INDO-EUROPEAN



INDO-EUROPEAN

The most widely studied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Many of the most important languages of the world are Indo-European. These languages are official or co-official in many countries and are important in academic, technical and world organizations.

Examples: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian.

Indeed, more than half the world's population speak one or more of these languages either as a mother tongue or as a business language.

The Indo-European languages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India.

• Languages that are essential in multinational contexts or with large numbers of speakers.

Examples: Portuguese, Hindi, German, Bengali.

• Some of the great classical languages of religion, culture and philosophy were Indo-European.

Examples: Latin, Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali.

• Languages that are scattered around the world as their speakers are part of diasporas.

Examples: Greek, Yiddish, Polish, Armenian, Romany, Kurdish, Italian, Punjabi, Gujarati.

BE SURE TO STUDY THE INDO EUROPEA LANGUAGE TREE ON PG 162.

SINO-TIBETAN

The Sino-Tibetan Family is an important Asian family of languages. It contains the world's most spoken language, Mandarin, the official language of China. Thai, Cantonese

The languages in this family are monosyllabic tonal languages. Words are made up of single syllables

Mandarin has over 1600. GUO - country, MEN - gate, WO - I, REN - person, AN - peace. The syllables themselves have tones. This means that the voice can be high, low, rising, falling, etc, just like singing. It is like the way many Europeans raise their voice at the end of a question. As an example the syllable, MEN can mean gate or we depending on tone.

AUSTRONESIAN

Also known as Malayo-Polynesian Family is made up of over 1000 languages spread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as South East Asia. Although covering a large geographical area, the languages are remarkably uniform in structure.

The most common are Malay and Indonesian (which are actually dialects of a single language)

AFRO-ASIATIC

The Afro-Asiatic Family is dominated by Arabic, an important modern and classical language. It is the language of the Quran and of Islam. It is spoken in many Middle East and North African countries and studied outside that region. There are many regional variations and accents.

Other Languages: Hebrew(Language of Judaism and the Old Testament), Maltese

This language family originated in the sahara. During the 7th centrury Arabic spread from the Arabian penninsula as the Religion of Islam spread into cover most of North Africa and the middle east.

NIGER-CONGO FAMILY

The Niger-Congo Family features the many languages of Africa south of the Sahara. The family originated in West Africa. Migrations took the languages to eastern and southern Africa. There are over 900 languages in this family in nine branches. Includes many of the tribal languages of Africa.

Africa's borders reflect colonial history rather than linguistic boundaries. For this reason, many of these languages are spoken across national frontiers.

DRAVIDIAN FAMILY

The Dravidian Family of languages are the very difficult sounding languages of South India. These include the major languages Tamil (spoken in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, northern Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia), Malayalam (Kerala state), Kannada (from Karnataka) and Telugu (Andhra Pradesh). Each has its own script which has the curved appearance typical of South Indian writing.

JAPANESE FAMILY

The Japanese language is spoken by the approximately 120 million inhabitants of Japan, and by the Japanese living in Hawaii and on the North and South American mainlands. It is also spoken as a second language by the Chinese and the Korean people who lived under Japanese occupation earlier this century.

ALTAIC FAMILY

The Altaic Family is named after the Alti Mountains, in Central Asia. These people were nomadic horsemen living in the plains. One group migrated towards Europe, the other group migrated towards the Korean Peninsula and the islands of Japan.

Turkish is the most westerly member of this family as well as the most spoken. Many of the others are spoken in former USSR republics (Azeri in Azerbaijan), Turkmen (in Turkmenia), Kazakh (in Kazakhstan), Kirghiz (in Kyrghystan), Uzbec (in Uzbekistan, land of Genghis Khan), Uigur (in Western China east of the Pamir Mountains).

Mongolian is found in Mongolia (where it is written in the Cyrillic script) and Northern China (with a script that goes down rather than horizontal). Korean and Japanese (sometimes considered) are the most easterly Altaic languages.

Some linguists do not include Korean and Japanese in this family

SOUTHEAST ASIAN FAMILY- Tai Languages

KOREAN FAMILY- Korean Dialects, some consider it part of the Altaic family

URALIC FAMILY

Not all European languages are Indo-European.

There are three European languages that are members of the Uralic Family. The family is named from the Ural mountains. The people speaking these languages originated from the Siberian side of the Urals. Over 1500 years ago they migrated to Europe and have become entirely Europeanized. Their languages tell the story of their migrations.

Major languages: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian

AMERINDIAN

Native American Languages

are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families

Example: Mayan ect.

OTHERS:

A. AUSTRIAIAN -Australian Aboriginal languages NATIVE LANGUAGES

a. Australia's 250 or so native languages have been tentatively classified into over 23 families

B. PAPUAN FAMILY-languages refers to those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian

C. NILO-SAHARAN FAMILY- group of languages spoken near the upper parts of the Nile River

a. The Nilo-Saharan Family includes languages of North East Africa like Nubian of Southern Egypt and Sudan, Dinka and Masai from northern Kenya, and Songhai from the Niger River of West Africa. Originally spoken in the mountains of Ethiopia, this language family has remained close to its place of origin for 10,000 years.

D. KHOISAN FAMILY- Native Languages of southern and Eastern Africa

E. GEORGIAN FAMILY- languages near the Caucus mountains-very linguistically diverse

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