unit 3 human geo

Acculturation - The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.

Assimilation - the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another

contagious diffusion - The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.

creole - a mother tongue that originates from contact between two languages

cultural determinism - Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. This supports the theory that environmental influences dominate who we are instead of biologically inherited traits.

cultural diffusion - the spread of cultural elements from one society to another

cultural ecology - Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Cultural geography - The subfield of human geography that looks at how cultures vary over space.

Cultural hearths - Heartland, source area, innovation center, place of origin of a major culture

Cultural landscape - the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape

Cultural relativism - the practice of judging a culture by its own standards

Cultural transmission - the process by which one generation passes culture to the next

Culture Region - An area in which people have many shared culture traits

Culture system - A collection of interacting elements taken together shape a group's collective identity. Includes traits, territorial affiliation, shared history, and more complex elements, like language

Culture trait - A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban.

environmental determinism - the view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life including cultural development

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.

ethnocentrism - belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group

hierarchical diffusion - The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places

Indo-European language family - Family of languages with the greatest number of speakers, spoken in most of Europe and areas of European settlement and in much of southwestern and southern Asia.

isogloss - A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate

language families - Group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin

lingua franca - a common language used by speakers of different languages

linguistic fragmentation - Many languages spoken by a small group of people.

linguistic geography - the study of the geographical distribution of linguistic features

official language - The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.

pidgin - an artificial language used for trade between speakers of different languages

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

standard language - The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications.

stimulus diffusion - The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

syncretism - the fusion of originally different inflected forms (resulting in a reduction in the use of inflections)

time-distance decay - The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin or source.

toponymy - the branch of lexicology that studies the place names of a region or a language

transculturation - cultural borrowing that occurs when different cultures of approximately equal complexity and technological level come into close contact

universalizing religion - A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.