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What is Language?
• System of communication through speech, a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meaning
• Many languages have a literary tradition (written communication) – e.g.: English
• Some languages do not have a literary tradition – theirs is an oral tradition
Language Evolution
• Languages subtly gradate one to another
• Dialects and other regional differences may eventually lead to incomprehensibility - a new language
• Migration and Isolation explain how a single language can later become two or more languages
Official Language
• Countries designate at least one language as their official language, the one used by government for all official documents e.g.: Canada has two official languages (English and French)
• Most countries’ official language would be one that is commonly spoken – exception is India who has English as the official language; its national language is Hindi
Hindi: The language of songs
www.cs.colostate.edu/
Language: the essence of culture• Language is an essential
element of culture, possibly the most important medium by which culture is transmitted
• Suppression of language is the suppression of culture e.g. : Dutch children in South Africa (1800s); First Nations children in Canada (1900s)
• Languages are a hallmark of cultural diversity with distinctive regional distributions
http://collections.ic.gc.ca
Where are English Language Speakers Distributed?
English – official use
Origin of English
• Spoken fluently by 500 million worldwide, more than any other language except Mandarin (almost all clustered in China)
• However English is the most widely spoken language (global lingua franca a language of international communication)
• English official language in 42 countries
• Widespread distribution as a result of colonization & globalization (mass media)
• God, Gold and Glory………
Former British Colonies
http://users.erols.com
Origin of English (cont)
• Germanic language• Celts arrived in British Isles (2000 BC)• 55BC-410AD Roman occupation – influence of
Latin e.g.: “consequences”, “sinister”• 450AD Britain invaded by Germanic tribes
Angles, Jutes and Saxons (from Denmark & NW Germany) e.g.: “kindergarten”, “angst”
• Modern English evolved from Anglo-Saxons’ language
• Vikings (9th-11th Century) e.g.: “reindeer”, “window”
Origin of English (cont)
• William the Conqueror of Normandy invaded Britain 1066AD
• French speaking – official language for next 300 years was French (language of the court); English spoken by the common folk
• 1489 English re-established as official language• Mingling of English and French influenced the
English language e.g.: “celestial”, “mansion”
Invaders Influence on English
http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH106.jpg
Roman Empire 117 AD
Invaders Influence on English
English Dialects
• A dialect is a regional variation– Distinctive vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation– May be understood by other speakers– Social dialect (denotes social class & standing)– Vernacular dialect (common speech of a region)– Geographic diffusion influences dialect evolution
• British Received Pronunciation is the standard language – most acceptable for govt, business, education and mass communication
Differences between British and US English
• English came to America by British colonists who settled along the Atlantic coast
• Followed by other European settlers who became acculturated
• Isolation results in language evolution• New experiences & objects required new
names e.g.: raccoon, moose• Influence of native American e.g.: kayak,
squash
Linguistic Dialects in USA
www.evolpub.comWord usage boundary - isogloss
Eastern US Speech Boundaries (isogloss)
Language Divisions for English
Family Indo-European
Branch Germanic
Group West-Germanic
Language English
Dialect Northeastern USA
Accent SE New England (Bostonian)
Relationship of English to Other Languages
Indo-European Languages
www.zompist.com
www.bartleby.com/
Indo-European
Family TreeLanguage Tree
Language Families• Language family is a
collection of languages related through a common ancestor in existence before recorded history
• Indo-European is the world’s most extensively spoken language family (3 billion 1st language speakers worldwide)
Language Branches
• A collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago
• Indo-European has 8 branches– Indo-Iranian (e.g.: Hindi)– Romance (e.g.: Spanish, French, Italian)– Germanic (e.g.: Dutch, German, English)– Balto-Slavic (e.g.: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish)– Albanian– Armenian– Greek– Celtic
Language Groups
• A collection of languages within a branch which share a fairly recent past and display similarities in grammar and vocabulary
• English belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic language branch
http://web.cn.edu
Germanic Languages in Europe
www.verbix.com
Indo-Iranian Languages
Sindhi
Balto-Slavic Languages
Balto-Slavic
• East Slavic– E.g.: Russian
• West Slavic– E.g.: Polish
• South Slavic– E.g.: Bulgarian
• Baltic– E.g.: Lithuanian
Romance Language Branch
• The Roman Empire, at its height in 2nd century A.D., extinguished many local languages. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, communication declined and languages evolved again.
