GEOG 1HA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: French Fries, Indo-European Languages, Germanic Languages
28 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Fundamental way that we distinguish between cultural groups. Most common languages spoken by canadians/hamiltonians are english, french, Language is a cultural variable: a learned behaviour (element of culture thats taught to you) Useful tool to delimit groups and regions (language barriers between different regions ex: ottawa - hamilton) Ex: quebec"s language (street signs) laws (all their street signs must have french first, then english) As many as 7000 languages existed prior to the period of european colonization. Today there is less than 6000 (north america and africa = meaning we probably lost those cultures as well) ex: loss of indigenous communities. Loss of language positive or negative **positive: improved global communications, negative: loss of culture akin to declining biodiversity. Language family: group of closely related languages that likely share a common and ancient origin. Language branch: sub-set of language family, with more recent origin (past several thousand years) (commonalities of languages, ex: french is similar to italian.
