Ch. 5 The Geography
of Language
Expanded by Joe Naumann
University of Missouri St. Louis
1
CHAPTER 5
SPEAKING ABOUT PLACES:
THE GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGE
Byte
Gif
LAN
ROM
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I. Introduction
A. Language provides most common
variable identifying cultures
1.
2.
3.
Skills passed from one generation to
the next
Helps shape the way we think and
perceive our environment
Countries name places after important
people
3
I. Introduction
B. Why we study languages
1. Provides the single most common
variable by which cultural groups are
identified
2. Provides the main means by which
learned customs and skills pass from one
generation to the next
3. Facilitates cultural diffusion of innovations
4. Because languages vary spatially, they
reinforce the sense of region and place
5. Study of language called linguistic
geography &geolinguistics by
geographers
4
II. Linguistic culture regions
A. Forms of language
1.
Dialects - variant forms of a language that have not
lost mutual comprehension
2.
Pidgin - results when different linguistic groups come
into contact. It serves the purposes of commerce. It
has a small vocabulary derived from various contact
groups.
3.
Creole - A creole language, or simply a creole, is a
stable language that originates seemingly as a
nativized pidgin.
4.
Lingua franca - a language that spreads over a wide
area where it is not the mother tongue and serves the
purposes of commerce.
5
Kenya –
Lingua
Franca
• Kenya has 2 official languages: Swahili and
English. These lingua franca facilitate
communication among Bantu, Nilotic, and
Cushitic language speakers.
• Swahili developed along the coast of East
Africa where Bantu came in contact with Arabic
6
spoken by Arab sea traders.
Classifying
Languages
7
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
1. Indo-European language family
a. Spoken on all continents
b. Subfamilies—Romance, Slavic, Germanic, Indic,
Celtic, and Iranic
1.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Subfamilies are divided into individual languages
Vocabulary similarities between languages reveal
kinship
Largest, most wide-spread family
Dominant in Europe, Russia, North and South
America, Australia, and parts of southwestern Asia
and India
Seven Indo-European tongues are among the top 10
languages spoken in the world
8
9
10
Language
Families
11
12
Indo-European
Language Family
13
Romance Languages Branch
14
Germanic
Languages
Branch
15
16
17
Suggested Indo-European Hearth
World-Wide Spread of IndoEuropean Languages
18
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
2. Afro-Asiatic family
a. Consists of two major divisions—Semitic
and Hamitic
b. Arabic is most widespread language in
the Semitic family
c. Resurrection of Hebrew language
d. Today, Hamitic languages spoken almost
exclusively in Africa
19
Semitic
• Semitic covers the area from Tigris-Euphrates
valley westward through most of the north half of
Africa to the Atlantic coast
• Domain is large but consists of mostly sparsely
populated deserts
• Arabic is the most widespread Semitic language
• Arabic has the most number of native speakers—
about 186 million
• Hebrew was a “dead” language used only in
religious ceremonies
• Today Hebrew is the official language of Israel
• Amharic a third major Semitic tongues has 20 million
speakers in the mountains of East Africa
• So – both Arabs and Jews are members of
the Semitic branch of the human family.
