CHAPTER 6: LANGUAGE
Field Note: What should I say?
Brussels, Belgium
In public, 2 signs would represent everything such as the bathroom, travel
agency hours and advertisements.
Speaker didn’t know whether to speak to the person behind the counter in
French, English, or Flemish.
In Belgium, economic differences between linguistic groups have been a
divisive issue for centuries,
Many people in northern Belgium (Flanders) opposed the growing of
Frenchification where Flemish is the dominant language.
By the 1960s, a fixed partition scheme came into being, which divided the
country into Flemish-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking
Wallonia in the south.
The partitioning process produced upheavals throughout the country.
The bilingual capital of Brussels is located in the Flemish-speaking north.
To begin chapter 6…
In this chapter we question what languages are and
examine the roles languages play in culture
We study the spatial distribution of the worlds languages
Learn how languages diffuse, change, and even become
extinct
Field Note (Continued)
TODAY, WALLONIA HAS AN
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE OF 17%,
WHEREAS FLANDERS HAS ONE OF
THE LOWER UNEMPLOYMENT RATES
IN EUROPE.
THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT PASSED
A LAW IN 1975 (ACADÉMIE
FRANÇAISE), BANNING THE USE OF
FOREIGN WORDS IN
ADVERTISEMENTS, TELEVISION AND
RADIO BROADCASTS, AND OFFICIAL
DOCUMENTS, UNLESS NO FRENCH
EQUIVALENT COULD BE FOUND.
DECISION MAKING NOW RESTS
WITH THE INDIVIDUAL
GOVERNMENTS RATHER THEN
IN A CENTRALIZED
GOVERNMENT IN BRUSSELS
What are languages, and what role do
languages play in cultures?
Language is a fundamental element of local and national
culture
A language is a set of sounds and symbols that are used for
communication
Language is also an integral part of culture, reflecting and
shaping it
Language and Culture
Language allows us to use vast vocabularies to describe new experiences,
ideas, and feelings. Language is a set of sounds, combinations of sounds, and
symbols that are used for communication; the crucial element in language is
vocalization.
It reflects where a culture has been, what a culture values, even how people in a
culture think, describe, or experience events.
Shared language makes people in a culture visible to each other and to the rest of
the world.
Language can reveal much about the way people and cultures view reality.
For instance, some African languages have no word or term for the concept of God.
Some Asian languages have no tenses and no system for reporting chronological
events, which reflects the lack of cultural distinction between then and now.
In the United States, some of the Spanish-speaking population is demanding the use
of Spanish in public affairs.
Many people opposed to the use of Spanish in the US where English would be the
official language of government, the internet poses a challenge to this because more
then 85% of all websites are in English. 68% of internet content is in English.
Language and Culture
To understand the role of languages in cultures you must
examine people who have experienced the loss of language
under pressure from others.
During colonization, (both abroad and within countries) colonizers
commonly forced the colonized people to speak the language of
the colonizer.
American, Canadian, Australian, Russian, and New Zealand
governments each had polices of forced assimilation during the
20th century. Quebec contains areas dominated by non-French
speaking minorities, the govt. passed laws banning or controlling
the use of non-French languages in advertisement, allows
inclusion of both Eng and Fr in signage but Fr letters are twice
the size of other lang., peoples of the north speak Algonquin and
Inuit languages, the Cree and Mohawk expressed a desire to
remain part of Canada should Quebec decide to secede.
WHAT IS A LANGUAGE?
Mutual Intelligibility (MI)---2 people can understand each
other when speaking.
Linguists have rejected the criterion of MI bec it is almost
impossible to measure, many lang are distinct but are
recognizable by diff speakers. For example, Danish and
Norwegian are separate lang but recognizable, as are
Serbian and Croatian, Hindi and Urdu, Sp and Port, and
Navajo and Apache.
Linguists and linguistic geographers recognize between
5000-7000 languages, including more than 600 in India &
over 2000 in Africa
Indo-European and
other language
families in Europe
OTHERS (NOT INDOEUROPEAN INCLUDE:
URALIC, ALTAIC, BASQUE
Language is so closely tied to
culture that people use
language as a weapon in
cultural conflict and political
strife. For example, in the
U.S where Spanish-speaking
population is growing, they
are demanding the use of
Spanish in public affairs.
