AP Human Geography 5.1 &5.2 Reading Guide
5.1 Where are languages distributed?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Define language
Define literary tradition
Define official language. Does the U.S. have an official language?
How many languages does the world have according to ethnologue.com?
Explain the differences in language families, branches and groups in your own words.
Look at the tree on pages 144-145 to do this.
6. Create an outline of the languages using the tree on page 144-145 using each trunk
coming out of the ground as a Roman Numeral
7. Where is Sino-Tibetan Language spoken?
8. Is “Chinese” a language? If not, what are the main languages spoken in China?
9. What is the relationship between the written word and spoken word between different
Chinese languages?
10. What are logograms?
11. What are most logograms related to?
12. List each of the “other Asian” language families and write down one meaningful fact
about that language that can help you identify it or single it out.
13. Do the same for each Southwest Asian, North African and Central Asian language listed
14. Do the same for each African Language family listed.
15. Using the map on page 146-7, What type of languages are most likely “other”?
16. Again using the map, what type of languages are spoken over the largest part of the
globe?
17. List at least 5 additional observations from the same map.
18. Using the map on page 149, what are the two largest language families in Africa?
5.2 Why is English related to other languages?
1. What are the 4 most widely spoke Indo-European Language branches?
2. How are German and English related? What type of language are they both?
3. Using figure 5-10, what other languages are also West Germanic? Where are they spoken?
4. How many languages are spoken in India?
5.Whay can Hindi be regarded as a collection of many individual languages?
6. Which language is Urdu written in? Why? How does this fact compare to the collection of
languages that Chinese people speak?
7. What is the official language of India? What has been retained as a second language of the
country?
8. Which alphabet is used for Iranian languages?
9. Which are the most widely used Slavic Languages?
10. During the cold war, which language was taught as a second language in Eastern Europe?
11. What countries are now the former Yugoslavia? Which language do the new countries all
speak? How is that same language being split up?
12. Which language did the Romance language evolve from?
13. Why do current languages exist? DIFFUSION
14. What is the earliest language we know about in the British Isles?
15. What did the German invasion cause?
16. What did the Norman invasion cause?
17. List several ways the Romance languages have diffused
18. Explain in the Kurgan Hearth Theory
19. Explain the Anatolan Hearth Theory