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Languages of China• Chinese has the most speakers of any language.• It is one of the world’s oldest languages spoken by
the greatest contiguous population on Earth.• Southern China-the most variety and dialects-most
are mutually unintelligible.• Some scholars argue that for this reason-it is not one
language, but several.• Mandarin-the dominate language of the North
spoken by 700 million including Beijing.• Wu is next with 100 million speakers in Shanghai
area.• Yue-or Cantonese is spoken by 70 million in the SE.
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Languages of China
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Chinese Ideograms
Fig. 5-13: Chinese language ideograms mostly represent concepts rather than sounds. The two basic characters at the top can be built into more complex words.
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Street scene in Hong Kong,Now known as XianggangSince 1997 take over byRed China.
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Languages of India• India had 4 language
families with the largest being Indo-European and Dravidian.
• There are 15 major languages-all but 4 are Indo-European.
• Over 1,600 lesser languages.
• The largest Indo-European language is Hindi
• Largest Dravidian tongue is Telugu.
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South Asian Languages & Language Families
Fig. 5-7: Indo-European is the largest of four main language families in South Asia. The country of India has 18 official languages.
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Languages of Africa
• There are 1,000 spoken languages in Africa and many are unwritten.
• There are 4 major indigenous language families;
• Afro-Asiatic of N. Africa• Nilo-Saharan• Niger-Congo• Khosian• Largest ethnic groups are
associated with a language.
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Languages of Subsaharan Africa
- extreme language diversity
- effects of colonialism
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NigeriaMore than 400 different languages.