The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein

Chapter 5: Languages

Key Issue 1: Where Are Languages Distributed?

Pages 142-149

***Always keep your key term packet out whenever you take notes from Rubenstein. As the terms come
up in the text, think through the significance of the term.

1. Define language: a system of communication through speech; a collection of sounds that a

group of people understands to have the same meaning

2. Define official language: a designated language; used by the government for laws, reports,
and public objects like road signs, money and stamp

3. Define language family: a collection of languages related through a common ancestral

language that existed long before recorded history

4. Define language branch: a collection of languages within a family related through a

common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago; differences are not as
extensive or as old as between language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm
that the branches derived from the same family

5. Define language group: a collection of languages within a branch that share a common
origin in the relatively recent past and display many similarities in grammar and vocabulary

6. Make brief notes on each of the following language families as you read about them in this
section (i.e. how many people speak a language of that family, where spoken, common
languages, etc.). See pages 146-149.

a. Indo-European
● most widely used language family
● predominant in Europe, South Asia, and North and Latin America

b. Sino-Tibetan
● predominant in China (1.3 billion population - world’s highest) and smaller countries in
Southeast Asia
● no single chinese language - most common is mandarin (official language of China and
Taiwan and one of the six official languages of the United Nations)
● 7 other Sinitic branch languages are spoken by at least 20 million is China - Wu, Min, Yue
(Cantonese), JInyu, Xiang, Hakka, and Gan.

c. Austronesian
● spoken by 6% of world population, mostly in Indonesia - world’s 4th populous country
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

● Javanese - spoken by 85 million people

d. Austro-Asiatic
● spoken by 2% of world population
● based in Southeast Asia
● Vietnamese - most spoken - is written like our roman alphabet
● Vietnamese alphabet was devised in the 17th century by Roman Catholic missionaries

e. Tai Kadai
● was once classified in Sino-Tibetan
● spoken in Thailand and neighboring portions of China
● similarities with the Austronesian family have led some linguistic scholars to speculate
that people speaking these languages may have migrated from the Philippines

f. Japanese
● written in part with Chinese logograms, Japanese also uses two systems of phonetic
symbols like western languages used either in place of the logograms or alongside them
● Chinese cultural traits have diffused into japanese including the writing of it

g. Korean
● written in a system known as hankul (aka hangul or onmun)- each letter represents a
sound
● more than half of the vocab derives from Chinese words

● Chinese and Japanese words are the principal sources for creating new words to
describe new technology and concepts

h. Afro-Asiatic
● main language is Arabic in two dozen countries of Southwest Asia and North Africa
● 200 million plus Arabic speakers
● world’s Muslims have knowledge of Arabic because the Quran (Islam’s holy book) was
written Arabic in the 7th century
● also Hebrew - language of bible
● official language in 24 countries of SW ASia and North Africa
● one of the six languages in UN

i. Altaic
● originated in the steppes bordering the Qilian Shan and Altai mountains between TIbet
and China
● most speakers is Turkish
● when Soviet Union governed most of the Altaic speaking region of Central Asia, use of
Altaic language was suppressed to create a homogenous national culture
● became official in several newly independent countries after breakup of Soviet Union,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

j. Uralic
● Estonia, Finland, and Hungary
● traceable back to a common language, Proto-Uralic, first used 7,000 years ago by people
living in the Ural mountains - now Russia

k. Niger-Congo
● more than 95% of sub-saharan people
● Swahili - the first language of only 800,000 people and an official language in Tanzania,
but it is spoken as a second language by about 30 million Africans
● esp in rural areas, local languages are used to communicate with others from the same
village but swahili is used to communicate with outsiders
● swahili developed through interaction among African groups and Arab traders
● Swahili is one of the few African languages with an extensive literature

l. Nilo-Saharan
● spoken by a few million people in north-central Africa, immediately north of the Niger-
Congo language region
● division within this family exemplify the problem of classifying African languages
● divided into 6 branches, plus numerous groups and subgroups
● total number of speakers of each individual language is extremely small

m. Khoisan
● use of clicking sounds
● most important language: Hottentot

Key Issue 2: Why is English Related to Other Languages?

