Language

言語ユニット

Language as Element of Cultural Diversity

• 6000+ Languages spoken today, not including dialects

• 1500+ Spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa alone

• 400+ in New Guinea alone

• 100+ in Europe

However, this diversity is diminishing:

• 2000+ Threatened or Endangered Languages

Language families

• The Indo-European language family– Largest most wide-spread family– Spoken on all continents– Subfamilies—Romance, Slavic, Germanic,

Indic, Celtic, and Iranic– Seven Indo-European tongues are among the

top 10 languages spoken in the world

English Sanskrit      

Greek Latin Armenian Old Irish Lithuanian

me mam eme me is - manefather pitar       pater pater hayr athair -mother matar       mater mater mayr mathair motinabrother bhratar       - frater elbayr brathair brolis

daughter duhitar thugater- - dustr - duktercow gav- bous bos kov bo guovs(Latv)eoh (OE ) asvas hippos equus - ech asva, marehound svan kuon canis sun con sunfoot pad pod- ped- otn - -new navas ne(w)os novus nor nue naujasbears bharati     pherei  fert bere berid -two duva duo duo erku do duthree trayas treis tres erek tri trys

Which languages share a common ancestor?

Many Indo-European languages have common words for snow, winter, spring; for dog, horse, cow, sheep bear but not camel, lion, elephant, or tiger; for beech, oak, pine, willow, but not palm or banyan tree.

Some Indo-European Shared Words

Indo-European Language Family (50% of World)

Main Branches:

• Germanic - Dutch, German

• Romance - Spanish, French

• Baltic-Slavic - Russian

• Indo-Iranian - Hindu, Bengali

Indo-European Language Family - Germanic BranchWest Germanic

•English (514 million)

•German (128)

•Dutch (21)

East Germanic

•Danish (5)

•Norwegian (5)

•Swedish (9)

Germanic Branch - Icelandic

Iceland colonized by Norwegians in AD 874.

Largely unchanged because of isolation.

.

Germanic Branch - EnglishDiffused throughout the world by hundreds of years of British colonialism. Brought to New World by British colonies in 1600s. Has become an important global lingua franca.

Development of English

Germanic Tribes (Germany/Denmanrk)

• Jutes

• Angles

• Saxons

Vikings (Norway)

• 9th - 11th Centuries

Normans (French)

• Battle of Hastings, 1066

• French was official language for 150 years.

Development of English - Adopted Words

Germanic Tribes (Germany/Denmark)

• kindergarten, angst, noodle, pretzel

Vikings (Norway)

• take, they, reindeer, window

Normans (French)

• renaissance, mansion, village, guardian

Indo-European Language Family - Romance BranchLike English these languages have

been spread by Colonialism.

• Spanish (425 million)

• Portuguese (194) - most in Brazil

• French (129)

• Italian (62)

• Romanian (26)

Indo-European Family - Romance BranchThe Roman Empire, at its height in 2nd century A.D., extinguished many local languages. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, communication declined and languages evolved again.

Literature was all written in Latin until the 13th and 14th centuries.

• Dante Alighieri’s 1314 Inferno written in vulgar latin (Florentine).

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 countries

Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family

– Has two major divisions—Semitic and Hamitic– Semitic covers the area from Tigris-Euphrates

valley westward through most of the north half of Africa to the Atlantic coast

• Large area but consists of mostly sparsely populated deserts

• Arabic is the most widespread Semitic language• Hebrew was a “dead” language used only in

religious ceremonies• Amharic a third major Semitic tongues has 20

million speakers in the mountains of East Africa

Language families

• The Afro-Asiatic family – 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

Language Families of Africa

Fig. 5-14: The 1,000 or more languages of Africa are divided among five main language families, including Austronesian languages in Madagascar.

Afro-Asiatic Language FamilyMain Branch:

Semitic

•Arabic(256)

Language of the Koran; spread by Islamic Faith and Islamic (Ottoman) Empires

•Hebrew (5)

Language of the old Testament (with Aramaic); completely revived from extinction in Israel, 1948.

Niger-Congo Diffusion

• proto-Bantu peoples originated in Cameroon-Nigeria

• They spread throughout southern Africa AD 1 - 1000

• Bantu peoples were agriculturalists who used metal tools

• Khoisan peoples were hunter-gatherers and were no match for the Bantu.

