AP Human Geography Unit 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes

Culture

The knowledge, attitudes and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society.

Folk Culture

Cultural traits such as dress modes, dwellings traditions, and institutions of usually small, traditional communities.

Popular Culture

Cultural traits such as dress, diet, and music that identify and are part of today's changeable, urban-based, media influenced western societies.

Hearth

The region from which ideas and cultural traits originate.

Assimilate

The process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group, losing the original defining cultural traits.

Acculturation

The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by a group without losing aspects of the original culture.

Cultural Landscape

The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape.

Ethnic Neighborhood

Neighborhood, typically situated in a larger metropolitian city; composed of a local culture/ethnic group.

Ghetto

A poor densely populated city district occupied by a minority ethnic group linked together by economic hardship and social restrictions.

Divergence

the act of moving away in different direction from a common point

Convergence

the act of joining together in different directions into a new common point

Germanic Languages

English, German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish-- From Northern Europe region

Slavic Languages

Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian-- From Ukraine region

Standard Language

A language that a country's political/intellectual elite promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, etc.

Global Language

The language used most commonly around the world; defined on the basis of either the number of speakers of the language, or the prevalence of use in commerce and trade.

Religion

A system of beliefs and practices that organizes life according to culturally defined ultimate priorities.

Creole Languages

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