Human Geography Unit 3 Culture

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts for Human Geography Unit 3: Culture.

Culture

All of a group's learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects

Language Branch

Dividing a language family into smaller groups Ex. Germanic, Romance, and Slavic are these off of the Indo-European family

Isogloss

Boundaries between variations in pronunciations or word usage

Dialect

Regional variations of a language

Taboo

Behaviors heavily discouraged by a culture

Folk Culture

Beliefs and practices of small, homogenous groups of people, often living in rural areas, that are relatively isolated and slow to change

Lingua Franca

A common language used by people wo do not share the same native language

Isolated Language

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

Conquest Theory

Language began north of the Black Sea. It spread through conquered territory using superior technology and animals

British Received Pronunciation

Instantly recognizable accent often described as "typically British"

Literary Tradition

A language that is written as well as spoken

Terroir

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

Creole

Two of more separate languages mixing and developing more formal structure and vocabulary so they are no longer a pidgin language

Custom

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

Popular Culture

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

Language

A system of communication through speech or movement, a collection of sounds or symbols understood by a group of people to have the same meaning

Language Group

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

Ideogram

A written character symbolizing the idea of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it ex. Chinese characters

Francophone

French speaking areas of the world on just about every continent

Pidgin

A simplified mixture of two languages that has fewer grammar rules and a smaller vocabulary

Ebonics

American black English regarded as a language in its own right rather than as a dialect of standard English

Vulgar Language

The dialect of a language that is spoken by the common of people

Language Family

Collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history

Standard Language

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

Agricultural Theory

People shared agricultural techniques and language diffused through Europe

Extinct Language

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

Official Language

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