Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

B. Key Issue 2 – Why Is English Related to Other Languages?

 A language family is a collection of languages related to a old language in ancient times (non-
recorded history)
 English belongs in the Indo-European family
 Indo-European is the biggest language family

i. Indo - European Branches

 There are eight branches of the Indo-European family
 They are Indo-Iranian, Romance, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic
 Indo- Iranian is spoken in South Asia, Romance in southwestern Europe and Latin America, and
Balto-Slavic languages in Eastern Europe
 The four not mainly used languages are Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Celtic

a) Germanic Branch of Indo - European

 English belongs to the Germanic branch because of the Germanic tribes that invaded England
1,500 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.
 English and German are part of the West Germanic Group because they are structurally similar
with the same vocabulary
 Other West Germanic languages include Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaans
 Another Germanic branch is Northern Germanic. Scandinavian languages in this group are:
Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic

b) Indo – Iranian Branch of Indo – European

 This branch includes more than 100 individual languages

1 INDIC (EASTERN) GROUP OF INDO – IRANIAN LANGUAGE BRANCH

 The languages spoken in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are in this branch
 There are 438 languages spoken in India
 But the official language is Hindu, which is not a part of this branch. It's a part of the Indo-
European Language
 India uses English as their government language and common language amongst all others

Page 1
 Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

 Hindi is spoken many different ways and could recognized as a collection of many languages.

2 IRANIAN (WESTERN) GROUP OF INDO – IRANIAN LANGUAGE BRANCH

 Spoken in Iran and surrounding countries
 Major languages are Persian (or Farsi) – Iran, Pashto – eastern Afghanistan/ Western Pakistan,
Kurdish used by the Kurds in western Iran, Northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey.
 All of the languages use the Arabic alphabet.

c) Balto – Slavic Branch of Indo – European

 Slavic was once a single language but around 7th century several groups of Slavs migrated from
Asia to Europe.
 Once they were isolated from each other their slavic language diverged into several languages

1 EAST SLAVIC AND BALTIC GROUPS OF THE BALTO SLAVIC LANGUAGE BRANCH
 The mostly widely used Balto-Slavic language is Russian in the eastern slavic branch. The
mostly wide used by the Russian people (80%)
 During communist rule after WW II the communist forces everyone in their empire to learn
Russian as a second language.
 Desire to use their own language drove the break up of the soviet union republics.
 The other countries that speak Russian are Ukraine and Belarus.

2 WEST AND SOUTH SLAVIC GROUPS OF THE BALTO – SLAVIC LANGUAGE BRANCH
 The languages in the western branch are Polish, Czech and Slovak.
 Czech and Slovak are so similar the someone speaking Czech can be understood by a Slavic
person and vica – versa.
 The most important language in the southern branch are spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
 Bosnian and Croats write using the Roman alphabet while the Montenegro and Serbs use the
Cyrillic alphabet (Ћирилица)
 When Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia split up from Yugoslavia they didn't
want to call their languages Serbo-Croatian because it reminded them of being dominated by the
Serbians. They called each of their languages by their country's name. Even Though the
linguists think they are the same.
 Some differences are starting to creep into the languages due to religon (Muslims words →
Bosnian). If they continue to isolate themselves from each other eventually their languages
maybe considered separate.

Page 2
 Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

 There are very small differences between the languages, but because language is a major
element of culture the differences are extremely important.

d) Romance Branch of Indo – European

 The romance languages originated from the Roman language 2000 yrs ago.
 The primary languages are Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian
 These countries are separated by rugged Mountains. Thus causing the isolation that is necessary
for the languages to diverge from the Root – language.
 A fifth romance language is Romanian which the primary language of Romania and Moldova
◦ Romainian is separated from the other countries by Slavic speaking peoples.
 Other small romance languages exist:
◦ Romansh → One of 4 official languages of Switzerland
◦ Catalan → Official language of Andorra, small country in the Pyrenees Mountains Also a
semi-autonomous region of Catalan in Spain centered around Barcelona.
◦ Sardinian: a mixture of Italian, Spanish and Arabic, spoken on the island of Sardinia off the
coast of Italy.
 Other even small Romance Language exist, at this point in mostly books:
◦ Ladin – 30,000 people in Tyrol
◦ Fiulian - also spocken in the Alps
◦ Ladino – mixture or Hebrew, Greek, Turkish and Spainsh spoken by Sephardic Jews now
living in Israel.