• Pygmies adopted Bantu tongue and retreated to forest

• Hottentots and Bushmen retained the clicks of Khoisan languages

LanguageComplexity

In Nigeria ethnic conflict between southern Ibos and western Yoruba led the government to move the capital to a more neutral central location (Abuja). Many other ethnic battles rage continuously.

In Switzerland, four official languages, a history of peace and tolerance, and a political system that puts power in the hands of local leaders ensure peace.

Nigeria has more than 200 individual languages!

major language families

• Africa south of the Sahara Desert is dominated by the Niger-Congo 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

Sino-Tibetan language family

– 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

Sino-Tibetan Language Family (20%)Branches:

• Sinitic - Mandarin (1075),Cantonese (71),

• Austro-Thai (77) - Thai, Hmong

• Tibeto-Burman - Burmese (32)

Chinese languages based on 420 one syllable words with meaning infered from context and tone.

Chinese Spoken …

• Languages or dialects– Mandarin (about 850 million), – followed by Wu (90 million), – Min (70 million) and – Cantonese (70 million).

• Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible,

• Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in (Wikipedia)

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

major language families

• Austro-Asiatic language family– 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 Sino-Tibetan,

Indo-European, and Austronesian

major language families • Occupy refuge areas after retreat before

rival groups– Khoisan — found in the Kalahari Desert of

southwestern Africa, characterized by clicking sounds

– Dravidian — spoken by numerous darker-skinned people of southern India and northern Sri Lanka

– Basque — spoken on the borderland between Spain and France is unrelated to any other language in the world

Austronesian diffusion

• Presumed hearth in the interior of Southeast Asia 5,000 years ago

• Initially spread southward into the Malay Peninsula

• 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

• Sailing and navigation was the key to Austronesian spread, not agriculture

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 – Most widespread language is Polynesian

Austronesian diffusion

• The remarkable diffusion of the Polynesian people– Form the eastern part of the 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 watery leap of 2,500 miles from the South 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

Austronesian diffusion

• Geographers John Webb and Gerard Ward studied the 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

Searching for the primordial tongue• Using controversial techniques, linguists

seek the more elusive prehistoric tongues

• Nostratic—ancestral speech of the Middle East 12,000 to 20,000 years ago– Ancestral to nine modern language families – A 500-word dictionary has been compiled

• Contemporary with Nostratic were other ancient tongues including Dene-Caucasian

The environment provides refuge

• Inhospitable environments offer protection and isolation• Provide outnumbered linguistic groups refuge from

aggressive neighbors• Linguistic refuge areas

– Rugged bill and mountain areas– Excessively cold or dry climates– Impenetrable forests and remote islands– Extensive marshes and swamps

• Unpleasant environments rarely attract conquerors• Mountains tend to isolate inhabitants of one valley from

another

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

• American Indian tongue Quechua clings to a refuge in the Andes Mountains 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

Examples of linguistic refuge areas

• 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 the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, some remnant of an African language, Gullah, still are spoken

Switzerland

• Switzerland has four recognized national languages: French, German, Italian, and Romansch.

• Romansch, a language of Latin origin, is spoken by only 1.1% of the population.

Switzerland

• Nevertheless, it has survived in the alpine linguistic refuge of the upper Rhine and Inn Rivers and was given official recognition in 1938.

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

Linguistic Ecology

• 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

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English dialects in the United States

• Dialects reveal a vivid geography• American English is hardly uniform from region

to region• At least three major dialects, corresponding to

major culture regions, developed in the eastern United States by the time of the American Revolution – Northern– Midland– Southern

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

English dialects in the United States

• Today, many regional words are becoming old-fashioned, but new words display regional variations

• The following words are all used to describe a controlled-access divided highway– Freeway — a California word– Turnpike and parkway — mainly northeastern and

Midwestern words– Thruway, expressway, and interstate

Key TermsPIDGIN - a form of speech that adopts simplified grammar and limited vocabulary from a lingua franca, used for communication between speakers of two different languages.

Examples include Hawaiian Pidgin and the creoles of West Africa that resulted from the slave trade.

“No eat da candy, Bruddah, it's pilau. Da thing wen fall on da ground.”

Give us da food we need fo today an every day.Hemmo our shame, an let us goFo all da kine bad stuff we do to you,Jalike us guys let da odda guys go awready,And we no stay huhu wit demFo all da kine bad stuff dey do to us.No let us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,But take us outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.Cuz you our King.You get da real power,An you stay awesome foeva.Dass it!”

