Indo-European and Other Language Families
Topic 1: Background of English
Vocabulary: Many similar words exist in several languages: English: menu, German: Menü, French: menu. At the end of the 18th century, Sir William Jones, Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, and August Schleicher developed the theory of cognates. Languages derive from a common ancestor and split up into cognate languages. In the 19th century, Darwin’s Origin of Species inspired the Genealogical Theory.
Metaphor: Family Tree: Latin is the mother language; Castilian, French, and Italian are daughters. This is an inaccurate theory because it suggests a strict chronological linguistic evolution. Relations established between several languages:
- Romance languages: /p/ becomes
- Germanic languages: /f/ (padre = father)
Conclusion: Originally, there was one single language (now extinct) that evolved into different varieties and then into languages.
Cognates
Words of common origin: IE *bher-bhar (Sanskrit), *pher (Greek): root of ‘bear’. The IE cognates: Numerals 1-10, words for 10+10 (cent-/sat), words for bodily parts (head, lung), words for natural phenomena (night, sun, moon), words for plant/animal names (beech, wolf), and cultural terms (yoke, weave).
Dravidian
The ‘old’ language of India, with about 25 representatives and 150 million speakers. These are very difficult-sounding languages, including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu. Each has its own script. They feature retroflex consonants, a distinctive sound formed with the tongue rolled up to the top of the mouth. They are agglutinating, with up to 8 noun cases. They once covered all of the Indian subcontinent and originated in the Indus Valley.
Sino-Tibetan
A very important language family, including approximately 250 languages. Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) alone is spoken by one billion people! These are monosyllabic tonal languages. Words are made up of single syllables: Mandarin has over 1600. The syllables themselves have tones: the voice can be high, low, rising, or falling; MEN can mean gate or we depending on tone. Examples include Mandarin, Thai, Cantonese, Kam-Sui, Burmese, Tibetan, and Manipuri.
Ameridian
Amerind includes nearly 600 languages, with more than 20 million speakers.
North America: Algonquian (Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree), Athapascan (Navajo, Apache), Dakota (or Sioux), Iroquois (Cherokee, Mohawk), Uto-Aztecan (Hopi, Nahuatl, Comanche).
South America: Oto-Manguean (Mixtec, Otomi), Mayan (Quiche, Yucatec), Carib (Carib, Chiquito), Andean (Quechua (Inca), Guarani, Aymara, Tupi, Guarana). The Andean language sub-family (which includes Quechua) numbers nearly nine million speakers! A common feature shared by several languages is the Dual Pronoun. Kiwai has one of the most complex verb structures known. Rotokas has the fewest sounds of any language, 11 (compared to the 44 of standard English).
Ural-Altaic
About 20 languages with 20 million speakers are in this family. In the Finnic Branch, Finnish and Estonian are closely related. Languages in the Ugric Branch (like Hungarian) are very different, having separated from the Finnic ones around 3000 years ago. Hungarian’s closest relatives (Ostyak, Vogul) are found in central Siberia. The majority of the languages in this family are spoken in Siberia (Mordvin, Komi, Nenets) apart from Sámi, which is spoken in Lapland. The Uralic Languages have many suffixes. Country names in Finnish are difficult to recognize. Finland, for example, is Suomi (Spain: Espanja).
Basque
Non-Indo-European language. VASCUENCE, EUSKERA. It has an uncertain relationship and is spoken by approximately 1 million people, most of whom live in Northeast Spain and some in Southwest France. The language has eight dialects. There are many regional varieties, but in Spain, there is also a fairly strong desire for the Batua unified standard. Some scholars believe it is descended from Aquitanian, spoken on the Iberian Peninsula and in Southern Gaul in ancient times. Others think it is related to Caucasian, and that its speakers came from Asia Minor. It is agglutinative and polysynthetic.
The Indo-European Languages
The single largest language family, Indo-European has about 150 languages and about three billion speakers. Over half the world’s population speaks one or more of these languages, either as a mother tongue or a business language. They stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India. Languages include Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), German (100 million), Russian (300 million), and English (400 million). In Europe and the Americas, they tend to be inflected.