THE GLOBAL LINGUISTIC
MOSAIC
CHAPTER
8. A GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
Language is one of the
cornerstones of national identity, cultural unity, and community cohesion. It is
the most important cultural glue—an aspect that binds a culture
together—because without language, there would he no culture. People have very
strong feelings about their language and identify with it (people may be
persuaded to change their religion, but not their language). When a people’s
language is threatened, the response is often passionate and protective.
Thousands of languages are
spoken in the world today (linguists estimate between 5000 and 6000)and they
serve as both unifiers and dividers of humanity. Ironically, all languages may
have a common origin. Consider the following points carefully as you read this
chapter.
Standard
Language
Human languages even those
spoken in preliterate societies—peoples who speak their languages but do not
write it—are fundamentally different from those of nonhuman primates. Human
languages are not static but change constantly because a vital culture requires
a flexible language and the potential vocabulary of any language is infinite.
Mature and complex
cultures—technologically advanced societies—attempt to maintain a standard
language sustained by national institutions and official state examinations. In
The modern world, where innovations diffuse rapidly, such standards are
difficult to uphold one problem that arises is: who decides what the standard
language will be? Not surprisingly, the answer has to do with influence and
power—circumstances that often produce problems in a world where cultural
identity and national self-interest are increasingly significant.
Classification and
Distribution of Languages
The problem of language
classification relates to the definition of language. At issue is what is a
language(according to The dictionary: ”human communication by voice) and what
is a dialect (“language of a particular area or class”)? The issue is a
complex one and it is clear that the distinction is not based on an objective
measure of mutual intelligibility. Instead, it must be recognized that what we
consider a language is a function of society’s view of what constitutes a
cultural community—a matter mat in mm is influenced by historical development
in the political arena.
Language classification uses
terms that are also employed in biology, and for the same reasons: some
languages are related and some are not. Language families are Thought to have a
shared, but fairly distant, origin in a language subfamily, the commonality is
more definite. Subfamilies are divided into language groups, which consist of
sets of individual languages.
Figure 8-2 shows the
distribution of 20 major language families. On this map, only the Indo-European
language family is broken down into subfamilies (greater detail is shown in
Figure 8-3). Spatially, the Indo-European languages are the most widely
dispersed. More people speak languages belonging to the Indo-European language
family than those in any other family. There are good reasons that this pattern.
When the European migration of emigrants and colonists spread over tile world in
the last 500 years, one of the cultural components that spread with them was
their language. Add to this the fact that indigenous populations were virtually
wiped out in The Americas and Australia (and their languages with them) and the
European desire to spread the Christian faith, usually in the language of the
European culture invading the area, and the patterns on the map become easier to
understand.
Major
World Languages
Chinese is spoken by more
people than any other language (Table 8-1), with English ranking second. The
numbers in Table 8-1, however, should be viewed as approximations only. English
is the primary language of 350 million people in 6 major countries and numerous
smaller countries with millions of inhabitants; it is also used as a second
language of hundreds of millions in
The present distribution of
languages, as revealed on maps, is useful in understanding cultural development
and change. Figure 8-4, for example, indicates the four Dravidian languages are
all spoken in a compact region in the south of the
CHAPTER
9. DIFFUSION OF LANGUAGES
CHAPTER
OUTLINE
Understanding the origin and
diffusion of languages is essential to understanding the diffusion of humanity.
By understanding where and how languages developed, we learn about the people
who spoke them. Although there is disagreement on when language arose, there is
no question that it was vital to the development of humanity. By studying the
development and changes in languages we learn much about the development of
humans and their cultures.
Language
Origins
The search for the origins of
language goes back tens of thousands of years. It has yielded information not
only about how language changes but also about the environments where early
languages were spoken. Linguistic reconstruction methods are still
controversial, but with the help of computers, remarkable progress is being made
in the reconstruction of ancient languages and their paths of diffusion.
The diversification of
languages has long been charted through the analysis of sound shifts—finding
similar words with the same meaning in different languages and determining their
common language of origin. If it is possible to deduce a large part of the
vocabulary of an extinct language, it may be possible to recreate the language
that preceded it. This technique, called deep reconstruction, has yielded some
important results. It takes humanity’s linguistic family tree back thousands
of years.