20
Hamitic
• Has two major divisions—Semitic and Hamitic
• Smaller number of people speak Hamitic
languages
• Share North and East Africa with Semitic speakers
• Spoken by the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria
• Spoken by the Tuaregs of the Sahara and Cushites
of East Africa
• Originated in Asia but today only spoken in Africa
• Expansion of Arabic decreased the area and number
of speakers
21
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
• Africa south of Sahara Desert
dominated by Niger-Congo
language family
• Spoken by about 200 million
people
• Greater part of the Niger-Congo
culture region belongs to the
Bantu subgroup
• Includes Swahili—the lingua
franca of East Africa
22
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
•
Sino-Tibetan family
includes
• One of the major language
families of the world
• Extends throughout most of
China and Southeast Asia
• Han Chinese is spoken in a
variety of dialects as a mother
tongue by 836 million people
• Han serves as the official form
of speech in China
23
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
•Japanese/Korean language family
• Another major Asian family with nearly
200 million speakers
• Seems to have some kinship to both the
Altaic and Austronesian
24
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
• Austronesian language family
• Most remarkable language family in
terms of distribution
• Speakers live mainly on tropical islands
• Ranges from Madagascar, through
Indonesia and the Pacific Islands, to
Hawaii and Easter Island
• Longitudinal span is more than half way
around the world
• Latitudinally, ranges from Hawaii and
Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in
the south
• Largest single language in this family is
Indonesian —5O million speakers
25
• Most widespread language is Polynesian
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
• Austro-Asiatic Found in Southeast
Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand,
and spoken by some tribal people of
Malaya and parts of India
• Occupies a remnant peripheral domain
• Has been encroached upon by SinoTibetan, Indo-European, and
Austronesian family spoken in Southeast
Asia
26
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other major language families
• Altaic language family
• Includes Turkic, Mongolic, and several
other subgroups
• Homeland lies largely in deserts,
tundras, and coniferous forests of
northern and central Asia
• Uralic family
• Finnish and Hungarian are the two most
important tongues
• Both have official status in their
27
countries
II. Linguistic culture regions
B. Language families
3. Other language families
• Occupying refuge areas after retreating
before the advance of rival groups
• Khoisan — found in the Kalahari Desert of
southwestern Africa, characterized by clicking
sounds
• Dravidian — spoken by numerous darkerskinned people of southern India and northern
Sri Lanka
• Others include — Papuan, Caucasic, NiloSaharan, Paleosiberian, Inukitut, and a variety of
Amerindian
• Basque — spoken on the borderland between
Spain and France is unrelated to any other
language in the world
28
A Typical News Stand in London,
Paris, Rome, New York . . . .
• Both Indo-European (e.g. French, Spanish and Swedish) and
Afro-Asiatic (Arab) language families are represented here. 29
Where would a similar news stand
be found in greater St. Louis?
• Probably the
University
City “Loop”
• An ethnically
diverse area
• Near a major
university
with many
foreign-born
students
30
Difficulties delineating culture
regions using linguistics
• Overlap of languages complicates
drawing of linguistic borders (really
transition zones)
• In any given area more than one tongue
may be spoken — Ecuador
• Language barriers are rarely sharp
• Geographers may encounter a
core/periphery pattern rather than a
31
dividing line
Core/periphery
pattern
• Dominance of
language diminishes
away from the center
of the region
• Outlying zone of
bilingualism
• Linguistic “islands”
often further
complicate the
drawing of language
borders
32
isoglosses — borders of individual
word usages or pronunciations
• No two words, phrases, or pronunciations
have exactly the same spatial distribution
• Spatially isoglosses crisscross one
another
• Typically cluster together in “bundles”
• Bundles serve as the most satisfactory
dividing lines among dialects and
languages
• Bundles approximate the transition zone33
Isoglosses
34
35
Isoglosses in France
II. Linguistic culture regions
C. The shifting boundaries of American English
1.
2.
Mapping dialects by using isoglosses
Major dialects and their changing pattern
in the United States
1.
2.
3.
3.
4.
5.
Northern
Midland
Southern
The use of slang to show how English
changes over time
Why Ebonics causes a dilemma
American English dialects suggest
Americans are not becoming more alike
36
Dialects & Accents
37
English dialects in the United States
• The three subcultures expanded westward
and their dialects spread and fragmented
• Retained much of their basic character even
beyond the Mississippi River
• Have distinctive vocabularies and
pronunciations
• Drawing dialect boundaries is often tricky
“All y’all come back now, ya hear!”
38
Dynamic English dialects in the
United States Today
• Many regional words are becoming oldfashioned, but new words display regional
variations
• The following words all describe a
controlled-access divided highway
• Freeway — a California word
• Turnpike and parkway — mainly northeastern
and Midwestern words
• Thruway, expressway, and interstate
39
Ebonics – Black English
• Once dismissed as inferior substandard
English
• Grew out of a pidgin that developed on early
slave plantations
• Today, spoken by about 80 percent of
African-Americans
• Used by ghetto dwellers who have not made
their compromises with mainstream
American culture
• Many features separate it from standard
speech, for example:
• Lack of pronoun differentiation between genders
• Use of undifferentiated pronouns
40
Ebonics – Black English
• Verb tense usually indicated by vocal
inflection rather than by verb conjugation
• Most African languages were oral languages rather
than written.
