Why is English related to other
languages?
A LANGUAGE FAMILY is a collection of languages
related through a common ancestral language
that existed long before recorded history.
Indo-European is the world’s most extensively
spoken language family (nearly 3 billion people)
Within a language family, a LANGUAGE BRANCH
(or sub-family) is a collection of languages
related through a common ancestral language
that existed several thousand years ago.
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.
Germanic Branch
West-Germanic is the group within the
Germanic branch that English belongs to.
West-Germanic is further divided into subgroups: High Germanic (basis for modern
German) and Low Germanic (English,
Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Frisian)
North Germanic—4 Scandinavian
languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
and Icelandic
Indo-Iranian Branch of IndoEuropean
Includes more than 100 individual
languages spoken by 1 billion people.
Branch can be divided into two groups,
eastern (Indic) and western (Iranian).
Indic languages include Hindi (1/3 India)—
spoken many different ways but written in
Devangari
Urdu (Pakistan) is spoken like Hindi but
written in the Arabic alphabet
Iranian—Farsi, Pashto (Afghanistan), and
Kurdish—Arabic alphabet
Balto-Slavic Branch
Slavic was once a single language with the hearth in Asia.
Several groups migrated to different areas of Eastern
Europe—divided into East, West, and South Slavic groups
and also Baltic.
East—mostly Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian
West—Polish, Czech, Slovak
South Slavic—spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia,
Montenegro, and Serbia
Bosnia and Croatians use the roman alphabet and
Montenegrins and Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet
When the countries belonged to Yugoslavia, language was
called Serbo-Croatian—recalls dominance of Croatians and
Bosnians by Serbs—now Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian.
Romance Branch
What are the 5 most common romance
languages? SPANISH, PORTUGUESE,
FRENCH, ITALIAN, AND ROMANIAN
What is the root? Latin vs. Vulgar Latin
Mountain ranges—intervening obstacles
Romansh (SW) Catalan (Andorra &
Catalonia), Sardinian,
Ladin, Friullian (Italy), and Romansh are
official dialects of Rhaeto-Romanic
Ladino—mixture of Spanish, Greek,
Turkish and Hebrew—spoken in Israel
Romance Language Dialects
France—North
and South
– Originally Francien (hearth Ile de
France) official in 16th century
– Langue d’oil / langue d’oc
– Hoc illud est (that is so)-> Hoc-> oc O-il
– Languedoc, (Occitan, Auvergnat,
Gascon, Provencal)
Spain/Portugal
Kingdom of Castile merged with Leon and
Aragon--Castilian Spanish
Now called Spanish but Castilian in Latin
America
Spanish and Portuguese achieved global
importance because of imperialism.
Spanish Academy—published official
dictionary in 1992
1994 Portugal, Brazil and several African
countries standardized Portuguese.
Dialects vs. Separate languages
It
is difficult to decide what is a
dialect and what is a separate
language
Creole or creolized language
Mutual intelligibility?
Mutual Intelligibility
Means two people can understand each other
when speaking.
Problems:
Cannot measure mutual intelligibility
Many “languages” fail the test of mutual
intelligibility
Standard languages and governments
impact what is a “language” and what is
a “dialect”
Origin and Diffusion of IndoEuropean
Germanic,
Romance, Balto-Slavic,
and Indo-Iranian are all part of the
same Indo-European family.
Linguists believe the languages to
have descended from one common
ancestral language—proto-European.
How do Linguists Study
Historical Languages?
Backward reconstruction – tracking sound
shifts and the hardening of consonants
backward to reveal an “original” language.
– Can deduce the vocabulary of an extinct
language.
– Can recreate ancient languages (deep
reconstruction)
– Can use common roots for various words to
deduce what type of location the “original”
language came from.
FOR EXAMPLE…
Looking at the physical attributes of the
words themselves, one finds common
roots in all Indo-European languages with
words such as winter, snow, bee, oak,
beech, bear, dear, and pheasant.
Words such as ocean, elephant, camel and
rice cannot be traced back to a common
Proto-Indo-European ancestor.
What does that say?
Historical Linkages among Languages
Indo-European
language family
Proto-Indo-European
language
Nostratic Language
Linguists and Anthropologists
Agree
on the existence of a language
Disagree on when and where and on
the processes and routes
One theory argues war and conquest
Another peaceful food sharing
Kurgan Theory
Marija Gimbutas
Steppes near the border of modern day
Russia and Kazakhstan
Earliest evidence dates back to 4300BC
Nomadic herders migrating through
Western Europe, eastward to Siberia and
southeastward to Iran and South Asia
Used horses and conquered much of
Europe and South Asia between 3500 and
2500 BC
Anatolian Hearth Theory
Colin
Renfrew
First speakers lived 2,000 years
before the Kurgans, in Eastern
Anatolia (present day Turkey)
Argues that speakers grew their own
food and so were peaceful and just
grew in population
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