Scientists do not yet agree on
how long ago language emerged. Some believe that the use of language began with
the rise of Homo sapiens 200,000 or more years ago; others argue that simple
vocal communication began much earlier. The first major linguistic hypothesis
proposed the existence of an ancestral Proto-Indo-European language (or closely
related languages) as the predecessor of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, among other
ancient languages. The proposed ancestral language(s) would link not only the
romance language but also a number of other languages spoken from
The
Language Tree
In the mid-nineteenth century
August Schleicher, a German linguist, compared the world’s language families
to the branches of a tree. He suggested that the basic process of language
formation is language divergence—differentiation over time and space.
Languages would branch into dialects; isolation then increased the differences
between dialects. Over time, dialects would become discrete languages.
Schleicher’s idea has stood the test of time and criticism, and the
language-tree model remains central to language research (Figure 9-1).
A complicating factor is that
with human mobility, languages did not merely diffuse through static
populations; they also spread by relocation diffusion (see Chapter 2). If this
caused long-isolated languages to make contact, language convergence occurred.
Researchers then face special problems because the rules of reconstruction may
or may not apply. Modern cultural events add a further complication. We know
that the languages of traditional, numerically smaller, and technologically less
advanced people have been replaced, or greatly modified, by the languages of
invaders. This process of language replacement goes on today, and there is every
reason to believe that it has happened ever since humans began to use language.
Thus languages change through divergence, convergence, and replacement, making
the spatial search for origins problematic.
Recent
Language Diffusion
The final stages of the
dispersal of the older languages—before the global diffusion of English and
other Indo-European languages—occurred in the Pacific realm and in the
Much remains to be learned
about the reasons behind the complexity of the Pacific language map, to say
nothing about the debate over human migration to, and language development and
diffusion in, the
Influences
on Individual Languages
Each of the languages in the world’s language families has its own story of origin and dispersal. It is clear, however, that there are certain critical influences on the diffusion of individual tongues. First, speakers of non-written languages will not retain the same language very long if they lose contact with one another. Second, the diffusion of a single tongue over a large area occurs only when people remain in contact with one another and continue to rely on a common linguistic frame of reference. Three critical components therefore have influenced the world’s linguistic mosaic: writing, technology, and political organization.
CHAPTER
10. MODERN LANGUAGE MOSAICS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
Language is an expression of
culture, serving to both unite and divide people. The question of which language
to use in a multilingual country is an important one since intercultural
Communication is essential for political stability. Sometimes an existing
language will spread worldwide to serve as a means of communications between
people, but in regions where several languages, and their cultures, meet and
merge a whole new language may develop. The study of place names, both
historical and contemporary, can also reveal much about a culture and its
people. In the world of the late 1990s, when the cultural composition of many
countries is changing, questions about language are of particular significance.
Choosing
A Language
The United States has no
official language—The language selected in multilingual countries, often by
the educated and politically powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion;
usually the language of the courts and government—even though we are a nation
of emigrants and enormous ethnic mix. The reason for this is simply that if
there were an “official” language selected for this country—no matter
which language it might be— it would carry with it the implied preference for
the particular culture of which it was the native tongue. It would also imply,
rightly or wrongly, that other languages/cultures were not as important.
Historically, languages spread
primarily by three means; commerce, religion, and conquest, within the
parameters of expansion and/or relocation diffusion. The
Indo-European languages spread globally in this manner and one in particular,
English, diffused throughout the world during the era of colonialism. Largely
because of the political and economic power of
Command of English undoubtedly
is an advantage throughout the world and the position of some governments is
that the advantages of being able to use English Outweigh cultural
considerations. Some countries have made English (or another foreign language)
their official language, giving indigenous languages secondary status. This
provokes charges of neocolonialism or favoring the interest of educated elites.
The emotional attachment to language is not just a matter of protecting
threatened tongues. It is also a practical issue.
Multilingualism
There is no truly
monolingual—where only one language is spoken—country in the world today.
Several, such as
Countries in which more than
one language is in use are called multilingual states. In some of these
countries linguistic fragmentation reflect strong cultural pluralism as well as
divisive forces (see Figure 10-5). This is true in former colonial areas where
peoples speaking different languages were thrown together, as happened in
Lingua
Franca
Traders have often succeeded
in overcoming regional linguistic communication problems where language planners
failed. Centuries ago people speaking different languages were forced to find
ways to communicate for trade. This need resulted in the emergence of a lingua
franca—any common language spoken by peoples with different native tongues,
the result of linguistic convergence. The term comes from the Mediterranean
region and its numerous trading posts during the period following the Crusades.
