Chapter 5 Flashcards
Language
is a system of communication through speech
is dynamic always changing with the changing world
How many languages are there?
The world has over 7,000 current spoken languages,
Institutional Language
used in education, work, mass media, and government. Has a literary tradition means is Written as well as spoken
Developing language
spoken in daily use by people of all ages and has a literary tradition
Vigorous language
spoken in daily use but lacks a literary tradition
Threatened language
face-to-face communications- fewer people speak it
Dying language
is still in use by older people but is not being transmitted, not being taught to kids so no longer active for the younger tradition
Natural language
Emerged and evolved within living or historic human communities
Ex- English, Latin which we don’t speak anymore
Artificial language
Intentionally constructed by people for communication or fictional purposes
What are examples of artificial languages?
Elvish languages in Lord of the Rings
Dothraki language in Game of Thrones- kelisi means queens and many people name their kids that, Aria
Esperanto
2016 more than 200000 parents named their sons Kylo sign language (no universal sign language – varies), tactile language (Braille, computer programming languages)
Culturally variable
Esperanto
international language that was created in 1887 and was intended to be a universal second language, idea was that it would be much easier to learn than grammar of natural languages, never took off 1 million to 15 million people might speak it
Permaculture
permanence and agriculture are put together based around sustainable agriculture and gardening
Freegan
only eat food they can eat for free
Snowflake
someone who is special or unique
What can world languages be organized into?
can be organized into families, branches, and groups
language family
is a collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed long before recorded history
Group of languages descended from a common, but distant, ancestor
More than 90 different language families
6 are considered major
language branch
is a collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestral language that existing several thousand years ago
Branches derive from the same family
language group
is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past
Have many similarities in Grammer and vocab
Most languages
share a distant, historical and genetic relationship with one or more other languages
What languages are not indo- european?
Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese are not)
½ the world’s people speak languages…
belonging to the Indo-European language family
Describe indo european languages
Indo-European is divided into eight branches
4 are spoken by large numbers of people: Romance, Germanic, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic
Romance language
is spoke in southwestern europe evolved from latin spoken by Romans
Germanic branch
Mian branch in north western Europe is Germanic branch
English is a part of the Germanic branch
northwestern europe
Indo-Iranian
is mainly in western and south asia
What is Indias official language?
Hindi is India’s official language, which belongs to the Indo-European language
India recognizes 22 languages called schedule languages that the government protects and encourages people to speak
Kurgan Hypothesis
(nomadic warriors)
Hearth of the Indo-European languages lies north of the Caspian Sea (near the current Russia/Kazakhstan border)
Kurgan nomadic herders domesticated horses and carried the language to the east and west as they conquered new lands
what branch is english part of?
English is a Germanic language but studying the origin of English words reveals a long history of invasions to the land that became England
Has a higher % of romance words
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England speaks English because of migration from Angles, Saxons, Jutes (from N. Germany)
Old English emerged out of Proto-Germanic language brought to England during the 5th and 6th centuries
Normans (from present day France) brought French to England in 1066
This stayed the language until 1362, when Parliament changed the language to English
n this 300 year period, German and French intermingled to form the new language (both sets of words exist today)
Modern English owes its simple words like sky to Germanic language and more elegant words to the French
Middle English
After 13th century
Wouldn’t be recognized as English by our standards
“Modern Day” English
15th century (from London)
Expands globally in 18th century
English is not a static language it continues to grow and change and known for its ability to incorporate other languages in and spread throughout the world
Renfrew (Anatolian/ modern day turkey) Hypothesis
sedentary farmer theory)
The hypothesis suggested that peaceful indoenzation of Europe from Anatolia would occur from about 7000 BC with the advance of farming technology
Transformation of language is thought to have occurred through the absorption by intermarriage and language replacement as the language of the framing population spread
Most of the farmers would have spoken indo European languages
Where did Proto- Indo European being
began in the Fertile Crescent, and then:
From Anatolia diffused Europe’s languages
From the Western Arc of Fertile Crescent diffused North Africa and Arabia’s languages
From the Eastern Arc of Fertile Crescent diffused Southwest Asia and South Asia’s languages.
Spread with Anatolian farmers/agriculture
Turkish language is not actually indo European language
Lingua Franca
Global societies need global languages for communication
A language mutually understood and commonly used to communicate by people who have different first languages
A language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce
Example: A Polish pilot flying over France speaks to the control tower in English
Example: a sign in Tanzania includes English and other lingua francas, including Arabic, Swahili, and Hindi (see right)
English is the global lingua franca
Pidgin language
a language created when people combine parts of two or more languages into a simplified structure and vocabulary
Language used to have a basic convo
a simplified mixture, or fusion, of languages and it is not the main language of the speakers
Only adopted when theres no other choice
Oral langauge barely written down
It is used to communicate in limited circumstance, such as business or government
E.g. Democratic republic of Congo “Lingala”: mix of French and local Congolese dialects
Creole language
a pidgin language that has developed a more complex structure and vocabulary and has become the native language of a group of people
A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated
May become more complex over time as grammatical rules, larger vocabulary, are introduced
Can act as a unifying cultural force for formerly distinct groups (e.g. Haitian Creole which evolved from pidginized French and African dialects during the era of the slave trade)
Describe the prominence of english on the internet
More than half of all Internet content is in English
English remains the dominant language of the Internet primarily because the people of the United States were early adopters
Today Chinese (Mandarin) language users online represent 20% of the world total
Standard/Official Language
a language that a country formally designates for use in it’s political, legal and administrative affairs
Countries can designate 2 languages as official languages
They can be unilingual, bilingual, trilingual etc
Not all countries have an official language- USA
At the federal level Canada is bilingual with 2 languages- English and French
In Manitoba its only English in Quebec only French and new Brunswick is the only province that designates both
Monolingual state
where citizens of the country all speak one language
Ex- Japan
Describe the Global Distribution of English
nglish is an official language of 54 countries, this represents about 2 billion people who live in these countries
In the past 4 centuries, the English migrated with their language when they colonize many parts of the world- relocation diffusion
English is a DeFacto- predominant but not official language in other countries- Australia, USA and England
Did you know that English is not the official language of the United States, Australia, and England?