Pages 150-157
1. Using the reading on page 150, complete the following chart about the Germanic
Language Branch
Germanic Branch

West Germanic Group North Germanic Group

↓ ↓
High Germanic Low Germanic Swedis Danish Norwe Icelan
h gian dic
- basis of - English,
modern Dutch,
German Flemish,
language Afrikaans,
and Frisian
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

2. Indo-Iranian Branch: Make 2 bullets charts from the reading.

Indic Group (Eastern) Iranian Group (Western)

● 438 languages spoken in India ● Spoken in Iran and other neighboring

- 29 by at least 1 million
● most widely used languages in India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh, belong to the
Indo-European language family, and the
Indo Group of the Indo-Iranian Branch of
Indo-European
● Official Language of INdia is Hindi - an
indo-eu language
● India also include 15 other Indo-
European languages (Assamese, Bengali,
Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani,
Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Panjabi,
Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu)
countries in Central Asia
● Languages include Persian in Iran, Pashto
in eastern Afghanistan and western
Pakistan, and Kurdish used by the Kurds
of western Iran, northern Iraq, and
eastern Turkey
● slavic was once a single language but
differences developed in the 7th century
and is now divided into East West, and
South Slavic groups as well as Baltic
group
● separate group from indic but in Indo-
iranian branch

3. How did Russian become the most important East Slavic language?

Russian became the most important East Slavic language after the Soviet Union rose to
power after the end of World War 2 in 1945. The Soviet forced native speakers of other
languages to learn Russian.

4. What is the most important West Slavic language?

The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

Polish (followed by Czech and Slovak)

5. Describe the controversy between Czech and Slovak languages under Czechoslovakia’s
government? What happened?

The government of Czechoslovakia tried to balance the use of Czech and Slovak during the
communist era and were very effective, but in 1993, 4 years after the fall of communism, Slovakia
separated from Czech Republic and restored their own language and culture. “Slovaks rekindled
their long-suppressed resentment of perceived dominance of the national culture by the Czech ethnic
group”

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

The people who speak the languages are becoming more distant and hostile towards each
other.

7. The four most contemporary Romance languages are Spanish , Portuguese, French &
Italian.

8. How did English become widely diffused?

British colonizations around the world.No

9. What three European people originally came together to form the English people and
English language?
Angles, Jutes, and Saxons

10. Where did these people come from?

From southern Denmark, northern Denmark, and northwestern Germany

11. What two subsequent invasions added additional words to the evolving English language?

● Normans invading England - came from present day Normandy in France

● English ppl invading North America

12. When and why did English diffuse to North America?

British colonization in Jamestown, VA, in 1607

13. How did Latin languages diffuse in Europe? What happened to the native languages?
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

Latin languages diffused in Europe when other countries, specifically the Romans, began
taking over Europe. The native languages were extinguished or suppressed.

14. Define Vulgar Latin:

Not the standard literary form of Latin but a spoken form.

15. What is the name of the (theoretical) common ancestral language of all languages discussed
in this key issue of the chapter?

Proto-Indo European

16. Why is its existence difficult (impossible) to prove?

Its existence is difficult to prove because it would have existed thousands of years before
the invention of writing or recorded history. There is no direct evidence.

17. Contrast the two views of the origin of this language in the chart below.

“Kurgan” Theory Renfrew Hypothesis

● by Marija Gimbutas ● by Archaeologist Colin Renfrew

● hypothesis that the first Proto-Indo-Eu ● argues that Proto-Indo-European was

speakers were the Kurgan people
● their homeland were between present-
day Russia and Kazakhstan
● earliest evidence of them dates back to
4300 B.C.
● they were nomadic herders - among the
first people to domesticate cattle and
horses
● migrated in search of grasslands for their
animal - this took them westwards
toward europe, eastward to siberia, and
southeast toward Iran and South Asia
spoken 2000 years before the Kurgan
people
● the people lived in Eastern Anatolia, part
of present-day Turkey
● biologist Russell D. Gray dates them back
to 6700 b.c.
● Renfrew believes they diffused from
Anatolia to Greece (the origin of the
Greek language branch) and from
Greece to Italy, Sicily, Corsica, the
Mediterranean coast of France, Spain,
and Portugal (the origin of the Romance
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

