Language

=**__Language__**=

Vocabulary Terms
Language Culture Standard Language Dialects Isogloss Mutual Intelligibility Dialect Chains Language Families Subfamilies Sound Shift Proto-Indo-European Backward Reconstruction Extinct Language Deep Reconstruction Nostratic Language Divergence Language Convergence Renfrew Hypothesis Conquest Theory Dispersal Hypothesis Romance Languages Germanic Languages Slavic Languages Lingua Franca Pidgin Language Creole Language Monolingual States Multilingual States Official Language Global Language Place Toponym

Flashcards are on this link tried to embed them but when I pasted the flashcards just gave me a URL http://quizlet.com/_59qn8

Images, Diagrams and Examples
Korean Character, many of the Asian languages use a set of characters instead of a formal alphabet.

Belgium is a country that is divided by the Flemish-speaking Flanders and the French-speaking Walloons. Brussels, the capital is a bilingual area for business purposes.

Mandarin Chinese is the most common first language that spoken around the world with 885 million in 2005.

Map of the world distribution of the language families. (I apologize for the small print in the legend)

The entire Indo-European Branch on the Language Tree with Proto-Indo-European as the start

The Renfrew Hypothesis showing how the Anatolia region and the Fertile Cresent spread the Indo-European languages

Denmark and Japan are two examples of monolingual states due to the fact that in these states only one language is spoken (Danish/Japanese)

India is the country with the most official languages, 22

In the United States there are dialects based on the large area of our country. The most noticable is the difference between the dialects in the North/Northeastern part of the United States and the Southern section of the country.

This a map of the Languages of Europe. Europe displays some of the most unique languages in the world (Basque) which have a limited background.


 * In 1994 the French government passed laws to stop the use of foreign words in France, a significant fine was placed for violators to this law


 * In the need of having a standardized language governments like that of Ireland's have promoted that all government employees pass an Irish language (Celtic) examination before they can be hired


 * Mutual Intelligibility refers to the fact that if two are people are speaking two different languages such as Spanish and Italian these people will not be able to understand each other. But if they were speaking a two different dialects of one language they will achieve a mutual understanding


 * Dialect nearest to each other geographically will be the most similar (greater spatial interaction) but if you travel farther away from a dialect chain the dialects will become less intelligible due to the lesser amount of spatial interaction


 * There are around 20 major language families and they are shown on the 2nd map above


 * Due to the discoveries of William Jones in the 1700s about the resemblance of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin and scholar Jakob Grimm in the 19th Century about consonants came the idea of an ancestral Indo-European Language


 * Backwards reconstruction methods like tracking sound shifts and the hardening of consonants, along with deep reconstruction which includes recreating an extinct language helped find this Proto-Indo-European Language


 * From the Proto-Indo European language came the Indo-European languages which developed into the Germanic Languages (English), Romance Languages (Spanish), and the Slavic Languages (Russian).
 * Africa is one continent that is filled with many different language families and some nation states inside the continents such as Nigeria have over 400 different languages spoken by its population.
 * Toponyms are categorized into a couple standardized topics such as Post-Colonial, Postrevolution, and Memorial. Examples of each would be the changing of the African Nations' Names when the Europeans gave them their independence (Post-Colonial). The changing of the name Zaire back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo after revolutionary leader Laurent Kabilaousted Mobut was no longer in power. An example of a memorial toponym would be like in the United States whenever Martin Luther King Jr is honored with his name being a major street or boulevard.

__**Current Event**__ [] This PDF is not very recent but the information on working languages in the EU was very interesting to me and thought it would be benefit for review (especially when it mentions the devolution areas trying to have its language become a working EU language). This presentation is current only based on the EU, if this was AP Econ then more information on the status of this supranational organization would be necessary.