Chapter 6LANGUAGE

Fact of the day

• Fastest growing culture/language is….. Hispanic/Spanish

Belgium case study

• Regional divisions by language (p151) North- Flemings/Flanders (Dutch) South Walloons (French)– Capital is French speaking but in a Dutch

region making division difficult– Causes gov. problems and political fights

What are languages and their roles?

• Language- systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings using sounds, signs, or gestures

France

• French have the idea of a pure language

• 1975 banned foreign words in ads

• 1992 made French the “official language”

• 1995 created fines for using foreign (English) words in public addresses

Canada• Province Quebec faces issues between

English and French speakers

• 85% speak French and the province claims French as their language

• Tried to outlaw all English signs

• Standard language- where society teaches rules and grammar for one language

• Dialect- regional variation of the national language, have different rhythm, phrases, pronunciation, vocab, and pace– Isogloss- the boundary where the dialects

transition

• Mutual intelligibility- people can understand one another with different dialects– Dialect chains- dialects close to one another

will sound similar

Why are languages distributed the way they are?

• Officially over 500 languages

• Classified as:– language family (common ancestor LONG

AGO)– Language subfamily/branch- have some

commonalities– Language groups- sets of individual

languages that share similar things like grammar rules

• Indo-European family- spoken by over half of the world

• Spread through migration

• group

• branch/subfamily

• family

Language formation• Sound shift- observe how the same word

meaning changes over time (milk in Latin is lacte, French lait, Spanish leche)

• Proto Indo European thought to be the first language of the Indo European family

• Backwards reconstruction- tracing the background of words to completely reconstruct an ancient language– Use vocabulary, location, and diffusion routes

to rebuild– Deep reconstruction is recreating a language

and then recreating the language that preceded it

– Nostratic thought to be the first language on earth

• Language divergence-when a new language forms usually due to isolation of a group of people

• Language convergence- when two languages collapse into one

Language theories (spread of Indo European languages)

• Renfrew- three language hearths– Turkey, Eastern Fertile Crescent, Western

Fertile Crescent• Conquest theory- started near Russia with

conquerings West• Agriculture theory- started in Turkey farmers

moved northwest looking for better land

European subfamilies

• Romance languages- areas dominated by Roman Empire

• Germanic- Expansion from Germany north to Norway and Sweden

• Slavic- from migration of Slavic people from Ukraine to Eastern Europe

Africa• Most languages are

unwritten but mainly grouped into 4 families (Niger-Congo biggest)

• Oldest language in Africa is Khosian with clicks

• Most languages came from the Bantu language

Nigeria• 3 major regional

languages; 12 major languages; 230 tribal languages

• Colonialism divided the land and created language issues

• Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa main lang. English is official lang.

• Difficult for school children

How do languages diffuse?• Lingua franca- common form of

communication used by traders

• Pidgin- when a combo of languages are used in daily life (Spanglish)

• Creole- when a pidgin becomes an official language

• Monolingual states- countries that speak one language (Japan, Portugal)

• Multilingual- states that speak more than one language (Belgium, South Africa)

• Global language attempt by creating Esperanto…failed

• Official language- language that a country adopts legally to unite the people– Used in many African countries by adopting

the colonial language instead of the many tribal languages

– Some countries have many official languages– India has the most with 22

What role does language play in making places?

• Toponyms- naming of places– 10 types: descriptive (Rocky Mtns.);

associative (Mill Valley); commerative (San Francisco); commendatory (Paradise Valley); incidents (Battle Creek); possession (Johnson City); folk (Plains, GA) manufactured (Truth or Consequence) mistakes (Lasker); shift (Lancaster)

• Changing place names can change history– Usually change with a change in power– Colonial African names changed with

independence– Can be used for memory– Can be commodified and sold for a name

(Tropicana field)