AP Human Geography - Chapter 5 - Language
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Questions and Answers

What is the number of languages spoken today?

6909

How many languages are spoken by at least 100 million people?

11

How many languages are spoken by at least 3 million people?

153

What is a language?

<p>A system of communication through speech; a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meanings.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a literary tradition?

<p>A system of written communication.</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many people speak English as their first language?

<p>23 million</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many people speak English fluently?

<p>500 million</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many countries have English as their official language?

<p>57</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many people live in a country with English as the official language, even if they cannot speak it?

<p>2 billion</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which groups influenced the English language?

<p>Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a dialect?

<p>Regional variation of a language, distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, or pronunciation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is an isogloss?

<p>The geographic boundary for a word's usage or pronunciation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a standard language?

<p>Dialect most acceptable for government, business, education, and mass communication.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is British Received Pronunciation?

<p>The dialect of English spoken by upper class Britons in London that is most commonly used by politicians, broadcasters, and actors.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Angle Germanic evolved into which language?

<p>Northumbrian English.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Jute Germanic evolved into which language?

<p>Kentish.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Saxon Germanic evolved into which varieties?

<p>West-Saxon or Mercian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is Old English?

<p>Time period of English with heavy German influence; very guttural.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is Middle English?

<p>Time period of English with heavy French influence; very light.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Southwestern English was the basis for which dialect?

<p>British Received Pronunciation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

BRP became predominant because of which cities?

<p>London, Cambridge, and Oxford.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Why is vocabulary in America different?

<p>New species of plants and animals, Native American words, new inventions, and the languages of immigrants.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What were the two goals of Noah Webster's Dictionary?

<p>Standardize spelling and grammar, and create a unique American language that is less dependent on England.</p> Signup and view all the answers

The pronunciation of English underwent less change in ________________ than it did in _____________.

<p>The United States; England.</p> Signup and view all the answers

The dialect of English that developed in New England is a result of?

<p>English Puritans from Southeast England.</p> Signup and view all the answers

The dialect of English that developed in the South is a result of?

<p>Slaves and the lower class from Southeast England.</p> Signup and view all the answers

The dialect of English that developed in the Mid-Atlantic region is a result of?

<p>Quakers from Northern England, Scots, Irish, Germans, Dutch, and Swedes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Who divided the Eastern US into three dialect regions?

<p>Hans Kurath.</p> Signup and view all the answers

The regional ________________ in the US are more differentiated than the _______________.

<p>Pronunciations; Vocabulary.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a language family?

<p>Collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before written history (pre-literary tradition).</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the four major language branches of the Indo-European language family?

<p>Indo-Iranian, Romance, Germanic, Balto-Slavic.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the four minor language branches of the Indo-European language family?

<p>Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Celtic.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a language group?

<p>A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two subgroups of the West Germanic group?

<p>High and Low.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which subgroup does Modern Standard German fit into?

<p>High.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which subgroup does English fit into?

<p>Low.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which language branch of Indo-Iranian has the most speakers?

<p>Indo-Iranian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many individual languages are there in the Indo-Iranian language branch?

<p>100+.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two subgroups of the Indo-Iranian language branch?

<p>Indic and Iranian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does English provide for the people of India?

<p>Common ground.</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many languages in the Indic subgroup are spoken by 1 million+ people?

<ol start="29"> <li></li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

How many ways are there to write Hindi?

<p>One.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the Devangari script?

<p>The literary tradition of Hindi.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where is the language of Farsi/Persian spoken?

<p>Iran.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where is the language of Pashto spoken?

<p>Afghanistan.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where is the language of Kurdish spoken?

<p>Kurdistan region.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What three languages are part of the Iranian subgroup of the Indo-Iranian language branch?

<p>Farsi/Persian, Pashto, Kurdish.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>This branch was once a unified language but migration from Asia led to isolation and diversity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the official languages of the UN?

<p>English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, French, Arabic.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the three subgroups of the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>East, West, South.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the most widely used language in the East subgroup of the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>Russian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of Russians speak Russian?

<p>80%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the second most widely spoken languages in the East subgroup of the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>Ukrainian and Belarusan.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the most widely used language of the West subgroup of the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>Polish.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the second most widely spoken languages in the West subgroup of the Balto-Slavic language branch?

<p>Czech and Slovak.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What alphabet do Bosnians and Croats use?

<p>Roman.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What alphabet do Montenegrins and Serbs use?

<p>Cyrillic.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the four most widely used languages in the Romance language branch?

<p>French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is Vulgar Latin/Latin Vulgate?

<p>A slang version of Latin spoken by the masses.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is Francien?

<p>The standard form of French that was established in the 1500's because it was spoken in Paris.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is Castilian?

<p>The standard form of Spanish.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of Spanish and Portuguese speakers do not live in Europe?

<p>90%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the most commonly used colonial language?

<p>Spanish.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the Spanish Royal Academy?

<p>An organization to protect the purity of Castilian.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does Creole/Creolized (language) mean?

<p>The result of a colonized language and the indigenous language mixing.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does Creole literally mean?

<p>A slave born in a master's house.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is a proto language?

<p>An ancestral language from which several language families or languages are descended.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Common __________ in all languages in a language family indicates a common __________.

<p>Vocabulary; origin.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What did all of the languages in the Indo-European language family originally have words for?

<p>Bee, beech, oak, bear, deer, winter, snow.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What did none of the languages in the Indo-European language family originally have words for?

<p>Elephant, camel, rice, bamboo, ocean.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where do most linguists think the Proto-Indo-European language originated?

