GEOG 1HA3 Lecture 11: LECTURE 11- LANGUAGE
5 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
Language: a fundamental way that we distinguish between cultural groups. Language is a cultural variable: a learned behaviour. Language is a useful tool to delimit groups and reigons. Language and the survival of cultural groups: eg. Quebecs language(sign) laws: french signs help cultural survival. As many as 7000 languages existed prior to the period of european colonization: today less than 6000 languages, down 16,000 languages. Loss of language a positive or negative thing: loss of language= better communication, key marker for cultural group= cultural groups are disappearing, biodiversity is decreasing. Language family: a group of closely related languages that likely share a common and ancient origin. Language branch: a sub-set of a language family and with more recent origin: past several thousand years, indo-european, romance languages: french, spanish, italian, germanic languages: english, german, dutch. European colonization: european languages ( english and spanish) Isolation vs. diffusion ( sino-tibetan vs. diffusion=indo-european)
