Chapter 5 LANGUAGE

By: Jade Rinehart & Sydney Black

Language

• Definition: A system of communication through speech, a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meaning

• Many countries designate an official language that is used by government for laws, money and stamps

• A system of written communication in many countries

Language Family• Is the collection of individual languages believed

to be related in their pre-historical origin

• The most commonly

spoken is Indo-European

Language Branch

Collection of languages that possesses a definite common origin but has split into individual languages

Example: Romance languages

Language Group

Collection of several individual languages that is part of a branch shares a common origin in the recent past, and has relatively similar grammar and vocabulary

Example: Spanish and French

Indo-European FamilyDivided into 8 Branches

Germanic- languages ( English, German, Danish, Norwegian and Sweden) that reflect the expansion of people out of the Northern Europe to the west and south

Indo-Iranian- Languages ( Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish) which are spoken in South Asia

Balto-Slavic- Languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian) that developed as Slavic people migrated from a base in present day Ukraine close to 2000 years ago

Romance- Languages ( French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese) that lie in the areas that were once controlled by the Roman Empire

The Language Tree 19 language families

Each family has its own branch, and each branch has its own group, each branch has its own language, each language has its own dialect

Classification of Languages

Indo-European Family

-Includes English

Sino-Tibetan

-mainly in China

Afro-Asiatic

-mainly in Middle East

Austronesian

-mostly in South East Asia

Niger-Congo

-mainly in Africa

Dravidian Family

-mainly in India

Altaic Family

-mainly in Asia

Austro-Asiatic

-mostly in South East Asia

Japanese

-mostly in Japan

Origin of English

The Diffusion of English

From England to North America

- Jamestown, VA 1607

- Plymouth, Mass 1620

-First language for 328 million people

-Spoken by half-billion people

-Official language in 57 countries

-Australia and U.S. Two most predominate countries where

English is spoken

Multilingual States

Countries in which more than one language is in use

Northern and Southern Belgium have had conflict and difficulty being a multilingual state

Helpful Hint!

-Multi: More than 1 language is spoken fluently

Monolingual States

Countries in which only one language is spoken

Japan is monolingual due to its very strict immigration laws

France has fought to preserve its monolingual heritage and has laws to keep the language pure. Also has prohibited infusion of English

Helpful hint!

-Mono: One Language is spoken fluently

Isolated Language

A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.

This happens because a lack of interaction with speakers of other languages

Isolation preserves the language

Example: Basque, it’s the only language that survived the arrival of indo European speakers, unable to link to any other language, spoken by 1 million people in the Pyrenees Mts. Of Northern Spain and Southwestern France.

Lingua Franca

Term means: language of the franks

Is the language of international communication

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages

Another example: Swahili in East Africa

Reviving Extinct Languages

Example:

Hebrew, which is a very rare case of an extinct language that has been revived, The Torah was mostly written in Hebrew.

It was diminished in 4th century B.C.E

Only retained for religion

Hebrew became one of two official language in Israel in 1948

Helped for a good sense of nationalism throughout the country

Celtic

Dominant Language before invasions of the British Isles

It was spoken in much of present day Germany, France, and Northern Italy and British Isles more than 2,000 years ago.

Today its still Spoken in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France

Brythonic

Welsh- dominant until 19th century,

Cornish- extinct in 1777 was revived in 1920s and taught in schools

Breton- Isolated Peninsula, 250,000 speakers

Gaelic

Irish - one of two official languages, spoken by 350,000 daily

Scottish - 1% in Scotland speak it,

Important Terms

Proto-tongue

Language shift

Dialect

Language family

Language branch

Language group

Language Divergence /Convergence

Standard language

Extinct language

Monolingual state

Multilingual state

Isolated language

Lingua franca

Pidgin language

Ebonics

Creolized language

Ideograms

Fun Facts

Estimated in 6,909 languages in worldEstimated in 6,909 languages in world

only 11 languages spoken by more than 100 only 11 languages spoken by more than 100 million peoplemillion people

153 languages spoken by at least 3 million153 languages spoken by at least 3 million

remaining languages spoken by fewer than 3 remaining languages spoken by fewer than 3 million peoplemillion people