Romance Language Branch
• Like English, these languages have been spread by colonialism– Spanish (Latin America; Africa; Philippines)– Portuguese (Brazil)– French (Indo-China, West Africa)– Italian (East Africa)
Other Language Families
• 50% speak Indo-European languages• 20% speak Sino-Tibetan languages (China)• 5% speak Afro-Asiatic languages (Middle East)• 5% speak Austronesian languages (SE Asia)• 5% speak Niger-Congo languages (Africa)• 5% speak Dravidian languages (in India)• 10% speak other language families
Sino-Tibetan Languages
• 420 one syllable words with meaning inferred from context and tone
• Chinese characters – ideograms• Examples:
– Mandarin– Cantonese– Thai– Burmese
Japanese and Korean
• Japan - isolated island state – language evolved separately (ideograms & phonetic symbols)
• Korea - peninsula state– language evolved separately (hankul)
Afro-Asiatic Languages
• Examples: Arabic and Hebrew
• North Africa and South West Asia (Middle East)
Altaic Languages
• E.g.: Turkish
Uralic Languages
• E.g.: Estonian, Hungarian and Finnish
African Languages
• Niger-Congo Languages– 95% in sub-Saharan Africa speak Niger-
Congo languages– Other 5% speak Khoisan or Nilo-Saharan
• Major Niger-Congo language is Swahili spoken throughout East Africa
• (Austronesian languages include Malay-Indonesian, Polynesian languages and Malagasy)
Languages of Africa
• Afro-Asiatic– E.g.: Arabic
• Austronesian– E.g.: Malagasy
• Khoisan– E.g.: Hottentot (Nama)
• Niger-Congo– E.g.: Swahili
• Nilo-Saharan– E.g.: Fur
• Indo-European– E.g.: Afrikaans
Preservation of Language
• Local languages are threatened by the global dominance and diffusion of English
• Thousands of languages are extinct – many face extinction as elders die off – e.g.: some First Nations languages
• Hebrew – revived extinct language – 1948 when state of Israel was established, Hebrew was chosen as one of the official languages – still used in Jewish prayers it was culturally symbolic
Preservation of Language
• Celtic – preserving endangered languages– Irish and Scottish Gaelic– 25% of people in Wales speak Welsh –
revival through the Welsh Language Society – Welsh is compulsory in schools
– Cornish is extinct – recent attempts to revive it in grade schools
– Breton – 300,000 speakers
Multi-lingual States• Belgium (2 official)
• Canada (2 official)
• Switzerland (4 official)
• Nigeria (> 200 languages)
French Language in Canada
Swahili – Lingua franca
• Kiswahili spoken widely in east and central Africa by an estimated 50 million
• Only 2 million native speakers
• Swahili functions as a lingua franca for– Trade– Government functions– Courts– Mass media
communication
Isolated LanguagesBasque Icelandic
www.map-of-spain.co.uk
www.cia.gov/
Iceland
Endangered Languages• As recently as 3,000 years ago, there were 10,000 to
15,000 languages in the world• Now there are about 6000 left• Of those, 1/2 will be gone by the year 2100 and all but
500 of the rest will be endangered.• More than 90 percent of the languages in existence
today will be extinct or threatened in little more than a century if current trends continue.
• Why are they disappearing?– Globalization
• Migration (Urbanization)• Economic Development (Lingua Francas)• Media• Internet (Requires Arabic Character Set)
– See graph of Internet Hosts by Language
Number of Native Speakers
• Chinese (937,132,000) • Spanish (332,000,000) • English (322,000,000) • Bengali (189,000,000) • Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000) • Arabic (174,950,000) • Portuguese (170,000,000) • Russian (170,000,000) • Japanese (125,000,000) • German (98,000,000) • French (79,572,000)
Language and the Environment
• Toponym - a place name
– Toponyms are language on the land, reflecting past inhabitants, their culture and their relationship to the land
Cook Islands
Quebec
Toponyms – Chinese restaurant in Richmond BC
http://www.kojikojima.com/image/Vancouver/china1.JPG
