Why are Languages Distributed the Way They Are

Why are Languages Distributed the Way They Are? By: Jacob Krebs, Mihir Patel, Chris Luken

Mind jog • What’s tge difference between language convergence and divergence? • Can you give an example?

How are languages classified? • Language families: languages that have a shared but distant origin. • Sub families: where the commonalities are more definite and the origin more recent. • Individual languages: cover a smaller territory, and dialects are the smallest, only covering local or regional variation of an individual language.

Effect of the Indo-European language family • This family stretches across the greatest extent on the map and has the greatest number of speakers. • English is the most widely spoken language all languages in the world. • However, Chinese claims more speakers in English.

Why are languages Distributed the way they are? 1. Indo-European 2. Sino-Tibetan 3. Japanese and Korean 4. Afro-Asiatic 5. Dravidian 6. Austronesian 7. Altaic 8. Sudaric

Language formation • Linguists classify languages by examining particular words looking for sound shifts. • Sound shifts are slight changes in a word across languages in a language family from the present backward to its origin. • William Jones observed that Sanskrit was closely related to ancient Greek and Latin. • Jakob Grimm observed that similar languages have similar consonants that soften over time. According to his theory, consonants became harder as they went backwards toward the original hearth.

Language formation (continued) • From jones and Grimm's a hypothesis was proposed that an ancestral Indo-European language called proto-Indo-European was the hearth of ancient Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. • Linguists use a technique called backward reconstruction. To deduce a part of the vocabulary of an extinct language.

Language formation (continued) • Language convergence is when languages have consistent spatial interaction, two languages can collapse into one. • Language divergence spatial interactions by speakers break down and the language fragments into dialects and then discrete tongues.

Theories • The Conquest theory suggests That the Proto-Indo. European language spread from east to west on horseback. • This Europeans overpowered earlier inhabitants, and changed their languages. • The Agriculture theory suggests that the Proto-Indo-European diffused westward through agriculture. Scientific evidence in the genes of those from around Europe proves this theory is accurate.

The Renfrew Hypothesis • A model that proposed that three areas around the agricultural hearth of the Fertile Crescent influenced the creation of three language families.