dialect
is a regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, syntax(how we put words together for pronunciation), spelling, cadence(rhythm of speech), pace of speech, and pronunciation
Example: English in the USA and English in the UK
How do UK english and USA english differ
Vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation are the most different
Vocabulary: settlers in America found new features, animals, etc to name
Spelling: The creator of Webster’s dictionary wanted American English to be different from England’s version, to promote independence and national pride
Pronunciation: colonists in N. America pronounced words differently over time
Dialects
Isogloss
A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs (dialect boundary or word-usage boundary)
When does a dialect turn into a distinct language?
Several languages in Italy were previously considered dialects, and now viewed by Ethnologue as different enough to be classified as distinct languages
a dialect can turn into another language with enough time
E.g. Venetian (3.8 million speakers)
Catálan
once regarded as a dialect of Spanish, is now classified by linguists as a distinct Romance language
Catálan is the official language of Andorra, and spoken by 5 million people in Catalonia (in Spain)
Mixing Languages
Many French speakers regard the invasion of English words with alarm, but Spanish speakers may find the mixing of two languages interesting
Franglais
Widespread use of English in French language
Cowboy, hamburger, jeans and t-shirt diffused into French and affected the “purity” of the language
French Academy promotes the use of French terms in France (i.e. fin du semaine rather than le weekend)
Spanglish
A pidgin language that has grown out of contact between English and Spanish speakers in US, Mexico and Puerto Rico
Magazine article: “When he says me voy – what does he really mean?”
Code switching: where a speaker alternates between languages during a sentence/conversation
Loanword
A word that originates in one language and is incorporated into the vocabulary of another language
E.g. ukulele and luau from Hawaiian, caravan and candy from Persian, Fjord and ski from Norwegian
Explain how different countries manage linguistic diversity
Countries have devised various strategies to promote peaceful coexistence among speakers of multiple languages
Switzerland has 4 official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh, and each is strong in different parts of the country
They function in relative harmony
Belgium has form two autonomous regions to try to keep the peace between the Walloons (who speak French) in Southern Belgium and the Flemings in Northern Belgium that speak Flemish
Economic and political differences
Walloons wealthier in the past, but not recently
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Canada: Bilingual Autonomy
57% of Canadians speak English at home, 21% speak French, and 22% speak another language
French speakers are clustered in Québec and French is the sole official language of Québec, despite the fact that Canada recognizes both English and French as official languages
Quebec avoids English words that are used in other French-speaking places
1977: government required all businesses in Quebec to show they function in French
1993: government requires French in advertising
2013: language policies made international news when an Italian restaurant was told to provide French language translations
Extinct/lost language
A language that has no living speakers
360 languages have become extinct since 1950
Endangered language
Risk of extinction due to few surviving speakers
Isolated Languages
An isolated language is a language unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family
Language hotspots
(areas where risk of extinction is high) occur when the following converge:
Language endangerment
High linguistic diversity index value
Language is poorly documented
Linguistic diversity index (LDI)
A measure that expresses the likelihood that 2 randomly selected individuals in a country speak different first languages
LDI does not simply reflect the number of languages
Mexico has ~300 languages but a low LDI because most people speak Spanish
What do the values on the LDI mean?
Values range from 0.00 (no linguistic diversity) to 0.99 (a lot of linguistic diversity – 2 randomly selected people will probably speak different first languages)
Explain how Irish language is preserved
There are efforts to revive, preserve, or invent languages
Preserving: Irish Gaelic is an official language of the Republic of Ireland
Irish was once the principal languages of Ireland before U K colonization
Now children are required to learn Irish in school and the language is used in signage, films, TV, etc.
All government employees required to pass language proficiency exams
Explain how welsh language is preserved
Welsh was the dominant language of Wales until the 19th century, when many English speakers migrated there
In 2011, the UK government made Welsh the official language in Wales
All government and utility companies provide services in Welsh
logograms
a symbol that represents a word rather than a sound
ex- chinese language thats written like this rather than english which is written according to sounds
most are compounds; words related to bodies of water ex- include a symbol that represents river plus additional strokes that alter the meaning
galician
Whether Galician, which is spoken in northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, is a dialect of Portuguese or a distinct language is debated among speakers of Galician. The Academy of Galician Language considers it a separate language and a symbol of cultural independence. The Galician Association of the Language considers it a dialect, because it believes that as a dialect it can help influence one of the world’s most widely used languages, whereas classified as a separate language it would be relegated to a minor and obscure status