States which have several
counties where 60% or more
of the people 5 years and
older spoke language other
than English: TX, NM, AZ,
FL, AK
STANDARDIZED LANGUAGE
In some countries the gov’t sustains standard language through official
examinations for teachers and civil servants
Ireland promotes use of Irish (Celtic lang.) by requiring an Irish
language examination for all govt. employees.
The phrase “the King’s English” is a popular reference to the fact that
the English spoken by well educated people in London and its environs
is regarded as British Received Pronunciation (BRP) English that is
standard.
People w/power & influence decide standard lang.
In France the Academie Fracaise chose French spoken in & around
Paris as official lang. In technically advanced societies, there is likely to
be a standardized language.
Standard Italian is the version of the language spoken in Florence and
Tuscany.
DIALECTS
Variants of a standard lang. along regional or ethnic lines.
Difference especially in vocab, syntax, pronunciation, cadence, & pace of speech all
mark a speaker’s dialect. But dialect most often marked by an actual difference in
vocabulary. (US dialect map below left).
Dialect chains- a set of contiguous dialects in which the dialects nearest to each other
at any place in the chain are most closely related.
Isogloss- geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs, but
such a boundary is rarely a simple line. Fuzzy isoglosses may signify the dialect has
expanded or contracted. (US isogloss map below right).
COMMON NAME FOR A SOFT DRINK IN THE UNITED
STATES, BY STATE, 2002.
BERT VAUX USED A 122 ONLINE SURVEY TO MAP DIALECT IN THE
U.S
WHY ARE LANGUAGES DISTRIBUTED THE
WAY THEY ARE?
Language families are group of languages with a shared family but
fairly different origin. There are 15 principal lang families of the world.
Subfamilies are divisions within a language family where the
commonalities are more definite and the origin is more recent.
Indo-Euro langs spread from W in all directions to Eurasia, results from
diffusion; the most widely used Indo-Eur lang today is Eng.
Colonialism also transplanted Indo-Euro langs to the Americas, Africa,
& Australia; Eng also the second lang used by millions in India, Afr,
elsewhere.
The world map of language families shows several language families
spoken by dwindling, often marginally located or isolated groups.
Italian, Spanish, and French are all members of the Romance
language subfamily of the Indo-European language family.
The predominant lang spoken on Madagascar are not of an Afr lang
family but belong to the Austronesian family.
LANGUAGE FORMATION
In the process of classifying languages, linguistic geographers study the
relationships among languages, looking for similarities and differences.
Sound shift- is a slight change in a word across languages within a
subfamily or trough a language family from the present backward toward its
origin.
William Jones, an Englishman living in South Asia, undertook a study of
Sanskrit, the language in which ancient Indian religious and literary text
were written. Jones discovered that the vocabulary and grammatical forms
of sanskrit bore a striking resemblance to the ancient Greek and Latin he
learned while in college.
Jakob Grimm, a scholar and a writer of fairy tales, suggested that sound
shifts might prove the relationships between languages in a scientific
manner. He claimed that related languages have similar consonants. He
said that over time consonants became softer and sounds shifted. For
example, Latin octo (eight) became Italian otto, Spanish ocho, and French
huit.
.
HISTORICAL LINKAGES AMONG
LANGUAGES
INDO-EUROPEAN (IE) LANGUAGE
FAMILY
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN (PIE)
LANGUAGE
NOSTRATIC LANGUAGE
9 BRANCHES OF THE IE LANGUAGE
FAMILY TREE (FOCUS ON GERMANIC,
ROMANCE, SLAV, IRANIAN, INDIC)
DEAD ENDS REPRESENT EXTINCT
LANGUAGES, WHEN DESCENDANTS
PERISH OR CHOOSE ANOTHER
LANGUAGE.
FIGURE 1
LANG DIVERGENCE
August Schleicher was the first to compare the world’s language families through the
branches on a tree. (Fig. 1) By the mid nineteenth century, Schleicher’s proposal of
language divergence (LD) took shape. LD occurs when spatial interaction among
speakers of lang breaks down and the lang fragments first into dialects and then into
discrete tongues. Ex.: Sp and Port., Quebecois and Fr., Sp and Quechuan in Peru,
Eng and Filipino in the Philippines.
Not only can languages diverge, they can also go through a process of language
convergence (LC), collapsing two languages into one. LC creates special problems
for linguists bec the rules of reconstruction may not apply or may be reliable. If
neither LD or LC can be applied, then language extinction becomes the reliable
conclusion.
DISCOVERIES AND LANGUAGES
William Jones conducted a study of Sanskrit, the language in which
ancient Indian religious and literary texts were written.