• In the Southern dialect, African-Americans
have made substantial contributions to speech
• Southern dialect is becoming increasingly
identified with African-Americans
• Caucasians in the Southern region are shifting
to Midland speech
• National TV uses Midland speech (close to St. Louis
speech)
• Midland speakers moving to the “Sun Belt”
41
MidlandSouthern
Divide
42
Invasions influenced the
development of English
43
Spread of English
• Diffused through British colonialism
• Reinforced by British
industrial/commercial power
• 20th Century: U.S.A. became the major
military, industrial, commercial, and
economic in the world, continuing to
reinforce the usefulness of English
44
Where English is an official language
45
Global dominance of English
• Approx. 90% of students in E.U. study
English in middle or high school
• Worldwide, 500 million people speak
English as a second language
• English terms have found their way into
other languages – Franglais, Spanglish,
Denglish
• Leading language of the internet
46
Language of online users
47
48
49
English dialects in the United States
• American dialects suggest we are
not becoming a more national culture
by overwhelming regional cultures
• Linguistic divergence is still under way
• Dialects continue to mutate on a
regional level
• Local variations in grammar and
pronunciation proliferate
• The homogenizing influence of radio,
television, and other mass media is
50
being defied somewhat
English is spoken in many places
– London, England
• All English words are not
mutually intelligible.
• A London tube (subway)
sign says performing there
(eg singing or playing for
money) is subject to a
fine.
• Are tube, subway, and
busking dialect words?
51
British English – American English
52
Dialects in England
Before 1066 c.e.
1150 to 1500 c.e.
53
Difficulties establishing boundaries
• Dialect terms often overlap
considerably, making it difficult to
draw isoglossess
• Linguistic geographers often disagree
about how many dialects are present
• Disagreement also occurs on where
lines should be drawn
• Boundaries are necessarily
simplified and at best generalizations
54
III. Linguistic diffusion
A. Introduction
1. Some languages are disappearing or
struggling to survive
1.
2.
3.
Welsh & Scottish Gaelic
Irish Gaelic
Breton
2. Diffusion favors some languages
Particularly English – international
lingua franca
3. Reviving Extinct Languages
1.
1. Hebrew – official language of Israel
2. Cornish
55
III. Linguistic diffusion
B. Indo-European diffusion
1. Earliest speakers lived in southern
and southeastern Turkey
2. Language branched out as people
migrated
•
•
Diffused west and north into Europe
Represented expansion of farming people at
expense of hunters and gatherers
3. Role of imperial conquest
•
Later language diffusion occurred with
the spread of great political empires,
especially Latin, English, and Russian
56
III. Linguistic diffusion
B. Indo-European diffusion
•
Role of imperial conquest
• Relocation & expansion diffusion
weren’t mutually exclusive
• Relocation diffusion by conquering elite
implanted their language
• Implanted language often gained wider
acceptance by expansion diffusion
• Conqueror’s language spread
hierarchically
• Spread of Latin with Roman conquests
• Spanish in Latin America
57
58
Language Diffusion
Diffusion in
sub-Saharan
Africa
59
III. Linguistic diffusion
C. Austronesian diffusion
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Impressive example of diffusion
Presumed hearth in interior of Southeast Asia
5000 years ago
Initially spread southward into the Malay
Peninsula
Key to diffusion was remarkable navigational
skills, not agriculture
Polynesians occupy a realm of hundreds of
Pacific islands
In a process lasting several thousand years,
people sailed in tiny boats across the.
uncharted vast seas to New Zealand, Easter
Island, Hawaii, and Madagascar
60
The remarkable diffusion of the
Polynesian people
• From eastern part of Austronesian culture region
• Occupy hundreds of Pacific islands in a
triangular-shaped realm
• New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii form the
three apexes of the realm
• Made a leap of 2,500 mi. from S. Pacific to Hawaii
• Used outrigger canoes
• Went against prevailing winds into a new
hemisphere with different navigational stars
• No humans had previously found the isolated
Hawaiian Islands
• Sailors had no way of knowing that land existed in
the area
61
Austronesian diffusion
• Geographers John Webb and Gerard Ward
studied prehistoric Polynesian diffusion
• Their method involved the development of a
computer model building in data on:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Winds
Ocean currents
Vessel traits and capabilities
Island visibility
Duration of voyage, etc.
Both drift and navigated voyages were considered
62
63
Polynesian Diffusion
Austronesian family
64
III. Linguistic diffusion
D. Linguistic globalization
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Possible role of Nostratic as ancestral
language
Original linguistic hearth in Africa
Will forces of modernization result in a
single world language?
