Topic: Chapter 5 Key Issue 1

Essential Question: Where Period: 2A (AP Human Geography)

Are the World’s Languages
Distributed? Date: 10/25/20

Questions/Cues/Main Ideas:. Notes:

● Language is an important part of culture and has two major
meanings:
○ People’s values
○ People’s tangible artifacts
● Language is the tool that other cultural values use to be spread.

Introducing Languages ● Most people in the U.S. only know one language while in other
countries such as the Netherlands, most people know 2 foreign
languages.

Language and Migration ● The study of language and the distribution of it is a result of
migration. People speak the same language in two different places
because of migration.
● If two groups that share a language have few connections with
each other, then the languages spoken can change.
● These changed languages can become their own language.
● Language is like a luggage that people bring place to place that
takes and gives words from different languages.
● Similarities among languages can help geographers understand the
diffusion and interaction of people worldwide.

Classifying Languages ● Earth’s collection of different languages shows cultural diversity.

● Ethnologue classifies languages into 5 types:
○ Institutional
○ Developing
○ Vigorous
○ In trouble
○ Dying
● Many countries adopt at least 1 institutional language as an official
language.
● The official language is spoken by most of the country’s residents.
● Some countries have the same official language.
● Some countries that have more than one official language require
documents to be in both official languages.
● A lack of literary traditions makes it difficult to document the total
number of languages and their distributions.
● There are two types of daily use languages and they are developing
languages and vigorous languages.
● Dying languages and languages in trouble are disappearing in use.

Organizing Language ● Every language in the world can be organized into different
Families families, branches, and groups.

Language Families ● Every language spoken on Earth can be organized into small
language families.
● In a language family tree:
○ Language families form the trunks of the trees
○ Individual languages are displayed as leaves
○ Some trunks divide into several branches, which represent
language branches
○ The branches can divide a second time into language
groups
● The larger the trunk and leaves of a language family tree, the more
people that speak that language and come from that family.
● Languages are most complex and diverse in Africa.
● Most languages spoken in the world come from the Indo-European
family.

Two Largest Language ● The two language families with the most speakers are
Families Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan.

Indo-European ● Indo-European is the most widely used language family and is

most predominant in Europe, South Asia, North and Latin
America.
 ● It has eight branches. Four are widely used (Indo-Iranian,
Germanic, Romance, and Balto-Slavic) and four are spoken by few
people (Albanian, Armenian, Celtic, and Greek)

Sino-Tibetan ● Sino-Tibetan is the second most widely used language family and
is most predominant in China and other smaller countries in
Southeast Asia.
● Mandarin is the most-used language in the world and is one of the
six official languages of the UN.

Other Large Language ● There are 14 languages families with Indo-European and
Families Sino-Tibetan being the two largest.

Southeast Asia Language ● The three largest language families of Southeast Asia are
Families Austronesian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tai-Kadai.

Austronesian ● 6% of the world speak the languages in this family with most of
them in Indonesia.

Austro-Asiatic ● 2% of the world speak languages in this family with most of the
people being Vietnamese.

Tai-Kadai ● The Tai-Kadai family was once a branch of Sino-Tibetan.

● The main languages of this family are spoken in Thailand and
neighboring portions of China.
● Languages in the Tai-Kadai family may have migrated from the
Philippines.

East Asia Languages ● The two most widely used language families outside of China are
Japanese and Korean.

Japanese ● Japanese uses 2 systems of phonetic symbols and is written in part

with chinese characters.
● Though Chinese cultural traits have diffused into Japan, the
structure of the two languages are still different.

Korean ● Korean is written in a system called hankul where each letter

represents a sound.
● More than ½ of Korean words come from Chinese words. Chinese
and Japanese words are often the sources for new words in Korean.

Other Asian Language ● Dravidian is the principal language family of South Asia, in
Families addition to Indo-European.
● The Altaic and Uralic language families were once a single family
but studies show different geographically distinct origins.

Dravidian ● Dravidian languages are principal ones in southern India.

● The two most widely used dravidian languages are Telugu and
Tamil.
 ● The origin is unknown as it has been studied less than other widely
used language families.
● When speakers of Indo-European languages reached India,
speakers of Dravidian languages were already present.