<p>A cold region that isn't near the ocean.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the diffusion method of the Nomadic Warrior Thesis?

<p>War and Conquest.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the diffusion method of the Sedentary Farmer Thesis?

<p>Peaceful Sharing of Food.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where did the Kurgan people live?

<p>The steppes between Kazakhstan and Russia.</p> Signup and view all the answers

When does the earliest evidence of the Kurgans date back to?

<p>4300 BC.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Why did the Kurgans migrate?

<p>They had domesticated animals and needed more land.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Why were the Kurgans able to conquer much of Europe and South America?

<p>They had horses.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Where did the original speakers of the Sedentary Farmer Thesis live?

<p>Eastern Anatolia (Turkey).</p> Signup and view all the answers

When does evidence for the Sedentary Farmer Thesis date back to?

<p>6700 BC.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Who proposed the Nomadic Warrior Thesis?

<p>Marija Gimbutas.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Who proposed the Sedentary Farmer Thesis?

<p>Colin Renfrew.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does the Sedentary Farmer Thesis state?

<p>The trading of food and agricultural technology led to the diffusion of the Proto-Indo-European language.</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to the Sedentary Farmer Thesis, why were there more speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language?

<p>There was more food available to those who could speak it, and therefore more speakers survived.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language in the Indo-European Language Family?

<p>46%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language in the Sino-Tibetan Language Family?

<p>21%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language in the Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian, and Niger-Congo language families?

<p>6%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language in the Dravidian language family?

<p>4%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language in the Altaic, Austro-Asiatic, and Japanese language families?

<p>2%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the world's population speaks a language that belongs to one of 100 small language families?

<p>5%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the Sino-Tibetan Language Family?

<p>The second largest language family in the world. Spoken in China and other Southeast Asian countries.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Chinese is part of which language branch?

<p>Sinitic branch.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the most common, everyday form of Mandarin?

<p>Pu Tong Hua.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the population of China speaks Mandarin Chinese?

<p>75%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the official language of China and Taiwan?

<p>Mandarin Chinese.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What language helped unify China?

<p>Mandarin Chinese.</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many one-syllable sounds are there in Mandarin Chinese?

<ol start="420"> <li></li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

Listeners must infer the meaning of words in Mandarin based on ___________ and ___________.

<p>Context; intonation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two types of characters in Mandarin?

<p>Phonetic and ideograms.</p> Signup and view all the answers

What percentage of the Chinese people are illiterate?

<p>16%.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Language Overview

  • Approximately 6,909 languages are spoken worldwide today.
  • Only 11 languages have more than 100 million speakers.
  • A total of 153 languages are spoken by at least 3 million people.

Definitions and Concepts

  • Language: A system of verbal communication understood by a group.
  • Literary tradition: Represents systems of written communication.
  • Dialect: Distinct regional variations of a language.
  • Isogloss: A geographic boundary marking variations in word usage or pronunciation.
  • Standard Language: The dialect most widely accepted for formal communication.

English Language Statistics

  • English has approximately 23 million native speakers but is spoken fluently by around 500 million people globally.
  • It serves as the official language in 57 countries and is the primary language for about 2 billion people, including non-speakers.
  • Influenced by several groups: Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans.

English Dialects and Variations

  • British Received Pronunciation (BRP): Spoken by the upper class, associated with politicians and broadcasters.
  • Dialects developed in the U.S. stem from regional influences, including settlers and enslaved groups.
  • Vocabulary in America differs due to the introduction of new species, Native American words, inventions, and other immigrant languages.

Language Families and Branches

  • The Indo-European language family includes four major branches:
    • Indo-Iranian
    • Romance
    • Germanic
    • Balto-Slavic
  • Minor branches include Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Celtic.
  • Language Group: A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin.

Indo-Iranian Language Branch

  • The Indo-Iranian language branch is the most populous, containing over 100 languages, with Indic and Iranian as its two subgroups.
  • Hindi uses the Devangari script and has one standardized form.

Balto-Slavic Language Family

  • This branch was originally unified but became diverse due to migration patterns.
  • Russian is the most widely spoken language in the East subgroup, accounting for 80% of speakers in Russia.

Romance Language Branch

  • Prominent languages include French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, with variations in usage across different regions.
  • Vulgar Latin refers to the colloquialism that evolved from Classical Latin.

Proto-Language and Historical Linguistics

  • A proto-language is the ancient ancestor from which several families derive.
  • Common vocabulary across related languages suggests a shared origin.

Linguistic Diffusion Theories

  • Nomadic Warrior Thesis: Proposes that language spread through war and conquest, associated with the Kurgan people from Kazakhstan.
  • Sedentary Farmer Thesis: Suggests that language diffusion occurred via peaceful agricultural practices, proposed by Colin Renfrew, originating from Eastern Anatolia.

Global Language Families

  • Indo-European comprises 46% of the world population; the Sino-Tibetan family includes 21%.
  • Other families include Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, Dravidian, and smaller families accounting for 5%.

Mandarin Chinese

  • Mandarin is the official language of China and Taiwan, spoken by 75% of the population.
  • It features 420 one-syllable sounds, with meaning often inferred through context and intonation.
  • Mandarin Chinese employs phonetic and ideographic characters.

Literacy and Language Use

  • Approximately 16% of Chinese people are illiterate, indicating varying education levels across regions.

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Test your knowledge on the various aspects of languages as discussed in Chapter 5 of AP Human Geography. This quiz focuses on the number of languages spoken today, their prevalence, and definitions related to language. Challenge yourself with flashcards designed to enhance your understanding of linguistic diversity.

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