Matthew 6:9-13 “The Lord’s Prayer”

- Taken from Da Jesus Book, a twelve year effort by 6 linguists to translate the New Testament into Hawaiian Pidgin, published 2001

Key Terms CREOLE - a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with an indigenous language. Often they are pidgins.

a. mo pe aste sa bananb. de bin alde luk dat big tric. a waka go a wosud. olmaan i kas-im cheke. li pote sa bay mof. ja fruher wir bleibeng. dis smol swain i bin go fo maket

I am buying the bananathey always looked for a big treehe walked homethe old man is cashing a checkhe brought that for meYes at first we remainedthis little pig went to market

Can you guess which colonizing language is the base for each of the following creole examples? New Orleans’

French Quarter

Key Terms CREOLE - a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with an indigenous language. Often they are pidgins

a. mo pe aste sa bananb. de bin alde luk dat big tric. a waka go a wosud. olmaan i kas-im cheke. li pote sa bay mof. ja fruher wir bleibeng. dis smol swain i bin go fo maket

French based Seychelles Creole English based Roper River Creole English based SaranEnglish based Cape York Creole French based GuyanaisGerman based Papua New Guinea Pidgin German English based Cameroon Pidgin

Can you guess which colonizing language is the base for each of the following creole examples? New Orleans’

French Quarter

Key Terms DIALECT - a regional variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary.

Social Dialects - can denote social class and standing.

Vernacular Dialects - the common, slang, speech of a region.

TermIs he fair dinkum? Why I declare!Down by the crickbludger mosquito hawknappies

MeaningIs he real or genuine? That’s remarkable!Down by the stream (creek)freeloader; welfare dragon flydiapers

LocationAustraliaDeep South (U.S.)Middle Atlantic StatesAustraliaSouth (U.S.)Britain; Brit. Colonies

Sounds Familiar - English Dialects Website

Common American Slang

Key Terms

ISOLATED LANGUAGE - a language that is not related to any other languages and thus not connected to any language families. Examples include Basque and Icelandic.

Basque Spain

Endangered Languages

As recently as 3,000 years ago, there were 10,000 to 15,000 languages in the world.

Now: about 6000 left.

Of those, 1/2 will be gone by the year 2100 and all but 500 of the rest will be endangered.

More than 90 percent of the languages in existence today will be extinct or threatened in little more than a century if current trends continue.

Extinct or Endangered Languages - Cameroon (11)

BIKYA BISHUOBUNG

BUSUU

DULIGEY

LUO

NAGUMI

NDAI

NGONG

YENI

ZUMAYA

Extinct Languages - USA (93)

ABNAKI-PENOBSCOT ACHUMAWI AHTENA APACHE, KIOWA APACHE, LIPAN ATAKAPA ATSUGEWI BILOXI CADDO CAHUILLA CATAWBA CHEHALIS, LOWER CHEROKEE CHETCO CHINOOK CHINOOK WAWA CHITIMACHA CHUMASH CLALLAM COEUR D'ALENE COOS COQUILLE COWLITZ CUPEÑO EYAK FLATHEAD-KALISPEL GALICE GROS VENTRE HAN HAWAI'I PIDGIN SIGN LANGUAGE HOLIKACHUK HUPA IOWA-OTO KALAPUYA KANSA KASHAYA KATO KAWAIISU KITSAI KOYUKON LUMBEE LUSHOOTSEED MAIDU, NORTHEAST MAIDU, NORTHWEST MAIDU, VALLEY MANDAN MARTHA'S VINEYARD SIGN MATTOLE MENOMINI MIAMI MIWOK MOBILIAN MOHEGAN MONO NANTICOKE NATCHEZ NISENAN NOOKSACK OFO OSAGE POMO POWHATAN QUAPAW QUILEUTE QUINAULT SALINAN SALISH SERRANO SHASTA SIUSLAW SNOHOMISH TANAINA TILLAMOOK TOLOWA TONKAWA TÜBATULABAL TUNICA TUSCARORA TUTELO TUTUTNI TWANA UNAMI WAILAKI WAMPANOAG WAPPO WASCO-WISHRAM WINTU WIYOT WYANDOT YANA YOKUTS YUKI YUROK

Endangered Languages

Why are they disappearing?

Globalization

Migration (Urbanization)

Economic Development

- Lingua FrancasMedia

Internet (Requires Arabic Character Set)

Lingua Franca - a language used for trade by two people who speak different native tongues.

Arabic

Chinese

Farsi Korean

Japanese

Greek