Language in Asia

Bill Baxter29 October 2007

Overview

• Actually, not all of Asia (mostly, South, Southeast, and East)

• That excludes (for example) Iraq, Iran, Asian part of Russia…

• So many languages, so little time

Map of Southern Asia

Main topics

• Spoken language ≠ written language

• Spoken language in Asia• Written language in Asia• Language and history• Europe discovers the languages

of Asia

Spoken vs. written language

• Spoken language is primary; written language is secondary• Everybody talks (almost); only some write.

Speech is built into our biology; writing isn’t.• Many spoken languages have no written form.• Writing is only ~ 5,000 years old; spoken

language is probably much older (maybe 40,000 - 80,000 years old?).

• The same language can be written with different scripts; different languages can be written with the same script. (Languages may look alike but sound very different, and vice versa)

Each dot represents a (spoken) language:

Source: http://www.ethnologue.com/, 25 October 2005

Families of (spoken) languages

• Descended from a common ancestral language

• Ex. 1: Romance languages (47, including French, Spanish, Italian), descended from Latin (attested)

• Ex. 2: Germanic languages (53, including German, Dutch, English, Swedish), descended from “Proto-Germanic” (not attested, but can be reconstructed from the daughter languages)

The Indo-European family (449)

Includes most languages of Europe, but also Indo-Iranian.

Selected language families of Asia (1)

• Indo-Iranian branch of IE : Indic (= Indo-Aryan, 219) and Iranian languages (87)

• Dravidian (73): Brahui (in Pakistan); Tamil (in India and Sri Lanka), Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc.)

• ‘Altaic’ (66): Turkic (40), Mongolian (14), Tungusic (12; = ‘Manchu-Tungus’ = ‘Tungus-Manchu’) in Northern Asia

• Japanese, Korean (probably related to each other, maybe part of Altaic

(continued…)

Language families of Asia (2)

• Sino-Tibetan (403): Chinese (14), Tibetan (53), Burmese, LOTS of minority languages

• Austronesian (1268) (‘Southern islands’): Malay/Indonesian, LOTS of minority languagesmay include Tai-Kadai (76) (Thai, Lao; and related languages, mostly in China)

• Hmong-Mien = Miao-Yao (35): minority languages in China and SE Asia.

• Austroasiatic (169) (‘Southern Asian’): Vietnamese, Khmer = Cambodian, LOTS of minority languages in SE Asia, some in India.

Indo-Iranian: Iranian branch

Languages of India (Indo-Iranian and others)

Source: http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/map/T028684A.gif

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Languages of India (Dravidian)

Source: http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/map/T028684A.gif

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Languages of India (Sino-Tibetan)

Source: http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/map/T028684A.gif

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

The Altaic family (controversial)

Source: http://ehl.santafe.edu/maps/Altaic.gif, 25 Oct 2005

The Turkic family (part of Altaic?)

Language families of Asia (2)

• Sino-Tibetan (403): Chinese (14), Tibetan (53), Burmese, LOTS of minority languages

• Austronesian (1268) (‘Southern islands’): Malay/Indonesian, LOTS of minority languagesmay include Tai-Kadai (76) (Thai, Lao; and related languages, mostly in China)

• Hmong-Mien = Miao-Yao (35): minority languages in China and SE Asia.

• Austroasiatic (169) (‘Southern Asian’): Vietnamese, Khmer = Cambodian, LOTS of minority languages in SE Asia, some in India.

The Sino-Tibetan family

The Austronesian family

Tai-Kadai

Source: http://www.proel.org/mundo/tai3.gif, 25 Oct 2005

Hmong-Mien (=

“Miao-Yao”)

Source: http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=379726&typeId=17, 29 Oct 2007

Language groups in China

The Austroasiatic family

How are language families identified?

• Shared items of basic vocabulary (items not likely to be borrowed), showing regular sound correspondences.

• Where possible, shared morphology (prefixes, suffixes, etc., with grammatical functions)

• Members of the same family may look very different because of the accumulation of changes over time; and languages can be structurally similar without belonging to the same family.

Tagalog and Malay (~ Indonesian):some basic vocabulary

TAGALOG INDONESIAN TAGALOG INDONESIAN

1 BLOOD dugo darah 17 MOON buwan bulan

2 BONE buto tulang 18 NAME ngalan nama

3 DIE param mati 19 NEW bago baru

4 DOG aso anjing 20 ONE isa esa

5 EAR tenga telinga 21 SALT asin asin

6 EGG itlog telur 22 STONE bato batu

7 EYE mata mata 23 SUN araw matahari

8 FIRE apoy api 24 TAIL buntot ekor

9 FISH isda ikan 25 THIS ito, iri ini

10 FULL puno penuh 26 TONGUE dila lidah

11 GIVE bigay kasi 27 TOOTH ngipin gigi

12 HAND kamay tangan 28 TWO dalawa dua

13 HORN sungay tanduk 29 WATER tubig air

14 I, ME alp aku 30 WIND (n.) hangin angin

15 KNOW alam kenal, tahu 31 YEAR taon tahun

16 LOUSE kuto kutu 32 YOU (sg.) ikaw awak

Tagalog and Malay (similar words)