● b/t 3500 and 2500 BC, Kurgan warriors, language branch)

using their domesticated horses as
● from the mediterranean coast, the
weapons, conquered much of Europe
and South Asia speakers migrated northward to central
and northern france and on to the british
isles (perhaps the origin of the Celtic
language branch)

● Distribution of Indo-EU branches

2. Indo Iranian Branch
- spoken primarily in South Asia
- most speakers of the lang branch
- subdivided into eastern group (indic and western group (iranian)
North Germanic - High Germanic
West Germanic - Low Germanic
3. Balto-Slavic branch
- spoken primarily in Eastern Europe
- Divided into...
>> East Slavic and Baltic Groups: most widely used language is Russian followed by Ukrainian
and Belarusan
>> West and south slavic
4. Romance branch
- spoken primarily in southwestern EU and Latin America
- most widely used are spanish, portuguese, french, and italian
>> regions where spoken languages tend to correspond to the political boundaries of spain,
portugal, france, and italy
● Origin and diffusion of language families
- Modern english has evolved primarily from the language spoken by three germanic
tribes invading the british isles
1. Angles - from southern Denmark
2. Jutes - from northern Denmark
3. Saxons - from northwestern Germany
- Overtime, others invaded England and their languages influenced the basic English
- - vikings from present day norway
- normans from present day normandy in france spoke french
● English diffuses around the world
● - English language migrated with the people of england when they established colonies
over 4 centuries
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

● - english is an off lang in the former british colonies

● DIffusion to north america
● - first successful colony was jamestown, VA, in 1607
● defeat of france by england secured english as the dominant language in north america
● united states responsible for diffusing english to several places - ex philippines
● - INdo-European
● - theorized that germanic, romance, balto-slavic, and indo-iranian languages all
stemmed from a common ancestral language
● - proto-indo-european
● LInguists and anthropologists continue to debate when and where the proto-indo-
european language originated and how it diffused
● - two theories
● 1. nomadic warrior hypothesis
● 2. sedentary farmer hypothesis

Key Issue 3: Why Do Individual Languages Vary Among Places?

Pages 158-163

1. Dialects are defined as “regional variations of a language” and are distinguished by three
things. What are they?

● Pronunciation
● Spelling
● Vocabulary

2. Explain what an isogloss is.

A word-usage boundary; boundaries of where regional words are used can be mapped
visualization of words used in specific regions

3. People from all three eastern regions (New England, Southeastern, Midlands) migrated into
the Midwest, Great Plains and Western United States. Why is there a relatively uniform form
of English (dialect) spoken across this enormous area?

The migration and mobility of americans allowed for an uniform dialect to spread across the
country. Also mass media, especially television and radio, allowed a uniform form of English.

4. Define standard language:

Dialect that is well-established and widely recognized as the most acceptable for
government, business, education, and mass communication.
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

5. What is the standard language for of English? Where did it come from (3 cities)? How was it
diffused throughout Britain?

The standard language for English is RP (Received Pronunciation). It came from London,
Cambridge, and Oxford. It spread through hierarchical diffusion.

6. In a single word, why is American English different from that spoken in England?

Isolation

7. Why don’t people in the United States speak “proper” English?

Because America has adapted other cultures. Also they have changed the English language a
bit to be more independent from Britain and they have stayed isolated from them.

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

9. Why is it difficult to distinguish individual languages from dialects?

Because speakers tend to regard their language as distinct.

10. Define creolized language:

- language that results from the mixing of the colonizer’s language with the indigenous
language of the people being dominated
- forms when the colonized group adopts the language of the dominant group, but
makes some changes, such as simplifying the grammar and adding words from the
former language

A dialect is a regional variation of language distinguished by distinctive vocab, spelling, and

pronunciation.