English spoken by more people than any
other language
Example of India
If language dies, culture probably will also
Remnant linguistic islands
Basque is unrelated to any other language
in the world
65
4.
III. Linguistic diffusion
E. Written Expression
1. Alphabets
2. Pictographs
4.
Related
script
The same spoken language but different
scripts
66
Multilingual States
• Can be a centrifugal force leading to
political devolution
• Canada & French Canadian movement for
independence
• Former Yugoslavia has fragmented into 6-7
states based largely on linguistic & cultural
differences
• Spanish is becoming the 2nd language of the
United States
67
68
Belgium
Two state solution:
Flanders
Wallonia
69
Switzerland: peaceful coexistence
70
493 distinct languages
Three major ones: Yoruba, Igbo, & Hausa
approx. 15% each.
Decided on English as the official language
71
IV. Linguistic ecology
A. Habitat and vocabulary
1.
A language's vocabulary reflects its area
of development environment—
topography
2. Example of English in northern Europe
B. The habitat provides refuge
1. Inhospitable areas provide protection
and isolation
2. Example of mountainous regions
3. Shatter belts
4. Reality of today's world is contact, not
isolation
72
The environment and vocabulary
• How the environment affects vocabulary
• Spanish language derived from Castile
• Rich in words describing rough terrain (Table
4.2)
• Distinguishes subtle differences in shape and
configuration of mountains
• Scottish Gaelic
• Describes types of rough terrain
• Common attribute spoken by hill people
• Romanian tongue
• Also from a region of rugged terrain
• Words tend to be keyed to use of terrain for
livestock herding
73
Habitat Influence
74
Environment and Vocabulary
• English
• Developed in wet coastal plains
• Very poor in words describing
mountainous terrain
• Abounds with words describing flowing
streams
• Rural American South—river, creek,
branch, fork, prong, run, bayou, and
slough
75
Environment & Vocabulary
• Vocabularies develop for features of
the environment that involve
livelihood
• Detailed vocabularies are necessary
to communicate sophisticated
information relevant to the adaptive
strategy
76
The Environment Provides Refuge
• Inhospitable ones offer protection and isolation
• Provide outnumbered linguistic groups refuge
from aggressive neighbors
• Linguistic refuge areas
•
•
•
•
Rugged hill and mountain areas
Excessively cold or dry climates
Impenetrable forests and remote islands
Extensive marshes and swamps
• Unpleasant environments rarely lure conquerors
• Mountains tend to isolate inhabitants of one valley
from another
77
Examples of linguistic refuge areas
• Rugged Caucasus Mountains and nearby
ranges in central Eurasia are populated by
a large variety of peoples
• Alps, Himalayas, and highlands of Mexico
are linguistic shatter belts — areas where
diverse languages are spoken
• Amerindian tongue Quechua clings to a
refuge in the Andes Mts. of South America
• In the Rocky Mountains of northern New
Mexico, an archaic form of Spanish
survives due to isolation that ended in the
early 1900s
78
More Examples
• The Dhofar, a mountain tribe in
Oman, preserve Hamitic speech that
otherwise has vanished from Asia
• Tundra climates of the far north have
sheltered certain Uralic, Altaic, and
Inukitut (Eskimo) speakers
• On Sea Islands, off coast of South
Carolina and Georgia, some remnant
of an African language, Gullah, still
are spoken
79
Shatter Belt
80
Environment & Language Today
• Today environmental isolation is no
longer the linguistic force it once
was
• Inhospitable lands and islands are
reachable by airplanes
• Marshes and forests are being
drained and cleared by farmers
• The world is interactive
81
The environment guides migration
• Migrants were often attracted to new lands
that seemed environmentally similar to their
homelands
• Could pursue adaptive strategies they knew
• Germanic Indo-Europeans chose familiar
temperate zones in America, New Zealand, and
Australia
• Semitic peoples rarely spread outside arid and
semiarid climates
• Ancestors of modern Hungarians left grasslands
of inner Eurasia for new homes in the grassy
Alföld, one of the few prairie areas of Europe
82
The environment guides migration
• Environmental barriers and natural routes
guided linguistic groups along certain
paths
• Indo-Europeans traveled through low
mountain passes to the Indian
subcontinent, avoiding Himalayas &
barren Deccan Plateau
• In India today, the Indo-European/
Dravidian language boundary seems to
approximate an ecological boundary
83
The environment guides migration
• Mountain barriers frequently serve as
linguistic borders
• In part of the Alps, speakers of German
and Italian live on opposite sides of a
major ridge
• Portions of mountain rim along the
northern edge of the Fertile Crescent
form the border between Semitic and
Indo-European tongues
84
The environment guides migration
• Linguistic borders that follow such
physical features tend to be stable
and endure for thousands of years