TAGALOG MALAY TAGALOG MALAY

1 BLOOD dugóq darah 17 MOON buwan bulan

2 BONE buto tulang 18 NAME ngalan nama

3 DIE patáy mati 19 NEW bago baru

4 DOG áso anjing 20 ONE isa esa

5 EAR taqinga telinga 21 SALT asin asin

6 EGG itlog telur 22 STONE bato batu

7 EYE mata mata 23 SUN araw matahari

8 FIRE apóy api 24 TAIL buntot ekor

9 FISH isdáq ikan 25 THIS ito, iri ini

10 FULL puno penuh 26 TONGUE dila lidah

11 GIVE bigay kasi 27 TOOTH ngipin gigi

12 HAND kamáy tangan 28 TWO dalawa dua

13 HORN sungay tanduk 29 WATER tubig air

14 I, ME ako aku 30 WIND (n.) hangin angin

15 KNOW alam [< Arabic] kenal, tahu 31 YEAR taqón tahun

16 LOUSE kuto kutu 21 YOU (sg.) ikaw awak

Regular sound correspondences

• Tagalog /t/ = Malay /t/:

Tagalog Malay

1 EGG itlog telur

2 DIE mata mata

3 EYE bigat berat

4 HEAVY bigat berat

5 YEAR taqón léhér

6 TO SLEEP tulug tahun

Regular sound correspondences

• Tagalog /g/ = Malay /r/:

Tagalog Malay

1 EGG itlog telur

2 SAND pasig pasir

3 HEAVY bigat berat

4 NEW bago baru

5 NECK liqig léhér

6 TO SLEEP tulug tidur

Tone languages (Chinese & others)

• The same consonants and vowels, pronounced with different pitch contours or tunes, indicate different words (not just different emotional attitudes)

• Tone languages include • the various ‘dialects’ of Chinese• some (not all) other Sino-Tibetan languages• Vietnamese• Kra-Dai languages (including Thai)• Hmong-Mien languages

Tones in Mandarin Chinese

• 妈 ( 媽 ) mā ‘mother’• 麻 ( 麻 ) má ‘hemp’• 马 ( 馬 ) mǎ ‘horse’• 骂 ( 駡 ) mà ‘scold, attack verbally’• 吗 ( 嗎 ) ma (sentence-final particle

indicating a yes-no question)

( 妈 is the simplified character, 媽 is the traditional

character.)

An example sentence

• 妈骂马 ; 马骂妈吗 ?媽駡馬 ; 馬罵媽嗎 ?Mā mà mǎ; mǎ mà mā ma?‘Mother scolds the horse; does the horse scold Mother?’

Origins of writing in eastern Asia

• Chinese writing (begins ~13th century BCE): spreads to Korea, Japan, Vietnam

• Alphabetic systems (ultimately traceable to the Aramaic version of the Semitic alphabet):• Early (Brahmi and other central Asian scripts)• Later (Arabic alphabet adapted for Persian, Urdu,

etc.)• New scripts influenced by older ones

• Chinese-like scripts invented from scratch• Korean Hangeul alphabet (invented from scratch)

Stages in the development of Chinese writing:

• Pottery markings (~ 3000 B.C.E.?)• ‘Oracle bones’ (13th-11th c. B.C.E.)• Inscriptions on bronze vessels (13th-3d c.

B.C.E.)• Brush and ink on bamboo or silk (rag paper

invented ~ 105 C.E.); printing• Script reform (Japan after 1945; China from

1950s): ‘simplified’ characters (fewer variant characters, fewer strokes in each character)

• Computer fonts and encodings

Oracle bones(turtle plastron)

Máo gōng dǐng 毛公鼎 , ca. 900 BCE(Taipei, Former Palace Museum)

Shāng 商 dynasty bronze inscription, ~1100 BCE

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

作作作作作作

‘ made [for] Father Dīng [this] precious treasured vessel’

A Chinese typewriter (1970’s)

Asahi Shimbun on the World Series (today)

　Ｒソックスが４ﾑ３で勝利 ３年ぶり７度目の世界王者 2007年 10月29日 13時 11 　分 米大リーグのワールドシリーズ（４戦先勝制）第４戦、レッドソックス（ア・リーグ）対ロッキーズ（ナ・リーグ）戦が２８日（日本時間２９日）、コロラド州のデンバーであり、松坂と岡島が所属するレッドソックスが、ロッキーズに４ﾑ３で４連勝し、３年ぶり７度目のワールドチャンピオンに輝いた。 松井 稼頭央

MATSUI Kazuō

Chosun Ilbo on the World Series (2005)

[weol.deu.si.ri.jeu] si.ka.go hwa.i.teu sak.seu, ...