Chapter 5 Key Issue 2

Why is English related to other languages?

  • English is part of the Indo-European family
  • the Indo-European family has 8 branches

Distribution of Indo-European Branches

Germanic Branch

  • English and German belong to the West Germanic group of the Germanic branch
  • West Germanic is divided into High Germanic and Low Germanic
    • high: high elevations
    • low: low elevations
  • High German
    • spoken in the southern mountains of Germany
    • basis for the modern standard German language
  • Low German
    • spoken in the northern lowlands of Germany
    • includes English, Flemish, Dutch, Frisian, and Afrikaans
    • Afrikaans is similar to Dutch because Dutch settlers migrated to South Africa
  • Germanic branch also includes North Germanic languages
    • spoken in Scandinavia
    • 4 Scandinavian languages
    • Swedish
    • Danish
    • Norwegian
    • Icelandic
    • all derive from Old Norse

 germanic branch example

Indo-Iranian Branch

  • has the most speakers out of Indo-European branches
Indic (Eastern) Group
  • India
    • 438 languages
    • 29 languages spoken by at least 1 million people
    • most widely used languages in India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) belong to the Indic group
    • official language is Hindi
    • originally a variety of Hindustani
    • grew due to British encouraging its use in government
    • English is a secondary official language
    • used as a common language
    • 22 “scheduled” languages
    • government is obligated to encourage use of those languages
  • Hindi
    • spoken in many different ways
    • can be regarded as a collection of many individual languages
    • one official way to write
    • a script called Devanagari
  • Urdu
    • spoken very similarly to Hindi
    • recognized as a distinct language
    • written with Arabic alphabet
    • most speakers are Muslims (Quran is written in Arabic)
Iranian (Western) Group
  • spoken in Iran and neighboring countries in Central Asia
  • major languages
    • Persian (Farsi) in Iran
    • Pashto in eastern Afghanistan + western Pakistan
    • Kurdish used by Kurds of western Iran + northern Iraq + eastern Turkey
    • written in Arabic alphabet

Balto-Slavic Branch

  • Slavic was once a single languages
  • differences occured when Slavs migrated from Asia to Eastern Europe and lived in isolation

 balto-slavic branch example

East Slavic and Baltic Groups
  • most widely used Slavic languages are eastern ones
    • primarily Russian
    • spoken by >80% of Russian people
    • one of official languages of the UN
  • Russian
    • Soviet officials forced native speakers of other languages to learn Russian to enforce cultural unity
    • Russian was taught as a second language in Eastern European countries dominated by the USSR
    • the want to use other languages was a major drive to the break up of the Soviet Union
    • newly independent republics adopted other languages once the USSR broke
    • Russian still remains the language for communication among officials between past Soviet Union countries
  • Ukrainian and Belarusan are most commonly used after Russian
West and South Slavic Groups
  • most spoken West Slavic language is Polish, followed by Czech and Slovak
  • Czechoslovakia
    • government tried to balance the used of Czech and Slovak, though there were twice as many Czechs as Slovaks
    • balancing measures were effective in promoting national unity during the Communist era, but afterward, Slovakia split from the Czech Republic
    • Slovaks rekindled their long-suppressed resentment of perceived dominance of the national culture by the Czech ethnic group
  • most widely used South Slavic language
    • spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia
    • language was called Serbo-Croatian during Yugoslavia
    • offends Bosnians and Croatians because reminds them when they were dominated by Serbs
    • Bosnians, Croatians, and Serbians call the languages by different names to demonstrate their uniqueness
    • linguists consider them one
    • Bosnians and Croats write it in the Roman alphabet
    • Montenegrans and Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet
  • South Slavic languages
    • Bosnian Muslims introduced Arabic words
    • Croats replaced words regarded as having a Serbian origin
    • may eventually have enough differences to be considered different languages
    • for now, people can understand each other even though they’re considered different languages

Romance Branch

  • evolved from the Latin language spoken by Romans
  • 4 most widely used languages
    • Spanish
    • Portuguese
    • French
    • Italian
  • Spanish + French are 2 of the official UN languages
  • those languages correspond to the boundaries of the states of Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy
    • mountains serve as boundaries
  • other Romance languages
    • Romanian
    • used in Romania and Moldova
    • Romansh (dialect of Rhaeto-Romanic)
    • one of four official languages of Switzerland
    • only spoken by 40,000 people
    • Catalan
    • official language of Andorra
    • also spoken by 6 million people in eastern Spain
    • official language of Spain’s Catalonia province
    • Sardinian
    • a mixture of Italian, Spanish, and Arabic
    • was once the official language of Sardinia
    • Ladin (dialect of Rhaeto-Romanic)
    • spoken by 30,000 people in Italy in South Tyrol
    • Friulian (dialect of Rhaeto-Romanic)
    • spoken by 800,000 people in northeast Italy
    • Ladino
    • mixture of Spanish, Greek, Turkish, and Hebrew
    • spoken by 100,000 Sephardic Jews, most living in Israel