Large number of speakers and widespread distribution in the United States has contributed to the
existence of a large number of English dialects

12 original colonies can be group into 3 dialect regions: New England, Southeastern, Midlands

Some english words are specific to a dialect: Rural life, food, objects from daily activities
lan

language differences tend to be greatest in rural areas because of limited interaction with people from
other dialect regions

mass media has reduced the number of regionally distinctive words

The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

Dialects in UK
languages with multiple dialects may recognize one as the standard language that is widely recognized
as the most acceptable for government, business, education, and mass communication
- England’s is known as British received Pronunciation (BRP)

Difference between British and American English Dialects

● Vocab
● Spelling - Noah Webster wanted to reduce cultural dependence by changing spelling words in his
dictionary
● Pronunciation

Dialect or language
Increasingly difficult to determine whether two languages are distinct or whether they are dialects of the
same language

Language Diversity
Difficulties can arise at the boundary between two languages

Switzerland
- peacefully exists with multiple languages
- 4 official languages - German (65%), French (18%), Italian (10%), Romansh (1%)
- decentralized government, in which local authorities hold most of the power, and decisions are
frequently made on a local level by voter agenda

Key Issue 4: Why do People Preserve Local Languages?

Pages 164-177
1. Prepare detailed notes with bullets and notations on the maps regarding the following case
studies:
2. Belgium: Political & linguistic divides (Figure 5-27)
Switzerland: Peace in a multi-lingual state (Figure 5-29)
Nigeria: Problems in a multi-lingual state (Figure 5-30)

Notes:

-boundary between the

Romance and Germanic
branches runs through the
middle of two small European
countries, Belgium and
Switzerland

-had more difficulty than

Switzerland in reconciling the
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

interests of the different language speakers

-southern belgians (known as Walloons) speak french

-northern belgians (known as flemings) speak flemish, a dialect of the Germanic language
Dutch

- language boundary sharply divides the country into two regions

Notes:

- peacefully exists with multiple

languages
- key is a long tradition of
decentralized government, in
which local authorities hold most
of the power and decisions are
made by vote referenda
- has 4 official languages -
German, French, Italian , and
Romansh
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

Notes: - Africa’s most populous country

- problems arise from the presence of many speakers of many languages

- has 527 distinct languages and only 3 have widespread use - Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo, each
spoken by 1/8th of the population
- nigeria reflects the problems that can arise when cultural/language diversity is packed into a
relatively small region
- also illustrates the importance of language in identifying distinct cultural groups at a local scale
- speakers of one language are unlikely to understand any of the others in the same language
family, let alone languages from other families

3. Complete the chart below by taking notes on the various languages/countries & the issues
they are facing.
Basque - apparently the only language currently spoken in Europe that survives from the period before
the arrival of Indo-European speakers

- no attempt to link Basque to the common origin of the other European languages has been
successful

- probs once spoken over a wider area but was abandoned where its speakers came in contact
with Indo-Europeans

- the first 666,000 people in the Pyrenees Mountains of northern Spain and southwestern France

- lack of communication to other languages reflects the isolation of the Basque people in their
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

mountainous homeland

- this isolation has helped them preserve their language in the face of the wide diffusion of Indo-
European languages

Icelandic – related to other languages in the North Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-
eu family

- significant bc over the past 1,000 years, it has changed less than any other language in the
Germanic branch

- the norwegian immigrants had little contact with speakers of other languages when they arrived
in Iceland and did not have contact with speakers of their language back in Norway

- had less opportunity to learn new words and no reason to change their language

Native American – when spanish missionaries reached the eastern Amazon region of Peru in the 16th
century, they found more than 500 languages

- now only 92 languages have survived

- out of them, 14 is facing immediate extinction bc fewer than 100 speakers remain

- of the surviving, only Cusco, a Quechuan language, is currently used by more than 1 million ppl

- 74 languages based in the US have gone extinct, they were all spoken by groups of Native
Americans , spoken in the west

Hebrew – rare case of an extinct language that has been revived

- most of the jewish bible was written in Hebrew

- a language of daily activity in biblical times, Hebrew diminished in use in the fourth century b.c.
and was thereafter retained only for jewish religious services

