Ap Human Geography Unit 5 Flashcard
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How did English become widely diffused?
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England migrated with their language
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What European people originally came together to form the English people and English language?
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Celts, Vikings, Normans, Saxons, Angles, Jutes
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Where did these people come from?
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Denmark, Germany, France, Norway
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What 2 subsequent invasions added additional words to the evolving English language?
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German and Norman invasions
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What 3 things is dialect distinguished by?
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vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation
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What is the standard language for of English? Where did it come from? How was it diffused throughout Britain?
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British Received Pronunciation; London, Oxford, Cambridge; used by politicians, broadcasters, and actors
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Why is American English different from that spoken in England?
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pronunciation
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Language differences, as exhibited in dialects tend to be greater in _______ _______ than in _______ because . . .
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rural areas, cities, farmers are more isolated from interaction with people from other dialect regions
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Why is there a relatively uniform form of English (dialect) spoken across the Midwest, Great Plains, and Western United States?
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they all have an accent, so they tend to pronounce or say things differently, also depends on who settled there first
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What is the West Germanic Group broken down into?
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High Germanic and Low Germanic
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What is the North Germanic Group broken down into?
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Danish, Scandinavian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
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Describe the Iranian Group.
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spoken in Iran and neighboring countries in southwestern Asia, Persian- Iran, Pashto in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, Kurdish- Kurds in western Iran, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey
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Describe the Indic Group.
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India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, 432 languages currently spoken, official language of India is Hindi, 1 billion people live in India
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How did Russian become the most important East Slavic language?
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Soviet Union's rise in power after end of WW2 in 1945
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What is the most important West Slavic language?
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Polish
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What happened in the controversy between Czech and Slovak languages under Czechoslovakia's government?
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The government tried to balance the use of the languages, but twice as many Czech's lived in the country. They did that until the fall of communism, then Slovakia split from the Czech Republic to be able to use their own language again.
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Why are South Slavic languages, which were once very similar to each other, becoming increasingly different today?
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religions are brought into play and people want to use their own language
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What are the 4 most contemporary Romance languages?
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Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian
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How did Latin languages diffuse in Europe? What happened to the native languages?
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Roman armies brought Latin with them; either extinguished or suppressed in favor of the language of the conquerers
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Why is it that nearly 90% of Spanish and Portuguese speakers live outside of Europe?
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colonization of the new world- majorly in Latin America
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Why is it difficult to distinguish individual languages from dialects?
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many speakers choose to regard their languages as distinct
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What is the nae of the (theoretical) common ancestral language of all languages discussed in this key issue of the chapter?
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Proto-Indo European
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Why is its existence difficult (impossible) to prove?
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it would have existed thousands of years before the invention of writing or recorded history
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What is the "Kurgan" theory?
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Nomatic Warrior Theory, 1st Proto-Indo-European speakers were Kurgan people, Kurgans were nomatic herders, migrated in search for grassland for animals, Kurgan warriors used domesticated horses as weapons and conquered much of Europe and south Asia
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What is the Renfrew hypothesis?
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Sedentary Farmer Thesis, 1st speakers of Proto-Indo-European lived 2,000 years before the Kurgans, Indo-European diffused into Europe and South Asia along with agricultural practices rather than by military conquest, and language triumphed because its speakers became more numerous and prosperous by growing their own food instead of relying on hunting
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Indo-European Family
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largest family, divided into Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, English is part of this family
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Sino-Tibetan Family
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2nd largest family, mostly Southeast Asia and China, Mandarin is most commonly spoken language in China-based on 420 1-syllable words, mostly written in ideograms, which represent ideas or concepts, not specific pronunciations
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Austronesian Family
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mostly in Indonesia, large number of languages and dialects, Indonesia's most widely used language is Javanese, Malagasy is spoken in Madagascar
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Afro-Asiatic Family
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Arabic is major language of this family- official language in 2 dozen countries in Middle East, Muslims have some knowledge of this language because of the Quran, family also includes Hebrew, language of the Judeo-Christian Bible, vocab has strong Arabic influences because of interaction with African groups and Arab traders
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Niger-Congo Family
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spoken by more than 95% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1st language is Swahili spoken by 800,000 people and official language of Tanzania, Swahili used to communicate with others from same village and outsiders
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Dravidian Family
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mostly spoken in India
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Japanese Family
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used 2 systems of phonetic symbols Chinese cultural traits have diffused into Japanese society, including original form of writing
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Altaic Family
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originated in the steppes bordering the Qilian Shan and Altai mountains, most common is Turkish- once written in Arabic letters, but now Roman letters used, used to create homogeneous national culture, several countries forced to write in Russian Cyrillic language, but not anymore
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Korean Family
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may be related to Altaic languages of Central Asia or to Japanese, not written in ideograms, but in a system called hankul, each letter represents sound, half of Korean vocab derives from Chinese words
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Austro-Asiatic Family
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based in Southeast Asia, most spoken language of family is Vietnamese, which uses our familiar Roman alphabet, migrants carried Uralic languages to Europe, carving out homelands for themselves in midst of Germanic and Slavic-speaking people
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Tai Kadai
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once classified as branch of Sino-Tibetan, principal languages spoken in Thailand and neighboring portions of China, similarities with Austronesian family led some to believe speaking these languages migrated from Philippines
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Uralic Family
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spoken in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary, traceable back to a common language- Proto-Uralic, 1st used 7,000 years ago by people in Ural Mountains of present-day Russia
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Nilo-Saharan Family
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spoken by few million people in north-central Africa, divided into 6 branches and numerous groups and subgroups, total number of speakers in this family is very small
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Khoisan Family
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use of clicking sounds, most important Khoisan language is Hottentot
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Hebrew
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rare case of an extinct language, most of the Bible is written in it, retained only for Jewish reasons, one official language of Israel
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Switzerlan
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multiple languages, 4 official languages are: German, Italian, French, and Romansh, government places considerable amount of power in small communities
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Basque
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survives from before the arrival of Indo-European, abandoned because of Indo-European, northern Spain, southewestern France, isolated languages
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Icelandic
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North Germanic Group, changed less, Norwegian immigrants had no contact with others, no reason to change their language
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How has expansion diffusion occurred with English?
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English conquered so many countries and forced their language upon them
