AP Human Geography - Unit 3 (Culture)

Language Branch

A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

Toponym

place name- often have cultural or physical connection (Washington D.C.)

FBGLD for Arabic

Afro-Asiatic: Semitic

Polytheism

Belief in many gods

Hearth for Judaism

Present day Israel

Hearth for Christianity

Present day Israel

Stimulus Diffusion

a form of diffusion in which a cultural trait spreads but changes slightly as it spreads.

Syncretism religion

combination of two religious value systems

nationality

Identity with a group of people that share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular place (country) as a result of being born there.

Culture

The sum total of 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.

Local Culture

Group of people in a particular place who see themselves as a collective or a community, who share experiences, customs, traits, and who work to preserve those traits and customs.

Material Culture

The art, housing, clothing, sports, dances, foods and other similar items constructed or created by a group of people.

Nonmaterial Culture

The beliefs, practices, aesthics, and values of a group of people.

Hierarchal Diffusion

A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the most connected places or peoples. An urban hierarchy is usually involved, encouraging the leapfrogging of innovations over wide areas, with geographic distance a less important influence.

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas and cultural traits originate.

Assimilate

The process through which people lose originally differentiating traits, such as dress, speech particularities or mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society or culture.

Cultural Appropriation

The process by which cultures adopt customs and knowledge from other cultures and use them for their own benefit.

Ethnic Neighborhood (enclave)

Neighborhood, typically situated in a larger metropolitian city and constructed by or composed of a local culture, in which a local culture can practice its customs.

Commodification

The process though which something cultural is given monetary value.

Distance Decay

The effects of distance on interaction, generally the greater the distance the less interaction.

Time-space Compression

The social and physiological effects of living in a world in which time-space convergence has rapidly reached a high level of intensity.

Cultural Landscape

the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape

Placelessness

Defined by the geographer Edward Relph as the loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape so that one place looks like the next.

custom

practice routinely followed by a group of people

folk-housing regions

A region in which the housing stock predominantly reflects styles of building that are particular to the culture of the people who have long inhabited the area. Usually reflects the resources of physical environment.

residential segregation

Degree of which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of an urban environment.

sense of place

state of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certain character.

language

a set of sounds, combination of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication

standard language

the variant of a language that a country's political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, and other aspects of public life

language family

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

Proto-Indo-European

linguistic hypothesis proposing the existance of an ancestral Indo-European language that is the hearth of the ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskirt languages which hearth would link modern languages from Scandinavia to North Africa and from North America through parts of Asia to Australia

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.

Dialect

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

language divergence

the opposite of language convergence; a process where new languages are formed when a language breaks into dialects due to a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of the language and continued isolation eventually causes the division of the language into discrete new languages

language convergence

the collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of people with different languages; the opposite of language divergence

Renfrew hypothesis (Fertile crescent farmer theory)

hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin Renfrew where in he proposed that three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to 3 lang. families:Europe's indo-European lang. North African and Arabian languages and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India

Kurgan Hypothesis/Nomadic Warrior Thesis

one major theory of how Proto-Indo-European diffused into Europe which holds that the early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tongues.

Germanic languages

languages (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) that reflect the expansion of peoples out of Northern Europe to the west and south

Creole language

language that begun as pidgin language but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the mother tongue

lingua franca

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

Religion

A system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities.A system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities.

Eastern Orthodox Church

One of the 3 major branches of Christianity that arose from the division of the Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian; Arose from Constantinople.

Roman Catholic Church

Arose from Rome after the splitting of the Roman Empire.

Protestant

One of the three major branches of Christianity that arose from challenging of the Roman Catholic Church by many individuals.

Sunni

Branch of Islam that believes in the effectiveness of family and community in the solution of problems. Accept the traditions of Muhammad as authoritative.

Shiite/Shia

Branch of Islam that believes in the effectiveness of family and community in the solution of problems. Accept the traditions of Muhammad as authoritative.

Minarets

Tower attached to a Muslim mosque having one or more projecting balconies from which a crier calls Muslims to pray.

Hajj

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad.

cultural relativism

not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms

Ethnocentrism

Belief in the superiority of one's nation or ethnic group.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

sequent occupance

the notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape

cultural landscape

the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape

impacts of recent colonialism/imperialism on language

spread of European languages; growing use of English as a global lingua franca; near extinction of some tribal languages; spread of spanish language in Latin America (minus Brazil);

Impacts of recent colonialism//imperialism on religion

shift from animism to universal religions in Africa (Christianity and Islam); Global spread of Christianity; regional variations in branch of Christianity practiced (Latin America Catholicism- North America Protestantism)

Contemporary causes of diffusion

Colonial/imperialism; trade; urbanization; globalization; Communication technology

polygot

a person who knows several languages well (4 or more)

Distribution of the 4 major language families

See your map (language families)

indo-european
indo-iranian
indo-aryan/indic

FBGLD for Hindi

FBGLD for english

Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic

FBGLD for Spanish

indo-european
romances

FBGLD for Chinese (Mandarin)

sino-tibetian
sinitic
Chinese
mandarin

Why is the English language the current global language?

U.S. is world super power (after WWII); English colonial empire spread across the world; U.S. is number one world economy (English language of trade);

5 major world religions

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism

Universalizing Religion

faiths that claim applicability to all humans and that seek to transmit their beliefs through missionary work and conversion

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.

Monotheism

Belief in one God

Hearth for Islam

Present day Saudi Arabia

Hearth for Hinduism

India

Hearth for Buddhism

Northern India and Nepal

Ethnicity

A social division based on national origin, religion, language, and often race.

race

A group of human beings distinguished by physical traits, blood types, genetic code patterns or genetically inherited characteristics (controversial but society at large still uses this definition)

Regional Clustering of ethnicities in the US

Hispanic/Latino = Southwest; West
Black = South; Southwest
Asian/Asian American = West Coast

State level clustering of ethnicities

Major Cities/Urban areas

City level clustering of ethnicities

neighborhood clustering/ethnic enclaves

Contagious Diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population as it comes in contact with more and more people. Social media and the internet spread in this manner.

Expansion Diffusion

the spread of a feature from one place to another in a that leads to more people adopting a cultural trait.

relocation diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Multiculturalism

A perspective recognizing the cultural diversity of the United States and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions

Acculturation

The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another, while still maintaining some of their original cultural elements

Assimilation

when a person or group completely adopts the features of a dominant culture. Often is forced, but rarely is 100% successful.