KEY ISSUE 2: Why Is English Related to Other Languages?

Language Family - A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before
recorded history.
Indo-European is the worlds most extensively spoken language family by a wide margin.

Indo-European Branches.
Language Branch - A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that
existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with
language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from
the same family.
Indo-European is divided into eight branches.
Four of the branches:
Indo-Iranian
Romance
Germanic
Balto-Slavic
They are spoken by large numbers of people. Indo-Iranian languages are clustered in South
Asia, Romance languages in southwestern Europe and Latin America, Germanic languages in
northwestern Europe and North America, and Balto-Slavic languages in Eastern Europe.
The four less extensively used Indo-European language branches are Albanian, Armenian,
Greek, and Celtic.1.

Germanic Branch of Indo-European.

Language Group - A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in
the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and
vocabulary.
West Germanic is the group within the Germanic branch of Indo-European to which English
belongs.
English and German are both languages in the West Germanic group because they are
structurally similar and have many words in common.
West Germanic is divided into High Germanic and Low Germanic subgroups because they
are found in high and low elevations in Germany. High German is spoken in the mountains of
Germany and started the German language. English is from the Low Germanic subgroup of
West Germanic group.
Other Low Germanic languages include Dutch, which is spoken in the Netherlands, as well
as Flemish, which is generally considered a dialect of Dutch spoken in northern Belgium.
Afrikaans, a language of South Africa, is similar to Dutch, because Dutch settlers
migrated to South Africa 300 years ago. Frisian is spoken by a few residents in

northeastern Netherlands. A dialect of German spoken in the northern lowlands of

Germany is also classified as Low Germanic.
The four Scandinavian languages:
Swedish
Danish
Norwegian
Icelandic
They all derive from Old Norse, which was the principal language of Scandinavia before
A.D.1000. Four distinct languages emerged after that time because of migration and the
political organization of the region into four independent and isolated countries.

Indo-Iranian Branch of Indo-European

The branch of the Indo-European language family with the most speakers is Indo-Iranian.
The branch is divided into an eastern group (Indic) and a western group (Iranian).
Indic (Eastern) Group of Indo-Iranian Language Branch.
Most widely used languages in India.
Official language in India is Hindi because British encouraged its use
When India because independent, Hindi was proposed as the national language but other
languages disagreed so English, the language of British colonial rulers, became the official
language.
India also recognizes 22 so-called scheduled languages, including 15 Indo-European
(Assamese, Bengali, Dogra, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali,
Oriya, Panjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu), four Dravidian (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and
Telugu), two Sino-Tibetan (Bodo and Manipuri), and one Austro-Asiatic (Santali). The
government of India is obligated to encourage the use of these languages.
Urdu is spoken very much like Hindi, but it is recognized as a distinct language (it uses the
Arabic alphabet)

Iranian (Western) Group of Indo-Iranian Language Branch.

The major Iranian group languages include Persian (sometimes called Farsi) in Iran, Pashto
in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and Kurdish, used by the Kurds of western
Iran, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey
Use Arabic alphabet.

Balto-Slavic Branch of Indo-European.

Another Indo-European branch.
Slavic was once a single language, but differences developed in the seventh century when
Slaves migrated from Asia and lived in isolation.
As a result, this branch can be further divided into East, West and South Slavic groups as
well as a Baltic group.

East Slavic and Baltic Groups of the Balto-Slavic Language Branch.

Most widely used (Russian)
Importance of Russian increased when Soviet Union rose to power at the end of WWII in
1945. They forced others to speak Russian to form cultural unity.
After Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian are the 2 most important East Slavic languages.
Ukraine means Border and Bela- means white.

West and South Slavic Groups of the Balto-Slavic Language Branch.

Most spoken is Polish, followed by Czech and Slovak.
Czechoslovakia tried to balance the 2 languages even though there were twice as many
Czechs. They would use one language in the first half of spots and then switch to the
other. They were effective during the communist era.
With the fall of communism, Slovakia split and had the dominant language.
The most important South Slavic language is the one spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Bosnians and Croats write the language in the Roman
alphabet (what you are reading now), whereas Montenegrins and Serbs use the Cyrillic
alphabet (for example,
Yugoslavia is written JayOCabs Na.
e.
Serbo-Croatian offends Bosnians and Croatians because it referred to when they were
country ruled by Serbs.