In several areas of the world today, linguistic convergence has produced
languages of mixed origin. Some of these have developed into major regional
languages (see Figure 10-1).
Toponymy
The study of place names (toponymy)
can reveal a great deal about the contents and historical geography of a
cultural region. Even when time has erased other evidence, place names can
reveal much about a cultural area. Welsh place names in
Toponyms—place names—make
reading a map a fruitful and sometimes revealing experience. A careful eye will
spot Roman names on the map of
CHAPTERS
OUIZ
MULTIPLE-CHOICE
QUESTIONS
1. All languages have at least
one thing in common, they:
a.
change over time
b.
remain static
c.
do not borrow from other languages
d.
do not use symbols
2. Spatially the ? language
family is the most widely dispersed.
a.
Afro-Asiatic
b.
Ural-Altaic
c.
Indo-European
d.
Khoisan
3. The use of sound shifts
helps trace languages back toward their origins. This technique is called:
a.
backward reconstruction
b.
root tracing
c.
deep reconstruction
d.
language foundation tracing
4. In tracing languages
backward many factors must be taken into consideration, such as:
a.
language convergence
b.
the replacement of language by invading forces
c.
linguistic islands
d.
all of the above
5.
In which of the following world regions did the last diffusion of the
older languages take place.
a.
the
b.
the Pacific and
c.
the
d.
Central
6.
The world’s linguistic mosaic has been influenced by three critical
components. Which of the following is not one of these.
a.
transportation
b.
writing
c.
technology
d. political organization
7. Which of the following
languages has become the one most often used as the primary medium of
international communication in business.
a.
French
b.
English
c.
German
d.
Spanish
8. Of the following countries,
which has a division between the English and French speakers that may someday
lead to a permanent division.
a.
b.
c.
d.
9.
Which West African country has so many languages and lesser tongues that
the government adopted English as its “official” language.
a.
b.
c.
d.
10. In the Stewart system of
classification of place names,
a.
manufactured
b.
possessive
c. descriptive
d. commendatory
TRUE/FALSE
QUESTIONS
1. Linguists estimate between 2000 and 3000 languages are being spoken in the world today. (TF)
2. In today’s world, because of migration, most developed countries do not have a standard language. (TF)
3.
4. Languages that may seem to have the same roots but are very different, probably have words in common because of interaction between different cultures. (TF)
5. Occurring only in the past, language replacement occurred when invaders took over a small weaker group. (TF)
6.
Those that believe the agriculture theory of language diffusion think the
first language diffused from the
7.
When early large political systems collapsed language divergence took
place. (TF)
8. During the colonial period,
pidgin English developed in the
9. There are no true
monolingual states left in the world today. (TF)
10. It is likely
STUDY QUESTIONS
1.
How is it that we have come to speak English in the United States, and how is it
that English is becoming a lingua franca of the world?
Trace the diffusion of Modern English back to its origin in
2. Study Figures 10-3, 10-4,
10-5, and 10-6. Relate these figures to information about them in the text. Why
do you think some of these countries have had so many problems? Why do you think
3. What are the major components that make up the definition of language as spoken by humans? What is a standard language? How does the text explain a dialect and isoglosses?
4. Look at Figure 8-3. What does this tell you about the spread of the Indo-European languages? How do you think colonialism and migration (ancient and recent) helped in spreading these languages?
5. In Figure 8-5 we can see
the location of
6. Why is there debate over whether Chinese is one or several languages?
7. Describe the process of deep reconstruction and the role of sound shifts. What factors create problems for people trying to reconstruct old languages?
8. Discuss the theories of language diffusion. How does Cohn Renfrew carry one of these farther?
9. By looking at Figure 9-6, and reading the text, follow the diffusion of language in the Pacific. Discuss the problems encountered in interpreting the time frame and number of migrations.
10.
Discuss the controversies surrounding the diffusion of languages in the
11. Discuss the process of creolization. How is it important in the formation and use of new languages?
12. Why do some countries choose to declare official languages? What are the risks a country faces when it makes such a decision?
13. What does the study of toponymy reveal about past and current cultures of a place? What can we learn from two-pan place names?
14. List the reasons countries
have changed place names. Pay special attention to the former