Jones found that the vocabulary and grammatical forms of Sanskrit
showed an interesting correlation to the ancient Greek and Latin
languages he learned in college
From Jones’s notions, came the proposal of the ‘Proto-Indo-European’
language, as the hearth of ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit
WORLD LANGUAGE FAMILIES: LANGUAGE FAMILIES ARE GROUP OF
LANGUAGES WITH A SHARED FAMILY BUT FAIRLY DIFFERENT ORIGIN.
SUBFAMILIES ARE DIVISIONS WITHIN A LANGUAGE FAMILY WHERE THE
COMMONALITIES ARE MORE DEFINITE AND THE ORIGIN IS MORE RECENT
PIE FORMATION
A technique known as backward reconstruction is used to track sound shifts of the
original language. Vladislav Illich Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky (1960) each used
deep reconstruction to recreate ancient languages. They used stable words and those
used for identification such as: arms, legs, feet, hands as well as: sun, moon, and
other natural environmentally used words. Surprisingly, these two had been working
on this but had never collaborated until later on. They discovered not only Proto-IndoEuropean language, but of its predecessor, Nostratic.
Geographers reconcile if it is possible to deduce a vast majority of the vocabulary of
an extinct language, a language without any native speakers, then it is feasible to
recreate the language that preceded it.
This technique is known as deep reconstruction. After using this method, scholars
found a trace to the Nostratic language.
LOCATING THE HEARTH OF A LANGUAGE
Language divergence: Occurs when spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks down and the
language fragments first into dialects and then into discrete tongues.
Language convergence: Collapsing two languages into one.
Instances of language convergence create special problems for researchers because the rules of
reconstruction may no longer apply.
Conquest Theory: A Theory explaining early speakers of Proto Indo European spread from east to west on
horseback, and thus beginning the diffussion of the language.
Dispersal Hypothesis: Explains that the Proto Indo European languages first carried toward Southwest Asia
and than around the Caspian Sea.
Indo-European Language
Hearth
Dispersal Hypothesis
THE RENFREW HYPOTHESIS
British scholar Colin Renfrew developed his own theory
developed his own theory regarding the diffusion of ProtoIndo European’s and language, and proposed that 3 areas
within the vicinity of the Fertile Cresent gave birth to 3
languages families.
The Renfrew Hypothesis claims Anatolia (currently Turkey)
diffused Indo-European languages, the western region of
the Fertile Crescent came North African and Arabian
languages, and the east spread languages to Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. (Fig. 2)
FIGURE 2
DISPERSAL HYPOTHESIS
Indo-European languages first moved from the hearth
eastward into present-day Iran and southwestern Asia,
then around the Caspian and into Europe, the RussianUkranian plains to the east and the Balkans to the south
and east. (Fig 3)
FIGURE 3
AGRICULTURE THEORY
With increased food supply and increased
population, speakers
from the hearth of Indo-European languages
migrated westward and northward into Europe.
(Fig 4) Cavalli-Szorfa and Ammerman proposed
that every generation the agr frontier moved appx
11 miles, taking about 1500 years to penetrate
Eur.
FIGURE 4
THE LANGUAGES OF EUROPE
Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese
Lies in the areas of Europe that were once controlled by the Roman
Empire and over time it diffused with Latin.
Germanic languages: (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish)
Languages spoken by people who expanded towards Western
Europe.
Slavic languages: (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
Solvenian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croation) Developed by Slavic people
migrating from present day Ukraine to all around Europe.
THE LANG MAP BELOW SHOWS THAT THE INDO-EUR LANG FAMILY
PREVAILS WITH POCKETS OF URALIC OCCURRING IN HUNGARY
(UGRIC SUBFAMILY), FINLAND (FINNIC SUBFAMILY), AND ALTAIC
(TURKISH) WEST OF THE SEA OF MARMARA. THESE ARE NOT PIE
LANG.
Celtic people brought Indo-Eur
tongues into Eur over 3000
years ago but subsequent
migrations and empire building
caused the decline and
marginalization of the Celtic
subfamily. It survives on the
western edges of Eur like
Breton in western Fr but is lost
on the rest of the continent.
EUSKERA
THE BASQUE SPEAK THE EUSKERA
LANGUAGE, WHICH IS IN NO WAY
RELATED TO ANY OTHER LANGUAGE
FAMILY IN EUROPE.