• Language borders that cross plains
and major routes of communication
are frequently unstable — GermanicSlavic boundary on the North
European Plain
85
Language is intertwined with all
aspects of culture
• Comparative social, demographic,
political, and technological
characteristics groups are needed to
understand the linguistic map
• Linguistic cultural integration can
reflect the dominance of one group
over another — a dominance based
in culture
86
Importance of the
development of alphabets
• Facilitated record keeping, allowing
government to develop
• With empire building, languages tend to
spread with imperial expansion
• Imperial expansion of European and
U.S. power altered the linguistic
patterns among millions of people
• Superimposed Indo-European tongues in
the tropics and subtropics
• Areas most affected were Asia, Africa, and
the Austronesian island world
87
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
A. Technology and linguistic dominance
1. Importance of invention of writing - alphabets
a. Certain cultures became more complex and
dominant
b. Written languages advanced at the expense
of illiterate cultures
c. Were invariably the invention of agricultural
societies
d. Greek, Latin, and Chinese, along with other
tongues, enjoyed early advantages because
of literacy
2. Transportation
a. Opened lands to outside contacts
b. Examples of highway influence
c. English on the Internet
88
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
B. Language and empire
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Writing allowed governments and
bureaucracies to develop
Imperial expansion altered linguistic
practices of millions
Example of Chinese expansion
Transplanted languages have remained in
former colonies
English and French as languages of
educated elite in former colonies
89
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
B. Language and empire
•In South America, the expanding empires
of Spain and Portugal clashed in the
fifteenth century
• Signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494
• Spain received control over all colonial lands
west of a certain meridian
• Portugal gained control over lands east of
the line
• Brazil eventually became Portuguese
speaking
• In most of the rest of South America Spanish
prevailed
90
91
Colonial legacy of linguistic dominance
• When imperial nations gave up their colonial
empires, their languages remained
• English is still spoken in much of Africa, the Indian
subcontinent, the Philippines, and certain areas of the
Pacific islands
• French persists in north, west and central Africa,
Madagascar, and Polynesia
• In most areas English and French function as languages of
the educated elite and of government, commerce, and
higher education
• Often hold status as legal languages, serving has link
languages
• Help hold countries together where native languages are
multiple and divisive – i.e. Nigeria
92
Technology and linguistic
diffusion
• Affect of transportation technology on
geography of languages
• Ships, railroads, and highways usually spread
languages of cultural groups who build them
• Sometimes spells doom for the speech of peoples
whose lands are opened to outside contacts
• Trans-Siberian Railroad spread Russian language
eastward to Pacific Ocean
• Presently highway construction into Brazil’s
Amazonian interior threatens Indian languages
93
French &
Native
Languages
are used
94
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
C. The social morale model
1. Process of indigenous language
disappearance after imperial conquest
a. Loss of pride in language and local culture
b. Monoglots
• Monoglot: n. A person who knows only one
language. adj. Knowing only one language;
monolingual
• Persons living in the United States, Australia,
France, Italy, and the United Kingdom (mainly
England as the Celtic nations have their own
languages) are commonly stereotyped as monoglots.
2.
3.
Modern communications media hasten
decline of regional languages and dialects
Example: decline of Welsh language
95
Decline of the Welsh Language
96
The social morale model
• Model built by geographer Charles Withers
• Explains the process of language loss
incurred by conquered cultural groups
• Placed in a lower social class
• Lose pride in their language and culture, eventually
abandoning both
• Education system based solely on socially
dominant language produces bilingualism
• Monoglots, or persons speaking one tongue decline
97
The social morale model
• If conquered group literate, they will
usually start to become illiterate in
their traditional language
• Often no legal or religious status is
accorded the conquered language
• Old way of speech considered primitive
and its use socially degrading
• Denying the oppressed language access to
broadcast facilities can hasten process of
decline
98
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
C. The social morale model
4. English usage in the United States
a. Loss of Native American languages
•
•
•
•
•
b.
c.
