human geography by james rubenstein

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Human Geography

By James Rubenstein

Chapter 5Key Issue 3

Where Are Other Language Families Distributed?

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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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20% Speak one of these four language

families. Afro-Asiatic (Middle East)

Austronesian (Southeast Asia)

Niger-Congo (Africa) Dravidian (India)

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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.

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Sino-Tibetan Family

Spoken in China and several Southeast Asian

countries. Sinitic Branch Austro-Thai Branch Tibetan-Burman Branch

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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.

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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.

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Ideograms

Characteristics that represent ideas or

concepts, not specific

pronunciations.

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Key characters

may be built into more complex words.

Ideogram Examples

:

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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.

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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.

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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)

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Vietnamese Most spoken tongue of Austro-Asiatic language family.

Written with Roman alphabet, which was devised by 7th century Roman Catholic missionaries.

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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.

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Altaic and Uralic Language Families

Once thought to be of the same family.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Khoisan Language Family

Concentrated in the southwest.

Distinctive use of clicking sounds.

Hottentot is most important Khoisan language.

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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.

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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.

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