Chapter 8: Spatial Patterns of Language and Religion PDF

Chapter 8: Spatial Patterns of Language and Religion © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.1 Patterns of Language Language and Culture Oral and written language can identify and differentiate a culture, unifying the people who speak a common t...

Chapter 8: Spatial Patterns of Language and Religion © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.1 Patterns of Language Language and Culture Oral and written language can identify and differentiate a culture, unifying the people who speak a common tongue. Language and culture both reflect and shape our ways of life. As the needs of a culture change, so does its language. Studying the diffusion of languages helps geographers describe human movement and development. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.1 Patterns of Language Categorizing Languages Languages are organized into families, branches, groups, and dialects. A language family is the largest grouping of related languages. A language family includes languages that share a common ancestral language from a particular hearth or origin. Ancestral languages are not being actively used anymore. An isolate is a language that is not assigned to a language family. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.1 Patterns of Language Categorizing Languages A language branch is a collection of languages within a family sharing common origin and separated from other branches in the same family thousands of years ago. Language groups are languages within a branch that share a common ancestor in the relatively recent past and have vocabularies with a high degree of overlap. A dialect is a variation of a standard language distinguished by differences in pronunciation, degree of rapidity in speech, word choice, and spelling. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language Distribution of Languages The global distribution of languages has changed over time. colonization immigration Arabic, English, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish show wide transcontinental or intercontinental distribution as a result of migration patterns. Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali, Japanese, and Western Punjabi have grown largely as a result of population growth. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language How Languages and Language Families Spread and Change Almost half of the world’s population speaks a language in the Indo-European family. The Indo-European family has 445 living languages. The languages are spoken as a native tongue or a lingua franca. Scholars speculate about the existence of a common ancestral language of the Indo-European family, which they call Proto-Indo-European. Scholars argue about where the Indo-European language family originated, identifying two leading areas: modern Russia or Ukraine and the Asian section of Turkey. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language How Languages and Language Families Spread and Change Kurgan hearth theory: Nomadic Kurgans migrated from an area around the present-day border between Kazakhstan and Russia into Europe, Siberia, Iran, and South Asia. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  Kurgan Hearth Theory Were a nomadic-warrior people Cognates found among the languages of the Indo- European family point to the Kurgan hearth, since the words that would be used to describe climate and landscape, like winter and snow, apply to the Kurgan’s region climate, animals, and trees. Suggest that the people of the region conquered surrounding lands and advanced to Europe and South Asia, thus diffusing the Proto-Indo-European ancestral language. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language How Languages and Language Families Spread and Change Anatolian hearth theory: The first speakers of Proto- Indo-European moved into Europe and South Asia from present-day Turkey. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  Anatolian Hearth Theory Suggests the diffusion of Proto-Indo-European relates to agricultural practices. The adoption of agriculture promoted population growth, causing migration from the hearth to new regions. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language How Languages and Language Families Spread and Change The English language formed as a mixture of several linguistic influences—Celtic, Germanic languages, French, Latin, and borrowings from other languages. English originated on the island of Great Britain and has spread to become the dominant language in areas as far away as Australia and North America. English is one of the most spoken languages in the world and has become the dominant language of politics, business, finance, and technology in much of the world. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language How Languages and Language Families Spread and Change The spread of English exemplifies relocation diffusion and expansion diffusion. Through much of its history, English spread through the hierarchical type of expansion diffusion as English- speaking leaders imposed the language through conquest. Beginning in the 17th century, English spread by relocation diffusion with the establishment of colonies in North America and the Caribbean. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language Impacts of Language Diffusion When cultures interact, languages are impacted in different ways: One culture adopts another’s language. The languages blend to form a new language. The languages become isolated from each other and are preserved. As result of diffusion, cultures sometimes borrow from another language. Worldwide access to English-language media leads to some cultural convergence. Language divergence results from the formation of barriers that separate people into groups. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language Impacts of Language Diffusion Power influences which languages become dominant and subordinate. Speakers of local languages sometimes adopt the imperial language. Power influences toponyms, or place names. Toponym changes can reflect the religious beliefs of those controlling a location. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.2 The Diffusion of Language Impacts of Language Diffusion Endangered languages are the languages of small groups of people that are at risk of disappearing due to declining populations and cultural pressures. Social scientists, linguists, and native speakers are making efforts to preserve endangered languages, and some with considerable success. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company 8.2 The Diffusion of Language Impacts of Language Diffusion © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.3 Patterns of Religion Patterns of Distribution Some religious groups are concentrated within a region, while others are dispersed with a presence on several continents. Practices and belief systems attract different people and impact a religion’s distribution. Historical settlement patterns help explain present-day locations of religious groups. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company 8.3 Patterns of Religion Patterns of Distribution Estimated Majority Religions, 2020 © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Universalizing Religions Universalizing religions attempt to appeal to a wide variety of people and are open to membership by all, regardless of a person’s location, language, or ethnicity. By nature, universalizing religions are open to diffusion. Universalizing religions have commonly spread through relocation and expansion. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Universalizing Religions Christianity, the world’s largest religion, has spread to all continents. started in what is now the West Bank and Israel around the start of the common era first spread through relocation and expansion diffusion as a small group of followers carried the Christian message throughout the Roman Empire and Mediterranean region later spread through hierarchical diffusion with European settlers and conquerors Islam is the world’s second-largest religion. originated in the cities of Mecca and Medina on the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century has deep ties to Judaism and Christianity spread through conquest, trade, and missionary work after the death of Muhammad, the religion’s founder © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Universalizing Religions The oldest universalizing religion is Buddhism. arose from a hearth in northeastern India between the mid- sixth and mid-fourth centuries b.c.e. spread through many parts of Asia through trade and missionaries grew in the United States partly as a result of relocation diffusion through immigration The newest universalizing religion is Sikhism. founded by Guru Nanak, who lived from 1469 to 1539, in the Punjab region of northwestern India mostly concentrated in the Punjab region today © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Ethnic Religions Ethnic religions are closely tied with a particular ethnic group generally in a particular region. Hinduism and Judaism are the world’s two major ethnic religions. The diffusion of these ethnic religions has been limited but still substantial. Hinduism and Judaism have spread largely due to relocation diffusion. Neither religion has actively sought to recruit new believers. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Ethnic Religions The earliest evidence of the origin of Hinduism dates from about 1500 b.c.e. in South Asia. spread has mostly remained limited to South Asia specifically tied to India, leaving its mark on various natural and human features of the South Asian region carried to Southeast Asia through relocation and expansion diffusion by travel of priests, traders, and teachers spread to parts of Africa, Europe, and North America through relocation diffusion © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company  8.4 Universalizing and Ethnic Religions Ethnic Religions Judaism developed among the Hebrew people of Southwest Asia in present-day Israel and Lebanon about 4,000 years ago. initially largely spread through relocation diffusion as deteriorating conditions in Israel led many of the Jews living there to disperse throughout the Roman Empire. spread between the 11th and 20th centuries through relocation diffusion as Jews were persecuted and forced from their homes by governments in Europe. state of Israel founded in 1948, becoming one of the three principal centers of Judaism today, the other two being the United States and areas of the former Soviet Union. many individuals secularized, or not religious but identifying as Jews through ethnicity and culture. © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company Chapter 8 Key Vocabulary Buddhism language family Christianity language group ethnic religion secularized Hinduism Sikhism Islam universalizing religion isolate Judaism language branch © National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company