The Serbo-Croatian word for martyr or hero junakhas been changed to hero by Croats
and shahada by Bosnian Muslims.
In general, differences among all of the Slavic languages are relatively small.

Romance Branch of Indo-European.

The Romance language branch evolved from the Latin language spoken by the
Romans2,000 years ago.
Most widely used: Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Romanian (Moldova) is also
important. Two other ones are Romansh (Switzerland) and Catalan (Andorra). Others:
Sardinian, Laden, Friuli an, Ladinos.
Physical boundaries such as mountains are strong intervening obstacles, creating barriers
to communication between people living on opposite sides.
The distribution of Romance languages shows the difficulty in trying to establish the
number of distinct languages in the world.

Origin and Diffusion of Romance Languages.

All came from Latin, during the rise of Romeo
during the period of the Roman Empire, Latin varied to some extent from one province to
another. (Based on the army that controlled their region
Vulgar Latin - A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to
the standard dialect, which was used for official documents.
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, communication among the
former provinces declined, creating greater regional variation in spoken Latin.
When migrants were unable to communicate with speakers of the same language back
home, major differences emerged between the languages spoken in the old and new
locations, leading to the emergence of new languages. -

Romance Language Dialects.

The creation of standard national languages, such as French and Spanish, was relatively
recent.
The French dialect was Francine because that region included Paris.
The most important dialect difference is of the North and South. This is because of the
different ways yes was said. Kept shortening hoc allude est.
At the time Spain grew into its present boundaries, Castilian was the official language.
Spanish and Portuguese have achieved worldwide importance because of the colonial
activities of their European speakers.

These two Romance languages were diffused to the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese
explorers.
The Treaty of Tordesillas: split the New Worlds languages

The standardized way of Portages was made in 1994. Portugal was upset because it got rid
of moose accent marks such as tildes (So Paulo), cedillas (Alcobaa), circumflexes
(Estncia), and hyphens.

The standardization of Portuguese is a reflection of the level of interaction that is

possible in the modern world between groups of people who live tens of thousands of
kilometers apart.

Distinguishing Between Dialects and Languages.

Moldovan is the official language of Moldova yet is a dialect of Romanian.
Flemish, the official language of Belgium, is considered a dialect of Dutch.
Several languages of Italy are viewed as different enough to merit consideration as
languages distinct from Italian according to Ethnologue.
Distinguishing individual languages from dialects is difficult, because many speakers
choose to regard their languages as distinct.
Romance languages spoken in some former colonies can also be classified as separate
languages because they differ substantially from the original introduced by European
colonizers.
Creole or Creolized Language A language that results from the mixing of a colonizers
language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European.

Proto-Indo-European is the language that Indo-European languages came from. This cannot
be proven.
The words for animals and trees have a common root (beech, oak, bear, deer, pheasant,
bee)
Probably liven in a cold climate because there were many words for winter and snow, but
not ocean.

Nomadic Warrior Thesis.

Marija Gimbutasb.

The first Proto-Indo-European speakers were the Kurgan people in the borders of
Russia and Kazakhstan. Earliest evidence dates back to 4300 BC.

Kurgan warriors, using their horses, conquered much of Europe.

Sedentary Farmer Thesis.

Colin Renfrew.

2,000 years before Kurgans, in Eastern Antolia (Modern day Turkey)

Diffused towards Greece.

Migration.

Renfrew argues that Indo-European diffused into Europe and South Asia along
with agricultural practices.

KEY ISSUE 3: Where Are Other Language Families

Distributed.
Classification of Languages.
Indo-European (English)
46%
Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin)
21% (China)
Afro-Asiatic (Arabic)
6% (Middle East)
Austronesian
6% (Southeast Asia)
Niger-Congo.
-95% of sub-Saharan Africa.

