Where are other language families distributed Classification of

Where are other language families distributed? Classification of languages Distribution of language families

Classification of Languages

Sino-Tibetan Spoken by 26% of world- China and SE Asia n 3 branches- Sinitic, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Thai n Sinitic includes Mandarin, spoken by ¾ Chinese n Others Sinitic languages spoken in S. China n Small # of languages promotes unity n

Sino-Tibetan Based on 420 one syllable words. n Listener gets meaning based on context and tone of voice n Ex: shi can mean lion, corpse, house, poetry, ten, swear, or die n Kan jian literally means “look see”, which tells you what jian means in this case n

Sino-Tibetan 1 Writing system for all Sinitic languagescontains thousands of characters n Some are sounds, but most are ideograms- ideas or concepts, not specific sounds n Difficult to learn to write- 16% pop can’t write n

Tibeto-Burman n Main language Burmese, used in Myanmar (Burma)

Austro-Thai n Main language Thai, used in Thailand, Laos, parts of Vietnam

Austro-Asiatic n n Main language Vietnamese, used in Vietnam, Cambodia Vietnamese alphabet developed by Catholic missionaries using Roman alphabet 17 th century

n n n Considered 2 families, though Korean may be related either to Japanese or Altaic Japanese uses Chinese characters Korean uses Hangul, where characters represent sounds like the alphabet Japanese/Korean

Afro-Asiatic Family n n n 4 th largest family in world- N. Africa/SW Asia Includes Arabic, Hebrew- important because holy books of 3 western religions written in this family Arabic spoken 200 million, many more have some knowledge ‘cause of the Koran

Altaic Once thought to be linked as one family n Altaic stretches from Turkey across Asia to W. China n Traditionally written in Arabic script n USSR forced the “stans” to use the Cyrillic alphabet, in 1928 Kemal Ataturk adopted Roman letters to modernize Turkey and align it w/ Europe n

Altaic/Mongolian

Uralic n n Originated in Ural Mts. Spoken in Finland, Estonia, Hungary

African Language Families Over 1000 spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa n Arabic dominates in the North n Other Afro-Asiatic includes Hausa, Amharic, Oromo, Somali n Over 95% in sub-Saharan Africa speak from Niger-Congo family, which includes 6 branches n 5% speak Khoisan or Nilo-Saharan n

Niger-Congo Family Youraba, Igbo, Shona are major languages n Swahili is native to only 800, 000, but spoken by 30 million- lingua franca w/ strong Arabic influence n Swahili has an extensive literary tradition n

Nilo-Saharan Relatively few speakers but very diverse- many branches, groups n Major language is Songhai n

Khoisan That’s the one with the clicking sounds n Main language Hottentot n See “The Gods Must Be Crazy” n Spoken SW Africa n

Austronesian/Indo-European Malagasy is most closely related to Ma’anyan, spoken 1, 900 miles away on Borneo n Afrikaans is closely related to Dutch, a Germanic language n

Nigeria Has 493 distinct languages n 15% Hausa, Youraba, Igbo, 55% the other 490 n Great source of regional/internal conflict n Moved capital to reduce tension n English a neutral language n

Why do people preserve local languages? Preserving language diversity Global dominance of English

Globalization has made English the first global lingua franca n On the other hand, dominance of English has created a desire to protect local languages n Languages are becoming extinct at the most rapid rate in history n 516 languages are nearly extinct- some people still alive, but not passing language on to next generation n

Nearly extinct 46 Africa, 170 Americas, 78 Asia, 12 Europe, 210 in Pacific n Gothic died in 1500, as did the entire E Germanic language branch. Why? n Cultural integration- switched to Latin when they became Christian n Same in Peru- people are switching to Spanisheconomic opportunity, pop culture, etc n

Hebrew By the 4 th century BC Hebrew was used only for religious services- dead language n Revived from religious texts after 1948 - creation of Israel n Eliezer Ben-Yehuda revived Hebrew n

Celtic languages Only spoken today in N. Scotland, Wales, W. Ireland, and Brittany- once dominated all of W. Europe n 2 groups- Brythonic and Gaelic n Irish Gaelic spoken by 350, 000 people n 1300 s- Irish forbidden to speak their own language in front of their English masters- tally stick n Cornish died in 1777 with Dolly Pentreath- last words- “I will not speak English… you ugly, black toad!” n

Celtic languages Parents encouraged English to compete for jobs n In Wales, Ireland Celtic is being revivedmandatory in schools n Cornish revived in 1920 s 100 people fluent, controversy surrounding spelling n American tourism in part pushing Irish revival n

Multilingual States Belgium and Switzerland- Belguim divided between French speaking Walloons and dutch speaking Flemish n Economic and political differences, along w/ culture create internal conflict n Switzerland has 4 official languages, German, French, Italian, and Romansh n Coexist peacefully because of decentralized gov’t n

Isolated languages are unrelated to any other n Basque is spoken in SW France and NE Spain by 600, 000 people. Isolation in mts. Has preserved it. n Icelandic- has changed little in 1000 yrs. Because of isolation, but related to Scandinavian languages- N. Germanic group n

Pidgin language/Lingua Franca Simplified form of lingua franca- has no native speakers- second language for everyone n If it becomes a native language then it is a creole language n Modern lingua francas include Russian, Spanish, English, Indonesian, Hindustani, Swahili n English as 2 nd language for 90% European students, 500 million people worldwide n

Language Convergence Franglais- eng/Fr, n Spanglish- eng/Sp n Denglish- eng/De n