Language

1
Chapter 5

• Language

2
The Indo-European Language Family

• A language family is a collection of languages
  related through a common ancestor that existed
  long before recorded history.
• A language branch is a collection of languages
  related through a common ancestor that existed
  several thousand years ago.

3
Branches of Indo-European

• Branches of Indo-European
• Germanic branch (NW Europe N Amer.)
• Indo-Iranian branch (South Asia)
• Balto-Slavic branch (E Europe)
• Romance branch (SW Europe S. Amer.)
• Albanian
• Armenian
• Greek
• Celtic

4
Germanic Branch of Indo-European

• A language group is 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.
• West Germanic is the group within the Germanic
  branch of Indo-European to which English belongs.

5
Indo-European Language Family
Fig. 5-5 The main branches of the Indo-European
language family include Germanic, Romance,
Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.
6
Indo-Iranian Branch of Indo-European

• Indo-European branch w/ most speakers
  (gt1billiion)
• 100 individual languages
• Indic Group Iranian Group
• 1/3 of Indians use an Indic lang.-Hindi
  Pakistanis use Urdu
• Other lang. fams. In India include Dravidian,
  Sino-Tibetan, and Austro-Asiatic
• Iranian group languages include Persian or Farsi
  in Iran, Pathan in Afghanistan and Kurdish
• These languages are written in Arabic.

7
South Asian Languages and Language Families
Fig. 5-7 Indo-European is the largest of four
main language families in South Asia. The
country of India has 18 official languages.
8
Balto-Slavic Branch of Indo-European

• Slavic was one a single language, but differences
  developed in the 7th century after migrations to
  Eastern Europe and years of isolation.
• East, West, South, and Baltic groups exist.
• Russian is the most widely-used language of the
  East Slavic Group
• It grew in importance with the Soviet Union
• Then partially caused its break-up
• Ukrainian and Belorusian are important, too.

9
Balto-Slavic Branch of Indo-European

• The most spoken West Slavic language is Polish,
  followed by Czech and Slovak
• The two most important South Slavic languages are
  Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian

10
Romance Branch of Indo-European
The Romance branch includes Spanish, French,
Italian and Portuguese, as well as a number of
smaller languages and dialects. It derived from
the Vulgar Latin of the Roman soldiers of the
empire 2,000 years ago. Time and isolation
account for the development of individual
languages.
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Romance Languages Continued

• 90 of the speakers of Spanish and Portuguese are
  outside of those countries.
• These Romance languages were diffused to the
  Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers.

12
Romance Creoles

• A creole language is defined as a language that
  results from the mixing of the colonizers
  language with the indigenous language of the
  people being dominated.
• French Creole in Haiti and Papiamento (Spanish)
  in the Netherlands Antilles are examples.