Dravidan
4% (India)
Altaic
2% (Asia)
Austro-Asiatic
-2% (Southeast Asia)
Japanese
2%
Other
5%

Distribution of Language Families

Sino-Tibetan Family
Peoples Republic of China, S.E. Asia
No Chinese language, mostly Mandarin (pu tong hua) (most used language in the world)
The relatively small number of languages in China is a source of national strength and unity.
Based on 420 one-syllable words. This number far exceeds the possible one-syllable sounds
that humans can make, so Chinese languages use each sound to denote more than one thing.
Kan jian a combination of the words for look and see, which would be redundant in
English clarifies that to see is the intended meaning for the multiple meanings of jian.
The Chinese languages are written with a collection of thousands of characters.
Ideograms - The system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which
each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case
with letters in English.
The Chinese government reports that 16 percent of the population over age 16 is unable to
read or write more than a few characters.2.

Other East and Southeast Asian Language Families.

Clustered on islands and peninsulas
Austronesian.

6%b.

Indonesia.

Because there are many islands, there are many languages.

Most widely used is Javanese.

Madagascar speaks Malagasy, an Austronesian family, even though it is far from

others. This show migration.

Austro-Asiatic.

2%b.

Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese is most spoken (Roman alphabet)

The Vietnamese alphabet was devised in the seventh century by Roman Catholic
missionaries.

Tai Kadai.

Once classified as a branch of Sino-Tibetan

Thailand and parts of China

Similar to the Austronesian family

May have migrated from the Philippines

Japanese.

Uses ideograms and phonetic symbols

Korean.

Related to the Altaic languages of Central Asia or to Japanese.

Not ideograms, but a system known as hankul.

Hankul each letter represents a sound.

Chinese and Japanese words are the principal sources for creating new words
todescribe new technology and concepts.3.

Languages of the Middle East and Central Asia

Afro-Asiatic.

Arabic.

Muslims (Quran)

Hebrew (Judeo-Christian Bible)

Altaic.

Between Tibet and China.

Turkish.

Turkish was once written with Arabic letters. But in 1928 the Turkish government,
led by Kemal Ataturk, ordered that the language be written with the Roman
alphabet instead. (Wanted to modernize the country and be like the rest of
Europe)

One element of Soviet policy was to force everyone to write with the Russian
Cyrillic alphabet

Uralic.

Estonia, Finland, and Hungary are not dominated by Indo-European speakers.

Migrants carried the Uralic languages to Europe.

African Language Families.

No one knows the precise number of languages spoken in Africa, and scholars disagree on
classifying those known into families.
Most lack a written tradition.
This great number of languages results from at least 5,000 years of minimal interaction
among the thousands of cultural groups inhabiting the African continent. Each group
developed its own language, religion, and other cultural traditions in isolation from other
groups.
Niger-Congo
95% of sub- Sharan Africa

Swahili (Tanzania)

In rural areas, local languages is used to communicate with people from the same
village and Swahili is used for outsiders.

Swahili originally developed through interaction among African groups and Arab
traders.

Swahili is one of the few African languages with an extensive literature.

Nilo-Saharan

North-central frica

6 branches with numerous groups and subgroups with very small speaking each
language

Khoisan.

Clicking sounds.

Southern Africa.

Hottentot language.

KEY ISSUE 4: Why Do People Preserve Local Languages?

The distribution of a language is a measure of the fate of an ethnic group.

Preserving Language Diversity.

Extinct Languages - A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no
longer used.
473 languages are nearly extinct (46 of these nearly extinct languages are in Africa, 182
in the Americas, 84 in Asia, 9 in Europe, and 152 in the Pacific)
Of Perus 92 surviving indigenous language
s, only Cusco, a Quechuan language, is currently used by more than 1 million people.
Gothic was widely spoken by people in Eastern and Northern Europe in the third century.
(Nowit, and its group, the East Germanic group are extinct)

Many Gothic people switched to speaking the Latin language after their conversion to
Christianity.
The European Union has established the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages
(EBLUL)
Only 300 languages are safe.

Hebrew: Reviving Extinct Languages.

Hebrew is a rare case of an extinct language that has been revived.
Hebrew diminished in use in the fourth century B.C. and was thereafter retained only for
Jewish religious services.
When Israel was established as an independent country in 1948, Hebrew became one of
the new countrys two official languages, along with Arabic.

The revival effort was initiated by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (created 4,000 new words and the
first modern Hebrew dictionary.

Celtic: Preserving Endangered Languages.

