AP HUMAN GEO TEST- Language Families

Indo-European Branches

-Divided into 8 branches

-Four of the branches are Indo-Iranian, Romance, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic

-Indo-Iranian languages are clustered in South Asia

-Romance languages in northwestern Europe and Latin America

-Germanic languages in northwestern Europe and North America

-Balto Slavic languages in Eastern Europe

-The four less extensively used are Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Celtic

Germanic Branch of Indo-European

-Both German and English belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. This is because of the language spoken by the Germanic tribes that invaded England

-West Germanic is the group within the Germanic branch of Indo-European to which English and German belong to.

West Germanic is divided into High Germanic and Low Germanic, so named because they are found in high and low elevations within present day Germany

-High Germanic is spoken in the southern mountains of Germany

-English is classified in the Low Germanic subgroup of the West Germanic group

-Other Low Germanic languages include Dutch & Frisian

-Low Germanic is a dialect of German spoken in the northern lowlands of Germany

-The Germanic language branch also includes North Germanic languages, spoken in Scandinavia- Swedish , Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic- all derive

Indo Iranian Branch of Indo-European

-The branch of the Indo-European family with the most speakers is Indo-Iranian

-Consists of Eastern(Indic) and Western(Iranian) Groups

-Indic group contains the official languages on India: English and Hindi, spoken in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan

-The Iranian group is spoken in Iran and Southwest Asia. Major Iranian group languages are Persian, Pathan, and kurdish

Balto-Slavic Branch of Indo-European

-Slavic was once a single language, but differences developed in the seventh century when several groups of Slavs migrated from Asia to different areas of eastern Europe. As a result, this branch can be divided into East, West, and South Slavic groups swell as a Baltic group.

-The most widely used Slavic languages are the eastern ones, primarily Russian, then Ukranian, and Belorusian

-The most spoken West Slavic language is Polish, then Czech, and Slovak

-The two most important South Slavic languages are Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian

-In general, differences among all Slavic languages are relatively small

How did Russian become the most important East Slavic language?

-When the Soviet Union gained power after WWI and it forced native speakers of other languages to learn Russian.

Describe the converse between Czech and Slovak languages under Czechoslovakia's government? What happened?

-Government tried to balance the use of the both languages. This contributed to the resentment of Czechs by the Slovaks

Why are South Slavic languages, which were once very similar to each other, becoming increasingly different today?

-Because of the isolation and hostility towards one another these because these countries are no longer unified under Yugoslavia

Romance Branch of Indo-European

-The Romance branch evolved from the Latin language spoken by the Romans 2,000 years ago

-The four most widely used contemporary Romance languages are Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French

-The fifth most important Romance language is Romanian

How did Latin languages diffuse in Europe? What happened to the native languages?

-They were brought by Romans who conquered lands, and native languages were suppresed

Vulgar Latin

-Latin that was the spoken form of the masses and not the literary form

Why is it that nearly 90% of Spanish & Portuguese speakers live outside Europe?

-Because of the colonial activities of Spain & Portugal in Latin America

Why is it difficult to distinguish individual languages from dialects?

-People choose to believe their languages are distinct

Creolized Language

-Language that results in mixing the colonizer language with the indigenous language

Francien

-The dialect of the ile-de-France region, became the standard form of the French

What are the two important dialectical divisions of France today?

-The north-langue d'oi'l and the southern language as langue d'o'c

What is Castillian?

-A Spanish dialect spoken in the north-central part of Spain

How many countries in Latin America have Spanish as their official language?

-18 countries

How does Spain maintain control of Spanish?

-They have the Spanish Royal Academy, who meet every week to clarify pronunciation of grammar rules

Sino-Tibetan family

-Encompasses languages spoken in the People's Republic of China

-The languages of China generally belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan family

-Austro-Thai and Tibetan-Burman are two smaller branches of the family

-The most important language in the Sinitic branch is Mandarin. Mandarin is by a wide margin the most used language in the world. Other Sinitic branch languages are Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Jinyu, and Gan. The Chinese government is imposing Mandarin countrywide

-The major language of the Austro-Thai branch is Thai.

-The major language of the Tibeto-Burman branch is Burmese

Afro-Asiatic Family

-Language family includeS Arabic and Hebrew as well as a number of languages spoken primarily in northern Africa and southwestern Asia

-It's languages were used to write the holiest books of three major world religions, the Judeo-Chirstian Bible and the Islamic Quaran

-Its major language branch is Semitic and its major language is Arabic

-Arabic is the major Afro-Asiatic language

Altaic Language Family

-Was once thought to be linked with the Uralic language family because the two display similar word formation, grammatical endings, and other structural elements

-Turkish is the by far most used Altaic language

-Turkish once used Arabic letters but the government demanded they change it to Roman letters

-Other Altaic languages include Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tatar, Turkmen, Uighur, and the Soviet Union

Uralic Language Family

-Have the only European countries not dominated by Indo-European speakers: Estonia, Finland, and Hungary

-Uralic Languages are able to trace back a common language, Proto-Uralic

Niger-Congo Language Family

-The largest branch of the Niger-Congo family is the Benue-Congo Branch, and its most important language is Swahili

Nilo-Saharan Language Family

-The total number of speakers of each individual language is extremely small

-Has six branches, can be divided into four groups, once group comprises of subgroups

Austronesian Language Family

-The most frequently used Austronesian language is Malay-Indonesian