Movie Quotes - Anchorman - I'm Kind of A Big Deal.wav

You can call me Profe Tewell…or

Entrenador Tewell… or Profe-Entrenador Tewell

• It’s time to TALK a little about LANGUAGE…

Origin of Languages

History and Evolution

• Scientists don’t know when language was first used by humans or their ancestors

• Estimates range– 2 million years ago Homo habilis – 40 thousand years ago Cro-Magnon man– Writing came much later, so there’s not a lot of

data– Oral tradition

• There are an estimated 6,089 languages actively used in the world

Babel

• Christian tradition – Babel (Babylon) was a

city that united humanity, all speaking a single language and migrating from the east; it was the first city to be built after the Great Flood. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens."

Do you know how the story goes?

Culture Hearth

• An area where a distinctive set of cultural traits develops– Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia)– Nile River Valley (Modern Egypt, Ethiopia)

Huong-Yellow River

Ganges Plain

Indus Valley

Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia)

West Africa

Meso- (Middle) America

Andean America

Nile River Valley

The first person that I see touch their nose with their left index finger

gets…..

• To answer a question about this lesson…

• If they get it right, man…it’s CANDY CITY!

Question

• How many languages are there, roughly?

• A. 4,000

• B. 5,000

• C. 6,000

• D. 7,000

Brothers, Sisters, Cousins

• Just like our society, languages are grouped into families that have common ancestors– Who is the common ancestor of you and your

mother or father?– Who is the common ancestor of you and your

cousin?– What language is the common ancestor of

French and Spanish?– From what language has English evolved?

Major Language Families

• Indo-European Largest Family– 3 billion speakers

• Roughly half the World’s population

– Divided into 443 different languages– Most of the major languages of Europe, the

Americas, and many Asian languages

Indo-European (cont’d)

• Each of the following languages is an Indo-European language that has more than 100 million speakers– Bengali (India, Bangladesh)– English (scattered…why?)– French (scattered…why?)– German (scattered…why?)– Hindi (India)– Portuguese (scattered…why?)– Russian (Russia and former USSR)– Spanish (scattered…why?)

You thought the last one was complicated…get a gander at

the next one!

Diffusion of Indo-European Languages

Subfamilies of Indo-European Languages

• Germanic– German– English– Dutch– Norwegian– Swedish– Danish– Others (Frisian, Afrikaans)

Subfamilies of Indo-European Languages

• Romantic– Derived from Latin …Roman Empire– French– Spanish– Portuguese– Italian

Sino-Tibetan• 2nd largest in terms of

the number of native speakers– 250 different

languages– Major subfamily

Chinese languages

Diffusion of Sino-Tibetan Languages

Afro-Asiatic

• 285 million native speakers

• 240 different languages

• Including: Arabic, Hebrew– North Africa– East Africa– Southwest Asia (Middle-East)

Afro-Asiatic

Tribal

• Central and Southern African Languages

• Were spread by the Bantu Tribe between 5 and 7 thousand years ago (5000 BC-3000BC)

• The Bantu were forced to move southward because of invasion, drought, and possible internal strife

• “Tribal” is the name that I have given to those languages originating with the Bantu Migration– Khosian– Niger-Congo– Nilo-saharan

• Languages used primarily south of the Sahara Desert

Austronesian

• Fewest number of native speakers

• Largest number of languages…

• Where From Madagascar to Easter Island

Why are there so few Austronesian language speakers, yet so many languages?

A “Created Language?”

• Esperanto…• Compilation of different languages• Designed to make it easy for everyone to

communicate• 1800s-early 1900s as many as 2 million

people learned the language• No country adopted it, though• The Esperanto Alphabet:

– a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z

Most Widely Spoken Languages?1. Mandarin Chinese (874 million, 16 countries)2. Hindi (366 million, 17 countries)3. English (341 million, 104 countries)4. Spanish (322 million, 43 countries)5. Bengali (207 million, 9 countries)6. Portuguese (176 million, 33 countries)7. Russian (167 million, 30 countries)8. Japanese (125 million, 26 countries)9. German (100 million, 40 countries)10. Korean (78 million, 31 countries)11. French (77 million, 53 countries)