September 8, 2015S. Mathews1 Human Geography By James Rubenstein Chapter 5 Key Issue 2 Why Is English Related to Other Languages?

April 21, 2023 S. Mathews 1

Human Geography

By James Rubenstein

Chapter 5Key Issue 2

Why Is English Related to Other Languages?


Language Family

A collection of languages related through a common

ancestor that existed long before recorded

history.


English is part of the Indo-European language family.


Language Branch A collection of

languages, within a language group, related through a

common ancestor that existed several

thousand years ago.


Indo-European(Eight Branches)

- Indo-Iranian- Romance- Germanic- Balto-Slavic

- Albanian - Armenian- Greek- Celtic



Language Group

A collection of languages, within a branch, that share a common origin in the relatively recent past.


West Germanic Group

Divided into sub-groups. High German is the basis for the modern German language.

English is classified in the low Germanic subgroup.

The North Germanic Group includes Scandinavia languages.



Scandinavian Languages

Derived from Old Norse Swedish

Danish Norwegian Icelandic


Indo-Iranian BranchThe branch of the Indo-

European language family with the most speakers is indo-

Iranian, . . .More than 100 individual

languages . . . Divided into an eastern group

(Indic) and a western group (Iranian).


Indic (Eastern) GroupThe most widely used

languages in India as well as in the neighboring

countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, belong . . .

to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian branch of

Indo-European.


Hindi The most commonly spoken Indic Language.

1/3rd of Indians speak Hindi. Spoken many different ways. Only one official way to write the language using a script called Devanagari.



Hindi originally a variety of Hindustani spoken in the area of New Delhi, grew into a national

language in the nineteenth century when the British encouraged its use in government.


Urdu Pakistan’s principal language

Spoken very much like Hindi but is written with the Arabic alphabet, a legacy of the fact that most Pakistanis are Muslims, and their holiest book (the Quran) is written in Arabic.


India’s 4 most important language

families Indo-European (predominantly in the north).

Dravidian (in the south). Sino-Tibetan (in the northeast).

Austro-Asiatic (in the central and eastern highlands). of the Indian population can speak it.


India’s 18 Languages

India’s constitution was amended to recognize …

- 13 Indo-European, - 4 Dravidian, and - 1 Sino-Tibetan

language. English has an associate status – only 1% of population can speak it.



Western Group – Indo Iranian

The major Iranian group include;

- Persian (sometimes called Farsi) spoken in Iran.

- Pathan spoken in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.

- Kurdish, used by the Kurds. Written in Arabic alphabet.


Balto-Slavic Branch of Indo-European

Slavic was once a single language, but differences

developed in the 7th century A.D. when

several groups of Slavs migrated from Asia to

different areas of Eastern Europe.


East Slavic and Baltic Groups

The eastern Slavic languages are the most widely used, primarily Russian.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly independent republics adopted official languages other than Russian.


Russian remains the language of communication among officials of the former Soviet Union.

After Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian (sometimes written Byelorussian) are the two most important East Slavic languages.

The desire to use languages other than Russian was a major drive in the Soviet Union breakup a decade ago.


West and South Slavic Groups

The most spoken West Slavic language is Polish.

Czech and Slovak are quite similar, and speakers of one can understand the other.

Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian are the two most important South Slavic languages.


West and South Slavic Groups

Although Serbs and Croats speak the same language, they use different alphabets.

Slovene is the official language of Slovenia.

Macedonian is used in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.


Differences among Serbo-Croatioan

languages Differences are relatively small. Due to cultural identity, differences are being preserved.

Since Yugoslavia broke up, regional differences have increased.


Romance Branch Evolved from the Latin language spoken by the Romans 2,000 years ago.

The most common are Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian.

Physical boundaries such as mountains, created barriers to communications between people living on opposite sides.


Romance Languages


Other Romance Languages

Romanian, is the principal language of Romania and Moldova.

Two other official Romance languages are Romansh and Catalan.

Sardinian—a mixture of Italian, Spanish, and Arabic—once was the official language of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.


Romance Dialects Ladin (not Latin) and Friulian (along with the official Romansh) are dialects of Rhaeto-Romantic.

Ladino—a mixture of Spanish, Greek, Turkish, and Hebrew—is spoken by 140,000 Sephardic Jews, most of whom now live in Israel.


Vulgar LatinThe Latin that people in the provinces learned –

not the standard literary form, but the

spoken form.


Creole or Creolized Language

A language that results from the

mixing of the colonizer’s language and the indigenous

language.


Origin of Indo-European

LanguagesThe Proto-Indo-European

cannot be proved, therefore two theories

exists; Kurgan Migration Anatolian Migration


Kurgan Migration Kurgans date to around 4300 B.C.

Nomadic herders. Domesticated horses between 3500 and 2500 B.C.

Conquered much of Europe and South Asia.



Anatolian Migration Lived 2000 years before the

Kurgans and diffused; - Westward to become the

origin of the Romance Branch.- Northward to become the

origin of the Germanic Branch.- Eastward to become the

origin of the Indo-Iranian Branch.


Documents

September 8, 2015S. Mathews1 Human Geography By James Rubenstein Chapter 5 Key Issue 2 Why Is English Related to Other Languages?