Native Americans subjected to linguistic assaults from
dominant culture
Indian children taken from families and placed in
boarding schools
Indian children were forbidden to speak their own
languages
In 1910, one out of every four Americans could fluently
speak some language other than English (14 percent
could in 1990)
Only Spanish speakers have had long-term success in
keeping their speech
Reasons immigrants learned English
Today, Spanish-speaking people asserting pride
in their language
99
Morale is not always broken by conquest
and subsequent discrimination
• Greeks have suffered periods of rule by
Romans and Turks
• Have kept their language
• Remained convinced their culture was superior
• Chinese absorbed Mongol invaders and
made Chinese out of them
• Sometimes languages of conquered and
conqueror blend
100
The economic development model
• Also developed by Charles Withers
• Industrialization with urbanization
breaks up social structure needed to
perpetuate an indigenous language
• Transition from subsistence farmer to
factory laborer is destructive to minority
tongues - particularly destructive when
factory language is not that of the farm
101
The economic development model
• Industrialization tends to draw population
from rural linguistic refuge area leaving
fewer speakers of minority languages
behind — called the clearance model
• If industrial development occurs in refuge
area, speakers of dominant language are
drawn in producing a changeover model
— native speakers are overwhelmed by
intrusion of foreigners
102
Economic Development Model
• Plight of Welsh language in Great Britain
• Illustrates Withers’ social morale, economic
development, clearance, and changeover models
• Now stands at the threshold of extinction
• Speakers were long denigrated
• British educational system promoted English
• Urbanization and industrialization knocked holes in
spatial fabric of Welsh
• Massive rural emigration followed to Englishspeaking towns and factories
103
Economic Development Model
• Geographer Keith Buchanan referred to decline
of Welsh and other Celtic languages as a
“liquidation” by ruling English to create a loyal,
obedient work force for mines and factories
• Recently the Welsh language was given educational
and media privileges by British government
• BUT social morale of its speakers is broken
• Largely aged speakers survive
• The day nears when inhabitants may not know what
the names of towns, rivers, and mountains mean
• The Welsh may not even be able to understand their
family names
104
Impact of devolution
• The ongoing achievement of
independence by various linguistic
minority groups could rescue some
languages previously endangered —
examples of Estonia and Latvia
105
V. Culturo-linguistic interaction
D. Language and religion
1.
Evangelical success of Muslims spread Arabic
a.
b.
Spread from a core area on the Arabian peninsula
with the Islamic faith
Without the evangelical fervor of the Muslims,
Arabic would not have diffused so widely
c.
2.
3.
In Iran, a non-Arabic Muslim land, Arabic is
still used in religious ceremonies
Hebrew used to promote unity in Israel
Latin survived mainly as the ceremonial language
of the Roman Catholic Church
a.
4.
European cultural “glue” during the Middle Ages
Religious books can shape languages by providing
a standard form
a.
b.
German – Luther’s Bible translation
Arabic – Qur'an only acceptable in Arabic
106
Religion, Language, & Conflict
• Linkage of language & religion increase
chance of nationalistic conflict and/or
separation movements
• Greek/Christian - Turkish/Muslim problem in Cyprus
• Armenian/Christian - Azeri/Muslim war
• Battle against Nio-Saharan/Christian and animist
tribal groups in Sudan
• French/Catholic Canadian separation movement
• Chechnyan/Muslim separation movement in Russia
107
VI. Linguistic landscapes
A. Messages
1.
Cultural landscape bears the imprint of language in
various ways
A. Example-road signs, billboards, graffiti, etc.
B. Can be a visual index to bilingualism or linguistic
oppression of minorities
1)
Political content
•
Québec has tried to eliminate English-language
signs
2)
Example: Turkey
• Kurdish or Arabic speakers are not allowed any visual
display of their languages
• Linguistic landscape displays only Turkish
• Linguistic minorities are visually reminded of their
inferior position
3)
Ownership—gang-related graffiti
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VI. Linguistic landscapes
B. Toponyms
1. Place-names
2. Often directly reflect spatial patterns of
language, dialect, and ethnicity
3. Become part of the cultural landscape when
they appear on signs and placards
4. Highway signs such as Huntsville,
Harrisburg, Ohio River, Newfound Gap, etc.
often provide a visible index to distribution
of other cultural traits
5. Many place-names consist of two parts —
the generic and the specific
a. The specific part of the names listed above (#4)
would be: Hunts, Harris, Ohio, Newfound, and
Hatteras
b. The generic parts, which tell what kind of place is
being described are:
c. vile, burg, river, gap
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VI. Linguistic landscapes
B. Toponyms
6. Generic toponyms are of greater
value to cultural geographers than
specific names
• They appear again and again throughout
a culture region
• Every culture or subculture has its own
distinctive set
• Can be particularly valuable in tracing
the spread of a culture
• Often aid in reconstructing past culture
regions
110
VI. Linguistic landscapes
C. Generic toponyms of the United States
1.