LOCATED IN THE ANDORRA
MOUNTAIN REGION BETWEEN SP
AND FR. NEVER BLENDED OR
DIFFUSED WITH OTHER LANG.
AFTER FRANCO’S DEATH IN 1975,
BASQUE SEPARATIST GROUPS
DEMANDED AUTONOMY AND IT WAS
GRANTED, RECEIVED ITS OWN
PARLIAMENT, AN OFFICIAL
LANGUAGE, EDUCATION POWERS
AND TAXATION TRANSFERS. MANY
BASQUES STILL DEMAND SECESSION
Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa
By studying language subfamilies, languages in parts of the world
such as Sub-Saharan Africa, it helps understand the migration
and settlement patterns.
extreme language diversity
effects of colonialism
Fragmentation of lang in Afr
Subsaharan Afr---dominance of NigerCongo lang family
Bantu migrations marginalized Khosian
family which is now confined to SW Afr
In an attempt to deal with linguistic as
well as cultural diversity, many former
African colonies have taken as their
official language the language of the
former colonial power.
Nigeria's languages
Nigeria's 141 million people
population speak about 500
different languages.
3 most used languages:
1. Hausa: is used in the north
and about 35 million people
speak hausa.
2. Yoruba: is used in the southwest and is spoken by 25
million people.
3. Ibo: is spoken in the southeast by over 25 million people.
The rest of the languages are
spoken by less that one million
people.
Nigeria's culture
Nigeria's culture is very important to their people.
When people move away a lot of those people still send
back money to their families still living there just to keep
their culture and economy alive.
If it wasn’t for Britain, Africa would not be by countries
the exact way it is, and have the different diversities.
English in Nigeria
In 1962, Nigeria won its independence and decided to claim
English as their official country language.
When children go to school, they must learn English.
Although in North Nigeria, they are rethinking about this
policy due to the fact that it is taking up most of their learning
time and not giving them enough time to learn other subjects.
How do languages diffuse?
Chinese and Latin were first learned by the wealthy and
powerful people.
The Gutenberg printing press and the rise of nation sates
were invented in the late Middle Ages.
This worked to spread literacy and stabilize languages
through written forms.
In 1452, Gutenberg printed the first Gutenberg Bible.
The press diffused quickly through Europe.
In 1500, many wars started to begin. This brought trade and
commerce to stimulate and bring in new languages. Started
to bring local languages close to extinction.
LANG DIFFUSION
human interaction ex: rise of empires caused
languages to spread over larger areas
print distribution began with use of printing press in
Late Middle Ages
migration
Trade formation of lingua franca
rise of nation-states
colonialism
Lingua Franca
Before trade brought new languages around, regional trade also
encouraged the people to speak different languages to have better
sources to communicate; language that is the product of a process of
convergence which allows speakers of two or more languages to
communicate
A lingua franca is a language used among speakers of different languages
for the purpose of trade and commerce. It can be a single language or a
mix of more than two languages.
-The first widely known lingua franca was a pidgin language.
Swahili is the lingua franca used of East Africa. Swahili developed from an
African bantu language mixed with Arabic and Persian, being used by 100
million people.
Many of the people do not use Swahili and their first and primary
language.
PIDGIN LANGUAGE
When people speaking two or more languages are in
contact and they combine parts of their languages in a
simplified structure and vocabulary
A Creole Language is a pidgin language that has
developed a more complex structure and vocabulary
and has become the native language of a group of
people.
Both pidgin and creole tend to be very simple and
accessible.
Multilingualism and Monoligualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language by sectors of the population.
For example, in the U.S Spanish is becoming a very known language.
Monolingual states are countries where almost everyone speaks the same language.
For example: Uruguay, Japan, Iceland, Denmark, Portugal, Poland, Lesotho.
Although every country is still going to have small numbers in which people do speak
other languages.
Multilingual states are countries in which more than one language is used.
Official Languages
Official languages- what
countries with linguistic
fragmentation often adopt to
tie the people together.
In former colonies the official
language was what tied
them down to the colonizer.
Many states adopt
languages in hope to get
better communication.
Language Families of India
GLOBAL LANGUAGE
-IT MEANS A COMMON LANGUAGE OF TRADE AND COMMERCE USED AROUND
THE WORLD.
-IF GLOBAL LANGUAGE WERE TO MEAN THE PRINCIPAL LANGUAGE USED
DURING DAY-TO-DAY ACTIVITIES NO LANGUAGE WOULD STUDIED WOULD
BE IN EFFECT NOT EVEN ENGLISH. ENGLISH IS THE STANDARD LANGUAGE
OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND TRAVEL.