1 ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES

 The Romance languages all developed from the same root language, Latin.
 The rise of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago caused a diffusion of their language as they
expanded their territory.
 The Latin spoken in each of the conquered lands was a little different because: The army
occupied their country and different times over hundreds of years. Also Latin incorporated
words from the native language in the territory.
 The latin learned in the provinces was not the literary form by the spoken form. Known as
Vulgar Latin – from the Latin word for masses.
 For example the literary latin word for horse is equus. The English used this root word for
equine and equestrian. The vulgar Latin word for horse is caballus. The Italian word is cavallor,
Spanish word is caballo, Portuguese word is cavalo, the French is Cheval and Romainian is cal.

Page 3
 Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

 After the decline of the Roman Empire the provinces became more isolated. This allowed each
region to create greater differences between their use of the vulgar Latin.
◦ Some areas stayed with Vulgar Latin other areas went back to their original languages
(German and Slavic)

2 ROMANCE LANGUAGE DIALECTS

 Languages always change over time. Standard national languages is only a recent activity
 There are many dialects that appear in the countries
 The dialect of the ile-de-France region, known as Francien, became the standard French
language only because the region includes Paris.
 The most important dialect difference in France is between North and South.
◦ North Dialect = langue d'oil
◦ South Dialect = langue d'oc
◦ The dialect names arose from how the word “YES” is spoken in the two different dialects.
▪ One Roman phase was “that is so” or “hoc illud est”
▪ South shorten it to oc
▪ North shorten to “o-il” for the first syllable for the first two words. (Dropping the “H”
sound. This was then shorten to “oui”
 Spain has many dialects exists. In the 15th Century, three kingdoms combined to form modern
Spain ( Castile, Leon, Aragon). Since the King of Castile became the King of Spain the dialect
of Castile became Standard Spanish.
 90% of the people who speak Spanish and Portuguese live outside of Europe. (South & Central
America)
 In 1994 the Portuguese speaking people meet in Africa to agree to common new standard
Portuguese.
◦ The standard removed many of the accents and added many new words from Brazil.
◦ The people in the country of Portugal were not happy.
 In 1992 the Madrid Academy established the standard official dictionary for Spanish. This
added hundreds of new words from the western hemisphere.

3 DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN DIALECTS AND LANGUAGES

 Distinguishing between dialects and languages is difficult because many speakers view their
language as distinct and not related to the standard language:
◦ Sicilian dialect of Italian

Page 4
 Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

◦ Moldovan dialect of Romanian

◦ Flemish dialect of Dutch
◦ Galician dialect of Portuguese
◦ Catalin is distinct and not a dialect of Spanish
 Several former colonies have languages that are now largely different, thus are now considered
to be separate languages
◦ French Creole in Haiti
◦ Papiamento in Netherlands Antilles
◦ Portuguese Creole in Cape Verde
 Creole or Creolized languages is defined as a language that results from mixing of the colonizer
and native languages.

ii. Origin and Diffusion of Indo - European

 There is no physical evidence to prove that Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-European
language branches all come from the same root.
◦ Because the root language would have existed prior to invention of writing and recorded
history.
 There is derived or inferred evidence:
◦ All of these languages have common words like winter and snow or bear, beech, oak and
bee.
◦ The linguists and anthropologists agree there was a common language but not where or
when. This is important because there are two theories of diffusion.
▪ Through warfare and conquest
▪ Through peaceful food sharing

1 Nomadic Warrior Thesis

 Theory by Marija Gimbutas
 Original people lived on the steppes on the border between Russia and Kazakhstan
 They, KURGANS, lived around 4300 BC and were herders.
 They went west in search of grasslands for their animals.
 They conquered Europe to the west, India/ Iran to the south and east to siberia Using their
superior horses and weapons.

Page 5
 Outline for Chapter 5 – Language

2 Sedentary Farmer Thesis

 Theory by Colin Renfrew
 Lived 2000 years before Kurgans in Anatilia, what is now Turkey.
 They were farmers.
 Gray thinks they lived earlier around 6700 BC
 They diffused west to Greece (Origin of the Greek Branch) and then to Italy and other
Mediterranean coast countries (France, Corsica, Sicily, Spain,
 Then they went northward to the Baltic sea (Germany) and then east to Ukraine (Slavic) and
finally to the Kurgans in Russia.
 The Iran/ India was either visited indirectly by Russia or directly by going east from Anatilia.
 Diffused into these areas along with their agricultural practices rather than war.
 The language triumphed because its speakers became more numerous and prosperous because
they could grow their own food. Instead of hunting for food.

Page 6