APHG
Unit 3
Language
Copeland
Today, the people of the world speak more than
distinct languages, which are grouped into
language
. The
family represents about
people and includes most of the languages of Europe and northern India, Australia, the United States,
and parts of South America. Seeded around the world by
, this family sprang
from a tongue spoken on the Russian steppes approx. 6000 years ago. This influence continues to grow
with widespread adoption of
as a second language.
History of the English-Language
DialectIsogloss-
Native American languages are spoken throughout the Americas, although the precise number of
languages in this classification is not known. More than 300 native languages were once spoken in the
U.S. and Canada. Two-thirds survive, but the few speakers left are aging. Even as native languages fade,
their sounds echo in place-names such as Chicago and Massachusetts.
Are Native Languages Surviving Today? Why or why not.
American Indian-Meso
and
, Mayan languages, are the region’s strongest indigenous tongues.
Most languages faded after European contact, but a few were documented by missionaries.
African Languages
African languages are grouped into four families: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Afro-Asiatic.
: With more than 1400 languages – almost one-fourth of the world’s total – NigerCongo is one of the largest language families. It includes Swahili, used by 35 million East Africans as a
lingua franca.
Swahili: Where are you going?
: About 200 Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by ethnic minorities in their home
countries. Only Dongolawi, a Nubian language of the southern Nile in Sudan, has a long written record.
: Famous for clicking sounds, Africa’s Khoisan languages may be the continent’s
oldest. Several have vanished; most have fewer than a thousand speakers.
: The languages of ancient Babylon, Assyria, Egypt and Palestine belonged to this
family. Still thriving, the largest living Afro-Asiatic language, Arabic, spreads in tandem with Islam.
Eurasian Languages
The languages of Eurasia are classified as members of either the
or
language
families, which include over 70 related languages. Also found in Asia are three further groups—
1) Austro-Asiatic languages, spoken by 45 million people in South East Asian countries,
2) Dravidian family, which includes the main languages of India and Sri Lanka.
3) The Austronesian (formerly known as Malayo-Polynesian) language family is the main
language grouping of the Pacific, spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island and Hawaii.
: Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian are safeguarded by their status as national
languages. Other Uralic languages have declined in the past 100 years, many crowded out by Russian.
: Some linguists think Mongolian, Tungusic, and Turkic languages are linked by
kinship. Others attribute similarities to linguistic borrowing between traditionally nomadic peoples.
 Austro-Asiatic: Now distributed from
to
, this family’s
languages may once have dominated most of SE Asia.
 Dravidian: Pockets of these language speakers live in
and
, but
most are found in southern
, where linguistic independence movements in
the 1950’s led to the birth of several language-based states, such as Andhra Pradesh,
home of Telugu.
 Austronesian: Island-hopping seafarers spread these languages across the
and
Indian Oceans from Hawaii to Madagascar. More than 1200 languages remain-about a
hundred on the tiny Pacific islands of Vanuatu alone.
Languages that do not belong to any of these families include language isolates such as
and
, the languages of New Guinea, and the Athabascan and Algonquian languages of sub
arctic Canada. There are dozens of other rare languages, such as
in Spain and France,
Burushaski in Pakistan, persist as
. Despite decades of research, links to known
language groups have yet to be verified.
, spoken in Siberia, is an example of a member
of an isolated small language family.
, now mostly spoken by Thai and Laotians, may
have come from southwest China.
Korean and Japanese: Both of these languages may be related. Both were influenced by Chinese. Many
words are Chinese loans, and Japanese writing still uses Chinese characters.
Basque
Australian-Indigenous Languages
Top Ten World Languages
georgia
Population: 8,186,453 Number of Counties: 159
Counties With the Most Languages Spoken
Rank County Languages
1 DeKalb County 74
2 Fulton County 73
3 Cobb County 72
4 Gwinnett County 69
5 Clayton County 38
6 Chatham County 33
7 Clarke County 31
8 Richmond County 27
9 Muscogee County 25
t-10 Cherokee County 23
t-10 Fayette County 23
12 Columbia County 22
13 Henry County 21
14 Liberty County 19
15 Forsyth County 18
t-16 Bibb County 17
t-16 Douglas County 17
t-16 Houston County 17
19 Hall County 16
t-20 Carroll County 15
t-20 Lowndes County 15
t-22 Bulloch County 14
t-22 Glynn County 14
24 Floyd County 13
t-25 Dougherty County 12
t-25 Rockdale County 12
t-25 Whitfield County 12
Most Common Languages Spoken
Rank Language Speakers
1 English 6,843,040
2 Spanish 426,115
3 French 42,630
4 German 32,760
5 Vietnamese 27,670
6 Korean 25,815
7 Chinese 19,390
8 Gujarathi 11,135
9 Kru, Ibo, Yoruba 9,770
10 Arabic 8,555
11 Japanese 8,255
12 Hindi 7,595
13 Tagalog 7,310
14 Russian 7,175
15 Urdu 7,110
16 Portuguese 6,875
17 Italian 5,825
18 Persian 5,480
19 Amharic 5,210
20 Laotian 5,180
21 Serbocroatian 5,010
22 French Creole 4,965
23 Cushite 4,075
24 Bengali 3,665
25 Mon-Khmer, Cambodian 3,545
26 Greek 3,320
27 Romanian 2,930
28 Hebrew 2,870
29 Polish 2,775
30 India, n.e.c. 2,730
31 Dutch 2,690
32 Thai 2,660
33 Tamil 2,560
34 Telugu 2,405
35 Mandarin 2,055
36 Swahili 1,770
37 Turkish 1,655
38 Miao, Hmong 1,360
39 Formosan 1,215
40 Czech 1,185
41 Cantonese 1,155
42 Malayalam 1,075
43 Ukrainian 1,035
44 Marathi 980
45 Fulani 945
46 Swedish 910
47 Hungarian 850
48 Panjabi 795
49 Kannada 790
50 Bulgarian 765
Languages in Georgia
• DeKalb County’s 74 languages tied for the 52nd
highest number recorded in any county in the
United States. Other Georgia counties that were
highly ranked included: Fulton County (57), Cobb
County (t-59), and Gwinnett County (t-73).
• Georgia has the third highest percentage of
speakers of Caucasian, Cushite and Gujarathi in
the United States. The Peach State also ranks
fourth in the percentage of Efik and Sindhi
speakers and fifth in the percentage of African,
Fulani, Krio and Mayan language speakers.
• DeKalb County has the third highest percentage of
Amharic speakers of any county in the nation.
Other counties that rank highly in a given language
include: Habersham County (fourth,
Laotian), DeKalb County (fourth, Cushite),
Gwinett County (fifth, Romanian) and Clayton
County (sixth, Kru/Ibo/Yoruba).
118
Languages
spoken