lecture 7- languages

Question 1

what is language?

Answer 1

• a system of communication
  Speech, movement, sound symbols

Question 2

5 things language can indicate

Answer 2

Time
Gender
Connections
Quantity
Place

Question 3

centripetal force (languages)

Answer 3

Languages can unify people

Question 4

Centrifugal force: languages

Answer 4

Language can also push/pull people away
- ex. in a place where you don’t speak the language

Question 5

how many languages spoken worldwide?

Answer 5

7000

Question 6

Institutional language

Answer 6

=used in education, work, media, government

-needs to be a literary tradition (written and spoken) to be used in institutions
-can be an official language
-standardized
“Accepted language”

Question 7

what does an institutional language need to be?

Answer 7

literary tradition (written and spoken)

Question 8

Stable language

Answer 8

=language is being consistently passed down through generations
- even if very few people speak the language

Question 9

Endangered language

Answer 9

= threatened/dying out
–> the younger generations are not learning the language
- even if a lot of people currently speak the language

Question 10

Language family=

Answer 10

collection of languages related through a common ancestral language

Question 11

Language branch=

Answer 11

collection of languages within a family

Question 12

Language group=

Answer 12

collection of languages in a branch that share a common origin

Question 13

Taxonomy of languages:

Answer 13

many branches

Question 14

Writing systems

Answer 14

• collection of organized symbols
  –> letters (organized into sounds, alphabet, or syllabary system)
  Ex. English, Greek, cyrillic

–> logograms (symbol that represent words or meaningful parts of words)
Ex. Chinese, hieroglyphs, emojis?

Question 15

what can the map of language families tell us about?

Answer 15

historical migration

Question 16

Romance languages=

Answer 16

language of the Roman’s
- derived from Latin
- share a lot of base words from Latin

Question 17

Why are languages segregated/different despite being derived from the same language?

Answer 17

due to geographic features that physically separates the people in these regions

Question 18

History of english language

Answer 18

–> old English was a Germanic language; basically, impossible for us to read now
–> middle English; more standardized, “a knights tale”, written English was a new concept, emergence of modern English
–> modern English

Question 19

most broadly spoken language in the world

Answer 19

English

2B people live in a country where english is the official language

official language in 56 countries

Question 20

most prominent language on the internet

Answer 20

English

Question 21

Lingua Franca

Answer 21

= language of the franks, middle eastern traders used this when communicating with European traders

Question 22

Pidgin language

Answer 22

= simplified form of lingua franca, to communicate with speakers of another language, for governance and trade

Question 23

Creole language

Answer 23

= a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into new forms

Question 24

Dialect

Answer 24

= a regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation

Question 25

Accent

Answer 25

= describes a distinct way of pronunciation, does not include differences in vocabulary or grammar

Question 26

what 3 things cause accent diversity?

Answer 26

- accent diversity caused by time -isolated communities have very different accents -settlement patterns and geographic features cause accent diversity

Question 27

Vocabulary

Answer 27

= body of words in a particular language

Question 28

Canada bilingual French and English autonomy

Answer 28

both recognized as an official language need to have French and English food labels on food in Canada)

Question 29

language laws

Answer 29

-The charter of the French language -Bill 101

Question 30

Joual

Answer 30

spoken Quebecois

Question 31

how many indigenous languages spoken in Canada?

Answer 31

over 60

Question 32

Endangered languages and preservation:

Answer 32

- between 2000-3000 languages are endangered - all of the 60 indigenous languages are endangered because younger generations are not learning them

Question 33

Inuit languages

Answer 33

- system of closely interrelated dialect - further displaced geographically= less likely to understand eachother -100,000 speakers

Question 34

Preserving inuit language by using a writing system

Answer 34

- Inuktitut syllabics -based on cree syllabics - it is digitized in Unicode, this helps preserve the language - Inuktitut is recognized/can be used in government documents

Question 35

Indigenous Language Act

Answer 35

to preserve, promote and revitalize indigenous languages