapping the distribution of languages is to classify language.

Linguists and linguistic geographers classify languages in terms that are also used in biology and for the same reasons: like species, some languages are related, and others are not.

At the global scale, we classify languages into language families.

These are then divided more into subfamilies—divisions within a language family

Language Tree

The Indo-European Language Family

• Branches of Indo-European– Germanic branch– Indo-Iranian branch– Balto-Slavic branch– Romance branch

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 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.

South Asian Languages and 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.

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.

Distribution of Other Language Families

• Classification of languages

• Distribution of language families– Sino-Tibetan language family– Other East and Southeast Asian language

families– Afro-Asiatic language family– Altaic and Uralic language families– African language families

Language Families of the World

Fig. 5-11: Distribution of the world’s main language families. Languages with more than 100 million speakers are named.

Major Language FamiliesPercentage of World Population

Fig. 5-11a: The percentage of world population speaking each of the main language families. Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan together represent almost 75% of the world’s people.

Chinese Ideograms

Fig. 5-13: Chinese language ideograms mostly represent concepts rather than sounds. The two basic characters at the top can be built into more complex words.

Language Families of Africa

Fig. 5-14: The 1,000 or more languages of Africa are divided among five main language families, including Austronesian languages in Madagascar.

Languages of Nigeria

Fig. 5-15: More than 200 languages are spoken in Nigeria, the largest country in Africa (by population). English, considered neutral, is the official language.

Language Diversity and Uniformity

• Preserving language diversity– Hebrew: reviving extinct languages– Celtic: preserving endangered languages– Multilingual states– Isolated languages

• Global dominance of English– English as a lingua franca– Diffusion to other languages

Language Areas in Switzerland

Fig. 5-17: Switzerland remains peaceful with four official languages and a decentralized government structure.

Internet Hosts

Fig. 5-1-1: A large proportion of the world’s internet users and hosts are in the developed countries of North America and western Europe.

Internet Hosts, by Language

Fig 5-1-1a: The large majority of internet hosts in 1999 used English, Chinese, Japanese, or European languages.

Monolingual States

Countries in which only one language is spoken Japan

Uruguay and Venezuela

Iceland

Denmark

Portugal

Poland

Lesotho

What role does language play in making places?

Toponyms are place names

They can give us a quick glimpses into the history of a place

10 basic types:

Descriptive (Rocky Mountains)

Associative (Mill Valley)

Commemorative (San Francisco)

Commendatory (Paradise Valley)

Incidents (Battle Creek)

Possession (Johnson City)

Folk Culture (Plains, Georgia)

Manufactured (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico)

Mistakes (Lasker, North Carolina) (Named for Alaska)

Shift Names, relocated: Lancaster, Pennsylvania and England

                                                                                                       

                                              

Just to clarify since everyone always gets confused!

Language Branch

• A group of languages that share a common origin but have since evolved into individual languages. Differences are not as extensive or ols as with language families. Branches derived from families.

Language Group

• A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

Vocabulary• LINGUA FRANCA – language used among speakers of

different languages for trade and commerce – a “bridge” language – English is the world’s lingua franca–

• PIDGIN LANGUAGE – people speaking two or more languages combine parts of the languages into a more simplified structure and vocabulary through contact with others

• CREOLE LANGUAGE – began as a Pidgin but later adopted in place of the mother language. More complex structure and vocabulary

• Isogloss-Word usage boundary– Examples: Pop vs Soda, “Ass yo” at AHS

Indo-European Group

Language Family

• A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

AAP Human Geography

More fun than a root canal!