Key Issue 1 Where Are the World’s Languages

Key Issue 1 Where Are the World’s Languages Distributed 1. Define language : a system of communica on through speech, movements, sounds, or symbols that a group of people understands to have the same meaning 2. Why is the study of languages so important (and why does Rubenstein priori ze it first among other cultural topics)? Most people communicate through speech, though some people use symbols or movements, such as sign language I. INTRODUCING LANGUAGES 3. Compare the amount of mul -lingual Americans with people of other parts of the world. 92% of countries besides America learn English, while only 20% of students in the US take a foreign language. 4. What percent of Europeans learn English? 92% 5. The diffusion of languages is largely due to reloca on diffusion. 6. The interplay between interac on and isola on helps explain the distribu on of individual languages and en re language families around the world. 7. a. Ethnologue es mates that the world has 7,099 languages. b. Only 11 languages are spoken by at least 100 million people. Below at le, list your guesses as to the top 11 spoken languages worldwide. (Don’t google, just guess. Then, we’ll go over in class.) - Guesses: Top 11: 1. Mandarin 7. portuguese 2. spanish 8. russian 3. english 9. japanese 4. arabic 10. germna 5. hindi 11. french 6. bengali c. 90 languages are spoken by at least 10 million speakers. d. And approximately 307 languages are spoken by between 1 and 10 million people. e. The remaining 6702 languages are spoken by fewer than 1 million people. 8. a. Define ins tu onal language : used in educa on, work, mass media, and government. Ethnologue iden fies 576 ins tu onal languages, including English b. Define official language : The language adopted for use by a government for the conduct of business and publica on of documents c. What is the main difference between an ins tu onal language and an official language ? An official language is officially adopted by the government, while an ins tu onal language is not. Disha Javagal d. One would think most all ci zens would know a country’s official language, but this is not always the case? When/why? Two billion people live in a country where English is an official language, even if they cannot speak it. This means that even if a language is official, it is not necessarily predominant by some of its ci zens. e. Countries can have more than 1 official language . f. (Guess. We’ll discuss this in class.) In the U.S., English is (circle) an ins tu onal language / official language . ins tu onal, because of the country's diversity. It is mostly used for government and public businesses. 9. a. What is a literary tradi on ? A language is wrien as well as spoken (like an alphabet) b. Not all languages have a literary tradi on. like Na ve Americans i. Define developing language : in daily use by people of all ages, from children to elderly individuals. ii. Define vigorous language : in daily use by people of all ages, but it lacks a literary tradi on **Languages can also be considered to be in trouble or dying. 10. Languages are organized into families, branches, and groups. Define each. Addi onally, using the following pages, iden fy the family, branch, and group for English. a. Language family – A collec on of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history English: Indo-European b. Language branch – A collec on of languages within a family-related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago English: Germanic branch c. Language group – A collec on of languages within a branch that shares a common origin in the rela vely recent past and displays many similari es in grammar and vocabulary. English: West Germanic group II. LANGUAGE FAMILIES **Familiarize yourself with Figure 5-9. While you don’t have to memorize the figure, be comfortable interpre ng it. 11. Refer to figure 5-9. What does the difference in shading between the “trunks” and “roots” signify? 12. a. Some biologists, including Quen n Atkinson, and linguists believe all languages can be traced to West Africa (region & con nent). b. They support this claim by arguing that languages in this region are the most diverse and complex because… they’re older Disha Javagal 13. While there are 142 language families, 7 are used by 90 % of the world’s popula on. III. TWO LARGEST LANGUAGE FAMILIES 14. What are the two largest language families? Indo-European; Sino-Tibetan 15. Compare the distribu on of the two largest families: Indo-European - Europe, South Asia, Americans, Sino-Tibe an - East Asia 16. Is “Chinese” a language? (Answer by taking notes on this concept.) Mandarin, Gan, Hakata, Jinyu, Min Nan, Xiang, Wu, Cantonese 17. Which language family has the widest distribu on worldwide? Indo-European IV. OTHER LARGE LANGUAGE FAMILIES - Take notes on each of the following language families as you read about them in this sec on (i.e. how many people speak a language of that family, where they are spoken, common languages, etc.). Southeast Asia Language Families Austronesian used by 5% of the world’s popula on, mostly in Indonesia many dialects due to the dispersion on thousands of islands Austro-Asia c 2% of the popula on speaks Vietnamese wrien with familiar La n alphabet Tai Kadai Thailand and neighboring por ons of China similar to Austronesia East Asia Language Families Japanese wrien with Chinese characters in part, Chinese cultural traits have diffused into Japanese society Korean handwri ng system where each leer represents a sound Chinese and Japanese words are principal sources of Korean words Other Asian Language Families Dravidian second most widely used language in South Asia behind Indo-European; Telugu and Tamil Altaic now known as Turkic, mostly used by Turks. The Soviets suppressed these languages Uralic originated 7000 years ago much smaller than Turkic African Language Families Afro-Asia c Arabic is the major language, the official language of the two dozen countries. ⅙ official languages at UN. 1.9 billion Muslims have some knowledge of the language because of the Koran; Hebrew too Niger-Congo - Nilo-Saharan America’s Other Language Family: Quechuan