LITTLE EVIDENCE IS SHOWN THAT PEOPLE IN A NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING AREA
WOULD CHANGE IT TO ENGLISH
THE TREND THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE WORLD IN COMMUNICATING IN THE
AREAS OF SCIENCE ,TECHNOLOGY, TRAVEL, BUSINESS, AND EDUCATION IS
ENGLISH.
THE ROLE OF ENGLISH IS PREDICTED TO INCREASE EVEN THOUGH IT ISN'T
CERTAIN DUE TO ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INFLUENCES ON LANGUAGE USE
ARE ALWAYS SHIFTING.
Mandarin Chinese is spoken by 955 million
people or 14.1% of the world’s population.
Spanish is spoken by 405 million people or
5.85% of the world’s population; English by
360 million (5.52%); Hindi by 310 million
(4.46%); Arabic by 295 million (4.43%)
TOPONYM
The systematic study of the origin and
meaning of place names; the name of a
specific place, these names often refer
to particular social processes occurring
in a particular area
Imparts a certain character on a place
Reflects the social processes in a place
Can give us a glimpse of the history of a place
These are the ten toponyms with examples:
Mistakes are historic errors in identification
or translation: West Indies
Types of Toponyms
Example
Descriptive
Rocky Mountains
Associative
Mill Valley, California
Commemorative
San Francisco, California
Commendatory
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Incidents
Battle Creek, Michigan
Possession
Johnson City, Texas
Folk
Plains, Georgi
Manufactured
Truth or Consequences,
New Mexico
Mistakes
Lasker, North Carolina
Shift
Lancaster, Pennslyvania
DESCRIBING THE TEN TOPONYMS
An English professor George Stewart defines each type of toponym and describes
these specifically:
He explains manufactured, like Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, which voted to
change its name to honor a 1950s radio game show
Shift names which include places like migrant communities an example being
Lancaster, England to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, clusters of Fr toponyms in LA,
Dutch toponyms in MI, Welsh toponyms in PA
Every toponym has a background tale or story
Knowing the stories behind toponyms can tell us many things about certain places
and their background
TOPONYMS AND GLOBALIZATION
Globalization affects how toponyms are found or used
Using Brazil as an example, colonized by the Portuguese so they include many
Portuguese toponyms as well as German ones in the southern state of Santa
Caterina h
The German word for flower is “Blume” and many last names begin with “Blum” the
flowers of Brazil grew to such a fondness by the Germans that they names many
towns in southern Brazil with that same prefix such as: Blumeau, Blumberg,
Blumenhof, Blumenort, Blumenthal, and Blumenstein.
Also how Argentineans call the archipelago of islands to the southeast coast of
South America as the Malvinas but the British refer to them as the Falkland Islands.
Argentina invaded in 1982 but lost the war so the islands remained under British
control but Argentineans continue calling them the Malvinas.
CHANGING TOPONYMS
When people change the toponym of a
place, they have the power to “wipe out
the past and call forth the new.”
- Yi-Fu Tuan
This is the name of a Welsh town that
takes pride in having the worlds largest
name, they changed the original name
of this town to this unpronounceable
word in fear of the English language
taking over and the Welsh language
diminishing.
The changes in the place-name
provide insight into the cultural
landscape.
CHANGING TOPONYMS
Major reasons people change toponyms:
After decolonization; many places change their names when power changes
hands in a place examples being: Leopoldville, Congo becomes Kinshasa;
Salisbury, Zimbabwe becomes Harare; Northern and Southern Rhodesia to
Zambia and Zimbabwe, East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh, and Lourenço
Marques, Mozambique (commemorating a Portuguese naval hero) changing to
Maputo
After a political revolution: When countries change governance or a revolution that
usually comes with name changes many occurring in Africa, Russia and South
Africa. For example, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Leningrad was
renamed St. Petersburg.
To commodify or brand a place: growing in areas of popular culture, this is used
so companies can brand themselves better and by spreading their name such as
Disneyland in Tokyo spreads its brand as it re-creates the one in the United
States.
WHERE ARE MLK STREETS IN THE US?
To memorialize people or
events: important people leave
lasting impressions on certain
places such as: Martin Luther
King or many people calling to
change confederate symbols
instead to honor the civil rights
movement.