- when israel was established as an independent country in 1948, hebrew became one of their
two official languages, alongside arabic

- hebrew was chosen bc the jewish population of israel consisted of refugees and migrants from
many countries who spoke many languages

- bc hebrew was still used in jewish prayers, no other language could so symbolically unify the
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

disparate cultural groups in the new country

- task of reviving hebrew was formidable

- words had to be created for thousands of objects and inventions unknown in biblical times, such
as telephones, acars, and electricity

- revival effort was initiated by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who lived in Palestine before the creation of
the state of israel and refused to speak any language other than hebrew

- Ben-Yehuda is credited with the invention of 4000 new hebrew words - related when possible to
ancient ones and the creation of the first modern hebrew dictionary

Celtic- (Welsh, Irish, Breton, Scottish, Cornish)

- was a major language in the british isles before the germanic angles, jutes, and saxons invaded

- 2000 yrs ago celtic languages were spoken in much of present-day germany, france, and
northern italy and as well as british isles

- today celtic languages survive only in remote parts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and on the
brittany peninsula of France

- celtic language branch is divided into goidelic (gaelic) and brythonic groups

- 2 goidelic languages survive -irish gaelic and scottish gaelic

- speakers of brythonic (aka cymric or britannic) fled westward during the germanic invasions to
wales, southwestward to cornwall, or southward across the english channel to the brittany
peninsula of france

- recent efforts have prevented the disappearance of celtic languages and others in europe

- the fate of 5 celtic languages is described here in order of number of speakers

Australia - 1 percent of the population is aboriginal

- many elements of aboriginal culture are now being preserved

- but education is oriented toward teaching english rather than maintaining local languages

- english is main, others are secondary

- an essential element in maintaining british culture was restriction of immigration from non-
The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

english speaking places during the 19th and early 20th centuries

- fear of immigration was strong here bc they are close to Asia

- under a “white australia” policy, every prospective immigrant was required to write 50 words of
a european language dictated by an immigration officer. this test was eliminated until 1957

- gov now merely requires that immigrants learn english

New Zealand- more than 20 percent of the population is Maori, descendants of polynesian ppl who
migrated there around 1000 years ago

- nz has adopted policies to preserve the maori language

- maori is one of nz’s 3 official languages - along english and sign language

- A Maori Language Commission was established to preserve maori

- only one percent of new zealanders are fluent in maori, most over age 50

- preserving this language requires skilled teachers and the willingness to endure inconvenience
compared to using the world’s lingua franca, english

- immigrants must already be fluent in english, although free english lessons are available to
immigrants for the exceptions

- more remote from asian land masses, nz has attracted fewer asian immigrants

Occitan- spoken by 2 million ppl in south france and adjacent countries

- name derives from the french region of Aquitaine, which in french has a similar pronunciation to
occitan

- dialects of occitan - Auvergnat, Gascon, and Provencal

- many ppl living in south france wants to see more efforts by the government of france to
encourage the use of occitan

- some schools may teach both french and occitan

The Cultural Landscape by Rubenstein
Chapter 5: Languages

4. Define lingua franca: language of international communication; language mutually

understood and commonly used in trade by people who inherit different native
languages

5. Define pidgin language: simplified form of english or another lingua franca; a form
of speech that adopts simplified grammar and vocabulary used for
communication among speakers of other languages

6. How has expansion diffusion occurred with English? Give three examples.

● english is changing through diffusion of new vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation

● english words are fusing with other languages
● Lingua franca of English is achieved widespread

7. Does the United States have an official language? Why or why not?
No it doesn’t because even though english is spoken the most, it has not been passed by law.

8. Discuss how the French language is important in Canada.

French speakers compromises one-fourth of the country’s population and is one of the two
official languages in Canada.

9. Why is much of the internet in English? Why might this be problematic?

Most of the internet is cited in English. At the beginning, 71% of internet users were English
users, so this explains the lack of diversity and less preservation with even more globalization
of internet because that brings more globalization of english.