Review Mix

4-5

Basic Concepts

6,909 Languages. Only 11 of these languages are spoken by more than 100 million people.

• Language – a system of communication through speech, which is a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meaning.

– Literary Tradition – a system of written communication (hundreds of languages lack a L.T.).

Basic Concepts (cont.)

• Official Language – one that a country designates as theirs and is the one used by the government for laws, reports, and public objects, such as road signs, money, and stamps (some countries have more than one official language).

Key Issue 1 – Continued

Dialects of English• Dialect – a regional variation of a language

distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.• Isogloss – a word-usage boundary within a certain dialect

of a language.• Standard Language – a dialect that is well established and

widely recognized as the most acceptable for government, business, education, and mass communication.

Key Issue 2: Why Is English Related to Other Languages?

• Language Family – a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.

• Language Branch – a collection of languages related though a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago.

• Language Group – a collection of laguages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

Key Issue 2 – Continued

**Key Families, Branches, and Groups**• Largest 2 Families: Indo-European (English,

Spanish) and Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin)• Major Indo-European Branches: Germanic

(English, German), Romance (French, Spanish, Portuguese), Indo-Iranian (Hindi, Persian), and Balto-Slavic (Russian, Polish).

• Important Language Groups: West Germanic (English)

Key Issue 3 – ContinuedKNOW THE TREE!

Thisison

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+155 Families

BranchesGroup

Superfamilies

Key Issue 3: Where Are Other Language Families Distributed?

Classification of Languages• Indo-European is the largest family, representing 46%

of all speakers globally.• Sino-Tibetan is the second largest family, representing

21% of all speakers globally.– Chinese languages are written with a collection of

thousands of characters; most of these characters are ideograms, which represent ideas or concepts rather than specific pronunciations.

• The remaining 32% are made up of several smaller families and individual languages.

Key Issue 4 – Continued

Global Dominance of English• Lingua Franca – a language used for international

communication (e.g. English). Originally, a lingua franca was a language used to facilitate trade between two people who spoke different languages.– While English first spread through relocation diffusion

(American colonies, British Empire), it has spread more recently through expansion diffusion due to its association with popular culture and its heavy use on television and the internet.

Key Issue 4 – Continued

Diffusion of English to Other Languages• Franglais/Spanglish/Denglish – a combination

of English with French/Spanish/German.• Creole / Creolized Language – a language that

results from the mixing of the colonizer’s language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated (Haitian is a good example—blended with French).

Treaty of Tordesillas

• Pope Alexander signed this treat to western part of the New World to Spain and the eastern part to Portual (led to diffusion of each languages in those parts)

• A group that learns the lingua franca in a simplified form for trade – pidgin language.

Basic Concepts

• Culture – combines three facets: values, material artifacts, and political institutions.– Material – derives from primary survival activities of daily

life: food, clothing, shelter.– Leisure – secondary activities such as arts and recreation.

• Habit – a repetitive act that a particular individual performs.

• Custom – a repetitive act of a group performed to the extent that it becomes a characteristic of the group.– Custom is one specific element of culture; culture represents

the entire collection of customs.

Basic Concepts – Continued

• Folk Culture – traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas (e.g. wearing a sarong in Malaysia or sari in India).– Isolation promotes cultural diversity

• Popular Culture – found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in personal characteristics (e.g. wearing jeans in the U.S.).– Difference between the two is of scale: Folk is small; Popular

is large.

Key Issue 2 – Why Is Folk Culture Clustered?

Influence of the Physical Environment• Folk culture societies are more influenced by

the environment due to their agricultural lifestyles (limited technology). Food, clothing and shelter are often influenced by climate, soil, and vegetation.

• Taboo – a restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.– Example: prohibition against eating pork in the

religions of Judaism and Islam

Key Issue 2 – Continued

Influence of the Physical Environment (cont).• Folk Housing – Folk Housing is partly influenced by the resources

available in the environment (wood and brick are most common)

– Sacred Space: many folk customs establish positions of houses, beds, people, etc. to conform to beliefs. Some houses even have a sacred wall, direction, or niche

Key Issue 2 – Continued

U.S. Folk Housing• 3 Main types of U.S. Folk Housing identified by Fred

Kniffen:– New England : four types, depending on the time/area of

settlement—Cape Cod, Saltbox, Two-Chimney, and Front Gable & Wing

– Middle Atlantic : the “I-House” (shaped like the capital letter I)—two full stories; one room deep, two rooms wide.

– Lower Chesapeake : (a.k.a “Tidewater”) one story with a steep roof and chimneys at either end. In especially wet areas, these houses are raised on brick foundations.

Key Issue 4: Why Does Globalization of Popular Culture Cause Problems?

Threat to Folk Culture• Loss of Traditional Values– Diffusion of Western / Popular customs infiltrate LDCs,

often adopting them at the expense of traditional/folk customs.• Men wearing suits in Asia and Africa for business• Women wearing skirts and blouses in urban areas• Women’s subservience to men in patriarchal cultures

disappears with changing gender roles due to education, adoption of popular customs, etc.