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Human Geography By James Rubenstein

Human Geography By James Rubenstein. Chapter 5 Key Issue 3 Where Are Other Language Families Distributed?. About 50% of all people in the World speak a language in the Indo European Family. About 20% of the World speak a language in the Sino-Tibetan family.

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Human Geography By James Rubenstein

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  1. Human GeographyBy James Rubenstein • Chapter 5 • Key Issue 3 • Where Are Other Language Families Distributed? S. Mathews

  2. S. Mathews

  3. About 50% of all people in the World speak a language in the Indo European Family. • About 20% of the World speak a language in the Sino-Tibetan family S. Mathews

  4. 20% Speak one of these four language families. • Afro-Asiatic (Middle East) • Austronesian (Southeast Asia) • Niger-Congo (Africa) • Dravidian (India) S. Mathews

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  6. Language Family Tree • Divided into language families, branches, and groups. • Families form trunks. • Individual languages form leaves. • Branches with less then 5 million speakers and dialects are not shown. S. Mathews

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  8. Sino-Tibetan Family • Spoken in China and several Southeast Asian countries. • Sinitic Branch • Austro-Thai Branch • Tibetan-Burman Branch S. Mathews

  9. Chinese • Mandarin (Pu tong bua – common speech) is the most important. - Spoken by 3/4ths all Chinese. - Official language of People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. • Others; Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Jinyu, and Gan. S. Mathews

  10. Sinitic Structure • Based on 420 one-syllable words with multiple meanings. • Meanings must be inferred from context and tone. • The written form relies on ideograms. S. Mathews

  11. Ideograms • Characteristics that represent ideas or concepts, not specific pronunciations. S. Mathews

  12. Ideogram Examples: Key characters may be built into more complex words. S. Mathews

  13. Japanese • A distinctive language family. • As an island, developed language in isolation. • Written language of Ideograms (from china) • Foreign terms are written with on of two systems of phonetic symbols. S. Mathews

  14. Korean • Often classified as a separate language family. • Written with phonetic characters (referred to as Hankul). • Over half of Korean words are derived from Chinese. S. Mathews

  15. Austro-Thai and Tibeto-Burman Branches • The Thai branch is spoken in Laos, Thailand and parts of Viet Nam. • The Burman branch is spoken in Myanmar (formerly Burma) S. Mathews

  16. Vietnamese • Most spoken tongue of Austro-Asiatic language family. • Written with Roman alphabet, which was devised by 7th century Roman Catholic missionaries. S. Mathews

  17. Afro-Asiatic Language Family • Includes Arabic and Hebrew. • Spoken in North Africa and Southwest Asia. • 4th largest language family. • Languages used to write holiest books of 3 major religions. S. Mathews

  18. Altaic and Uralic Language Families Once thought to be of the same family. S. Mathews

  19. Altaic Languages • Spoken in a 5000 mile band between Turkey and Mongolia. • Turkey is the most widely used example. • Originally written with Arabic letters, switched to Roman letters in 1928. • Include Azerbaijani, Mongolian, and Usbek among others. S. Mathews

  20. Uralic Languages • Estonians, Finish, and Hungarians are among the speakers. • Common root first spoken in the Ural Mountains 7000 years ago, north of the Kurgan homeland. S. Mathews

  21. African Language Families • Nearly 1000 distinct languages and several thousand dialects have been documented. • Result of 5000 years of minimal interaction. • Most lack written tradition. • North African language patterns are relatively clear, but sub-Saharan are more complex. S. Mathews

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  23. Niger-Congo Language Family • More than 95% of sub-Sahara speak languages of this family. • Benue-Congo is the most important branch, which includes Swahili. • Swahili is official language of Tanzania, was originally a mixture of Arabic and African languages. S. Mathews

  24. Nilo-Saharan Language Family • Spoken by a few million people in north-central Africa. • Divided into six branches, each of which are divided into several groups. • Total number of speakers in each group is extremely small. S. Mathews

  25. Khoisan Language Family • Concentrated in the southwest. • Distinctive use of clicking sounds. • Hottentot is most important Khoisan language. S. Mathews

  26. Austronesian Language Family • Once known as the Malay-Polynesian family. • Malay-Indonesian is spoken in Indonesia and is most frequently used example of this family. • Malagasy is spoken in Madascar, which is 1900 miles from other languages of the same family. S. Mathews

  27. Nigeria’s Language Conflict • More than 200 distinct languages. • English is the official language, but only 2% of the people speak it. • Speakers of one language are unlikely to understand any others of the same language. S. Mathews

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