AP Human Geography Chapter 4-7 Culture Unit

Chapters 4-7; Chapter 4; Folk and Popular Culture, Chapter 5; Language, Chapter 6; Religion, Chapter 7; Ethnicities, These Vocabulary Words Comprise All of This Unit

Acculturation

The process of adjustment to the dominant culture.

Assimilation

The process of giving up cultural traditions and adopting the social customs of the dominant culture of a place.

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Folk culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Habit

A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Popular culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Terroir

The contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to the way food tastes

Creole (or creolized) language

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Dialect

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Extinct language

A language that was once use by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Isogloss

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.

Isolated language

A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.

Language

A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

Language branch

A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that can be confirmed through archaeological evidence.

Language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Language group

A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

Lingua franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.

Literary tradition

A language that is written as well as spoken.

Official language

The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.

Pidgin language

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

Standard language

The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications.

Toponym

Place names given to certain features on the land such as settlements, terrain features, and streams.

Denglish

A combination of Deutsch (the German word for German) and English).

Developing language

A language spoken in daily use with a literary tradition that is not widely distributed.

Ebonics

A dialect spoken by some African Americans.

Franglais

A combination of francais and anglais (the French words for French and English respectively).

Institutional language

A language used in education, work, mass media, and government.

Logogram

A symbol that represents a word rather than a sound.

Received Pronunciation (RP)

The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in London and now considered standard in the United Kingdom.

Spanglish

A combination of Spanish and English spoken by Hispanic Americans.

Subdialect

A subdivision of a dialect.

Vigorous language

A language spoken in daily use but that lacks a literary tradition.

Vulgar Latin

A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents.

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Autonomous religion

A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally.

Branch

A large and fundamental division within a religion

Caste

The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned, according to religious law.

Cosmogony

A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.

Denomination

A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations in a single legal and administrative body.

Ethnic religion

A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or congregation).

Ghetto

During the middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews; now used to denote a section of a city in which members of any minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure.

Hierarchical religion

A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control.

Monotheism

The belief in and worship of only one God

Pilgrimage

A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

Polytheism

Belief in or worship of more than one god.

Syncretic

Combining several religious traditions.

Universalizing religion

A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.

Agnosticism

The belief that the existence of God can't be proven empirically.

Atheism

The belief that God does not exist.

Congregation

A local assembly of persons brought together for common religious worship

Missionary

An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion

Solstice

An astronomical event that happens twice each year, when the tilt of Earth's axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach its most northernmost or southernmost extreme, and resulting in the shortest and longest days of the year.

Apartheid

Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas.

Balkanization

A process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.

Blockbusting

A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that black families will soon move into the neighborhood.

Centripetal force

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.

Ethnic cleansing

A purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

Ethnic enclave

A place with a high concentration of an ethnic group that is distinct from those in the surrounding area.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth.

Genocide

The mass killing of a group of people in attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence.

Nationalism

Loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality

Nationality

Identity with a group of people that share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular place.

Race

Identity with a group of people who are perceived to share a physiological trait, such as skin color.

Racism

Belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Balkanized

A small geographic area that cannot successfully be organized into stable countries because it is inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other.

Racist

A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism.

Sharecropper

A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.

Ethnoburb

A suburban area with a cluster of a particular ethnic population.

Triangular slave trade

A practice, primarily during the eighteenth century, in which European ships transported slaves from Africa to Caribbean islands, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade goods from Europe to Africa.