Major language in the British Isles before it was invaded.
Today, Celtic languages survive only in remoter parts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and
on the Brittany peninsula of France.
The Celtic language branch is divided into Goidelic (Gaelic) and Brythonic groups. Two
Goidelic languages survive
Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic. Speakers of Brythonic (also called Cymric or Britannic)
fled westward during the Germanic invasions to Wales
Irish Gaelic.

Official language of the Republic of Ireland

Scottish Gaelic.

1% of Scotland.

Auld Lang Syne (old long since) poem by Robert Burns.

Came from Ireland

Brythonic (Welsh)a.

22% of Wales

Cornish

Extinct in 1777, Dolly Pentreath who lived in Mousehole

Breton.
Brittany is a peninsula in the Atlantic Ocean.

More French words.

The survival of any language depends on the political and military strength of its
speakers.

In the 1300s, the Irish were forbidden to speak their own language in the
presence of their English masters.

Britains 1988 Education Act made Welsh language

training a compulsory subjecting all schools in Wales.

Irish revival.

Irish bands have begun singing in Gaelic.

Cornish revived in 1920s

Impossible to know how to pronounce Cornish words3.

Multilingual States.
Difficulties rise at the border between two languages.
Southern Belgians (known as Walloons) speak French, whereas northern Belgians (known as
Flemings) speak a dialect of the Germanic language, Dutch, called Flemish.
Motorists in Belgium clearly see the language boundary on expressways. When heading
north, signs change from French to Flemish. Brussels is an exception. It is bilingual.
Belgium is divided into 2 regions, Flanders and Wallonia. Flanders wants to split the
country. It would then be one of Europes richest countries.
Switzerland peacefully exists as multilingual languages. 4 languages:
German (65%)
French (18%),
Italian (10%)
Romansh (1% and voting language).

Isolated Languages.
Isolated Language - A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not
attached to any language family.
The diffusion of Indo-European languages demonstrates that a common ancestor
dominated much of Europe before recorded historic.
Isolated languages arise through lack of interaction with speakers of other languages. A Pre-Indo-European Survivor: Basquea.
Isolated language in Europe before the arrival of Indo-European speakers.
Pyrenees Mountains in Spain and southwestern France.
This isolation has helped them preserve their language in the face of the wide diffusion of
Indo-European languages.
An Unchanging Language: Icendic
Related to other languages in the North Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the
Indo-European family.
Changed less than any other Germanic language.
The Norwegian immigrants had little contact with speakers of other languages when they
arrived in Iceland, and they did not have contact with speakers of their language back
in Norway. They did not learn new words.

Global Dominance of English.

One of the most fundamental needs in a global society is a common language for
communication.

English: An Example of a Lingua Franca

Lingua Franca - A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who
have different native languages. (English)
To facilitate trade
Pidgin Language - A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited
vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different
languages.

Each learn a few grammar and vocabulary rules.

No native speaker.
English, Swahili (East Africa), Hindi (South Asia), Indonesian (Southeast Asia), and Russian
(former Soviet Union)
The rapid growth in importance of English is reflected in the percentage of students
learning English as a second language in school.
Students around the world want to learn in English because they believe it is the most
effective way to work in a global economy and participate in a global culture

Expansion Diffusion of English

The spread of a trait through the snowballing effect of an idea rather than through their location of
people.
English is changing through diffusion of new vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
English words are fusing with other languages.
Recent changes in English have percolated up from common usage and ethnic dialects rather than being
directed down to the masses by elite people.
Ebonics - Dialect spoken by some African Americans.
Double negatives.
Some see it as a lack of education while others see it as language.
Bidialetic - they speak standard English outside Appalachia and slip back into their
regional dialect at home.

Diffusion to Other LanguagesFranglais

Official language in 29 countries.

Upset with English being the dominant language.

Franglais - A term used by the French for English words that have entered the French
language; a combination of franais and anglais, the French words for French
andEnglish, respectively.
d.

In 1635, the French Academy controls the French language.

Cannot ban franglais-

Spanglish

Spanglish - Combination of Spanish and English, spoken by Hispanic Americans.

Cubonics

Richer integration of English instead of using English words.

Song lyrics.

Not promoted in schools.

Enriching both languages

Denglish.

Denglish - Combination of German and English.

The Institute for the German Language did not want telephone company to change to 2wordsc.

English has diffused into other languages as well