2.
3.
Can locate areas settled by people of different
dialects
Example: New Englanders
Example of how different terms denote origin of
settlers
111
Generic Toponyms: New England
• New Englanders, speakers of the Northern dialect,
frequently used the term center in the name of the town
or hamlet near the center of township
• Outlying settlements in New England frequently bear
the prefix east, west, north, or south — the name of
township being the suffix
• Using these generic usages peculiar to New England
we can locate colonies New Englanders founded as
they migrated from their homelands
• Westward through upstate New York, Ontario, and into the
upper Midwest
• Toponymic evidence can be found in Walworth County,
Wisconsin
112
113
U.S.A. Generic Toponyms
• Other generic place names identified with the
Northern dialect—brook, notch, and corners
• The trace of New England even reaches
Seattle, Washington where “center” and
“corner” are frequently used
• Midland American areas can be identified by
such terms as gap, cove, hollow, knob, and
burgh
• Southern speech is recognized by names as
bayou, gully, and store (for rural hamlets)
114
VI. Linguistic landscapes
D. Toponyms and cultures of the past
1.
Place-names remain long after a culture has
vanished
a.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Australia abounds in Aborigine toponyms—even in
areas where the native peoples have long since
disappeared
Many times perpetuated by conquering
cultures—Native American place-names
Moorish names remain on the landscape in Spain
Example: Maori people of New Zealand
Toponyms identifying physical geographical
features seem to last permanently\
Study of archaic names has greater value in the
Eastern Hemisphere
115
Australian Aboriginal
116
Toponyms of the past: Iberia
• Example of Spain and Portugal
• Moorish rule for 700 years left many
Arabic place-names
• Prefix of guada on river names is a
corruption of the Arabic wadi
117
118
Indicator of intensity of Muslim
Influence in Spain
119
Toponyms from the past
• Example of eastern Germany
• Suffixes ow, in, and zig are common Slavic
suffixes in village names
• Suffix distribution accurately reveals the culture
region peopled by Slavic tribes as late as A.D. 800
• Slavic languages have disappeared from most of
eastern Germany
• Suffix weiler, in names of German villages south
of the Danube and west of the Rhine, reminds us
of former Roman rule and Latin usage
120
121
Toponyms of the past
• Example of New Zealand
• The Maori, a native Polynesian people, are today confined
mainly to refuge areas
• The smaller the town the larger the percentage of Maori
place-names
• Twenty percent of provinces have Maori names
• Fifty-six percent of counties have Maori names
• Nearly all streams, hills, and mountains retain Maori names
• Implication—British settlement remains largely an urban
phenomenon
• Linguistic landscapes can help shape the character
of places
122
Toponyms and environmental
modification
• Generic place-names tell us about
humankind’s past alteration of the
environment
• Germanic peoples cleared forests from
England eastward into present-day Poland
• Toponyms sometimes indicate how clearing was
accomplished
• Suffixes roth and reuth, as in Neuroth and
Bayreuth, mean “rooted out” or “grubbed out”, and
refer to the practice of digging out roots after
cutting trees
123
Toponyms and environmental
modification
• In England, ley or leigh, as in Woodley,
means “clearing” or “open place” in the forest
• In European place-names, brind, brunn, and
brand, reveal clearing by using fire
• In eastern woodlands of the United States,
American Indians cleared considerable forest
areas before the coming of Columbus
• Abandoned grass-covered fields survived
• Europeans recorded these places of deforestation
by calling them prairie
• Over 200 of these generic terms appear in
wooded eastern Texas alone
124
5. D. Political change & name change
1. Congo-Zaire-Congo
2. Burma-Myanmar
3. End of Soviet Union & the communist
system
125
The
name
change
followed
the
political
change.
126
VII. Concluding
Thoughts
A. The past
role of books in
language?
B. What
about the
computer age?
127