Chapter 8 | Spatial Patterns of Language and Religion

Language family

A group of languages that share a common ancestral language from a particular hearth, or region of origin

Isolate

A language that is unrelated to any other known language

Language branch

A collection of languages within a language family that share a common origin and separated from other ______s in the same family several thousand years ago

Language groups

Languages within a language branch that share a common ancestor in the relatively recent past and have vocabularies with a high degree of overlap

Dialect

A variation of a language distinguished by pronunciation, rapidity of speech, word choice, and spelling

Cognate

Words found in different languages that have similar meaning and a shared descent from a common ancestor

Universalizing religions

A religion that tries to appeal to all humans and is open to membership by everyone

Christianity

A universalizing religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ that began in what is now the West Bank and Israel around the beginning of the common era and has spread to all continents

Islam

A universalizing religion based on the teachings of Muhammad that originated in the hearth of Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century

Buddhism

The oldest universalizing religion, which arose from a hearth in northeastern India some time between the mid-sixth and mid-fourth centuries B.C.E. and is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha

Sikhism

The newest universalizing religion; founded by Guru Nanak, who lived from 1469 to 1539, in the Punjab region of northwestern India

Ethnic religions

A religion that is closely tied with a particular ethnic group living in a particular place

Hinduism

An ethnic religion that arose a few thousand years ago in South Asia and is closely tied to India

Judaism

The world’s first monotheistic religion, which developed among the Hebrew people of Southwest Asia about 4,000 years ago

Secularized

Focused on worldly rather than spiritual concerns