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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)