Altaic ● Altaic languages are thought to have come from the steppes
bordering the Qilian Shan and Altai mountains between Tibet and
China.
● Distribution of this language covers 8,000 kilometers in Asia.
● The Altaic language that has the most speakers is Turkish.
● Use of Altaic languages was suppressed under the Soviet Union.
● With the dissolving of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Altaic
languages became official in several new countries (Ex:
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan)

Uralic ● Uralic languages are traceable back to a common language used

7,000 years ago by people living in the Ural Mountains.
● Migrants carried the Uralic languages to Europe and retained their
language as a major element of cultural identity.
● Estonians, Finns and Hungarians speak languages in the Uralic
family.

African Language Families ● No one knows the exact number of languages in Africa.
● Scholars disagree on African languages into families.
● The world’s third and fourth largest language families are based in
Africa:
○ Afro-Asiatic (North Africa)
○ Niger-Congo (Sub-Saharan Africa)

Afro-Asiatic ● Arabic is the main language of the Afro-Asiatic family.

● Arabic is an official language in two dozen countries of Southwest
Asia & North Africa and one of six official languages of the
United Nations.
● Most Arabic speakers also speak a second language that is a
different form of the official Arabic. (Ex: Egyptian Spoken Arabic)
● There are 34 distinct Arabic languages in addition to the official
one.

Niger-Congo ● 95%+ of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa speak languages in the

Niger-Congo family.
● Yoruba, Igbo, and Swahili are the most spoken languages in the
Niger-Congo family.
● Swahili is used to communicate with outsiders.
● Swahili has Arabic influence and is one of the few African
languages with extensive literature.

Nilo-Saharan ● Languages of the Nilo-Saharan family exemplify the problem of

classifying African languages.
 ● Even with having few speakers, the Nilo-Saharan family is divided
into six branches & numerous groups & subgroups.
● The total number of speakers of each individual Nilo- Saharan
language is extremely small.

America’s Other Language ● Quechuan is the most widely used language family in the Western
Family: Quechuan Hemisphere other than Indo-European.
● Most speakers live in the Andes Mountains
● Most speakers of a Quechuan language use Spanish first.

Key Term(s):
● Language (A system of communication through speech, a collection of sounds that a group of
people understands to have the same meaning)
● Institutional Language (A language used in education, work, mass media, and government)
● Official Language (A language used by the government for laws, reports, and public objects)
● Literary Tradition (When a language is written as well as spoken)
● Developing Language (A language spoken in daily use by people of all ages, from children to
elderly individuals. It has a literary tradition, though it may not be widely distributed)
● Vigorous Language (A language spoken in daily use by people of all ages, but it lacks a literary
tradition)
● Language Family (A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that
existed long before recorded history)
● 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)
● 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)

Summary: Language are an important part of culture and can have two major meanings. Languages can
be people’s values, or people’s tangible artifacts. Language is also the tool that other cultural values use to
be spread. Most people in the U.S. only know one language. The study of language and the distribution of
it is a result of migration. People speak the same language in two different places because of migration. If
two groups that share a language have few connections with each other, then the languages spoken can
change. These changed languages can become their own language. Language is like a luggage that people
bring place to place that takes and gives words from different languages. Similarities among languages can
help geographers understand the diffusion and interaction of people worldwide. Earth’s collection of
different languages can help show cultural diversity. Ethnologue classifies languages into 5 types. They are
institutional, developing, vigorous, in trouble, & dying. Many countries adopt at least 1 institutional
language as an official language with that language being spoken by most of the country’s residents. A
lack of literary traditions in the language makes it difficult to document the total number of languages and
their distributions. There are two types of daily use languages and they are developing languages and
vigorous languages. Every language in the world can be organized into different families, branches, and
groups. They can be further organized into small language families and language family trees. The two
language families with the most speakers are Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan. Indo-European is the most
widely used language family and is most predominant in Europe, South Asia, North and Latin America
while Sino-Tibetan is the second most widely used language family and is most predominant in China and
other smaller countries in Southeast Asia. The three largest language families of Southeast Asia are
Austronesian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tai-Kadai. The two most widely used language families outside of
China are Japanese and Korean. Some languages like Japanese have their language affected by other
cultures and can even have words based on that other culture. The most number of languages spoken can
be found in Africa. No one knows the exact number of languages in Africa. Scholars disagree on some
African languages going into families. In fact, the world’s third and fourth largest language families are
based in Africa. The Afro-Asiatic in North Africa and the Niger-Congo in Sub-Saharan Africa.