Origin and Diffusion of Language Families

  • languages have existed for a long time, prior to history, so not much is known about the early ones

Origin and Diffusion of English

  • British Isles had been inhabited for thousands of years, but nothing is known about early languages before the Celts
  • Celts arrived with Celtic
  • mainland Europe tribes invaded, pushing Celts to remote northern and western parts of Britain, including Cornwall and highlands of Scotland and Wales
German Invasion
  • tribes invading British Isles were called Angles, Jutes, and Saxons
    • all Germanic tribes
    • northern Denmark → Jutes
    • southern Denmark → Angles
    • northwestern Germany → Saxons
  • England came from Angles’ land
  • at that time, all Germanic people spoke a common language
  • other invasions to England
    • Vikings from Norway
Norman Invasion
  • English is different from German because England was conquered by Normans
  • Normans
    • from Normandy in France
    • spoke French
    • established as England’s official language
    • majority of people didn’t know French in England, so they continued speaking English
  • England lost control of Normandy and had a long period of conflict with France
    • less people in England wanted to speak French
    • official language was eventually changed to English
  • while French had been the official language, French and English mixed, helping form modern English
    • sky, horse, man, woman → Germanic roots
    • celestial, equestrian, masculine, feminine → French roots
  • distribution of English speakers worldwide comes from England’s colonies and migration
Diffusion to North America
  • first diffused west during English colonies
    • after defeating French colonies, English became the principal language
  • British took control of Ireland, South Asia, South Pacific, and southern Africa → English became an official language, though only colonial rulers and elite residents could speak it
  • US has diffused English to the Philippines, which Spain had ceded to the US in 1899
    • after gaining independence, Filipino and English became its official languages

Origin and Diffusion of Romance Languages

  • Romance languages developed from Latin (“Roman’s” language)
  • as the Roman empire conquered areas, it brought Latin with it
    • native languages were extinguished or suppressed
  • as the Roman empire grew, Latin used in each province was based on that spoken by the Roman army at the time of occupation
    • also integrated words from the original language in the area

Vulgar Latin: a form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents

  • introduced to the provinces by soldiers stationed throughout
  • after the collapse of the Roman Empire, former provinces stopped communicating together, creating more regional variation
  • Latin continued to exist, while others adopted languages of conquering groups of people who spoke Germanic and Slavic

Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European

  • if Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian are in the Indo-European family, they must have a common ancestor
  • Proto-Indo-European cannot be proven with certainty because it would have existed prior to writing or recorded history
  • evidence that it once existed is derived from the physical attributes of words themselves
    • words for some animals and trees have common roots
    • linguists believe the words must represent things experienced in the daily lives of the original Proto-Indo-European speakers
  • words for other features, like elephant, camel, rice, and bamboo, have different roots
    • must have been added on later, after the root language split
  • languages share common root words for winter and snow but not for ocean
    • linguists conclude original speakers lived in a cold climate/one that had a winter, but didn’t come in contact with oceans
  • most people accept that Proto-Indo-European had existed, but disagree on when and where it originated and how it diffused
Nomadic Warrior Hypothesis
  • created by Marija Gimbutas
  • first speakers were the Kurgan people
    • homeland was in the steppes near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan
    • nomadic herders
    • among the first to domesticate horses and cattle
    • migrated in search of grasslands for their animals
    • westward through Europe
    • eastward to Siberia
    • southeastward to Iran and South Asia
    • warriors used their domesticated horses as weapons and conquered much of Euope and South Asia
Sedentary Farmer Hypothesis
  • created by Colin Renfrew
  • argued first speakers lived before the Kurgans, in eastern Anatolia
  • Russell D. Gray supports but dates back even earlier
  • diffused from Anatolia westward to Greece
    • and then westward to Italy, Sicily, Corsica, and the Mediterranean coast of France, Spain, and Protugal
    • and then northward to central and northern France and on to the British Isles
  • also said to have diffused northward from Greece toward the Danube River and westard to central Europe
    • then diffused northward to the Baltic Sea and eastward toward the Dnestr River
    • from there, speakers migrated to the Dnepr River, the homeland of the Kurgans
  • diffused along with agricultural practices rather than by military conquest