Chapter 5: Language 143 FIGURE 5-8 Soft-drink dialects. Soft drinks CANADA are called “soda” in the Northeast and Southwest, “pop” in the Midwest and Northwest, and “Coke” in the South. Map reflects voting at www. popvssoda.com. ATLANTIC OCEAN GENERIC NAMES FOR SOFT PACIFIC DRINKS OCEAN Pop RUSSIA MEXICO Coke Soda CANADA Other Gulf of Mexico No data and reflects the place of origin of most New England KEY ISSUE 2 colonists. It also reflects the relatively high degree of contact between the two groups. Residents of Boston, New Eng- Why Is English Related land’s main port city, maintained especially close ties to the important ports of southern England, such as London, to Other Languages? Plymouth, and Bristol. Compared to other colonists, New ■ Indo-European Branches Englanders received more exposure to changes in pro- nunciation that occurred in Britain during the eighteenth ■ Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European century. English is part of the Indo-European language family. A The New England and southern accents sound unusual to language family is a collection of languages related through the majority of Americans because the standard pronunciation a common ancestral language that existed long before throughout the American West comes from the Middle Atlantic recorded history. Indo-European is the world’s most exten- states rather than the New England and Southern regions. This sively spoken language family by a wide margin. ■ pattern occurred because most western settlers came from the Middle Atlantic states. The diffusion of particular English dialects into the middle and western parts of the United States is a result of the west- ward movement of colonists from the three dialect regions of Indo-European Branches the East. The area of the Midwest south of the Ohio River was Within a language family, a language branch is a collection of settled first by colonists from Virginia and the other southern languages related through a common ancestral language that areas. The Middle Atlantic colonies sent most of the early existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as exten- settlers north of the Ohio River, although some New Englan- sive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evi- ders moved to the Great Lakes area. The pattern by which dence can confirm that the branches derived from the same dialects diffused westward resembles the diffusion of East family. Coast house types discussed in Chapter 4 (compare Figure 5-7 Indo-European is divided into eight branches (Figure 5-9). with Figure 4-12). Four of the branches—Indo-Iranian, Romance, Germanic, and As more of the West was opened to settlement during the Balto-Slavic—are spoken by large numbers of people. Indo- nineteenth century, people migrated from all parts of the East Iranian languages are clustered in South Asia, Romance lan- Coast. The California gold rush attracted people from through- guages in southwestern Europe and Latin America, Germanic out the East, many of whom subsequently moved to other parts languages in northwestern Europe and North America, and of the West. The mobility of Americans has been a major rea- Balto-Slavic languages in Eastern Europe. The four less exten- son for the relatively uniform language that exists throughout sively used Indo-European language branches are Albanian, much of the West. Armenian, Greek, and Celtic. 144 The Cultural Landscape 20°10°0° 10° 20° 30° 40° 50° 70° ICELAND SWEDEN FINLAND ATLANTIC NORWAY RUSSIA 60° OCEAN ESTONIA LATVIA DENMARK LITHUANIA UNITED IRELAND KINGDOM BELARUS NETH. POLAND GERMANY 50° BELGIUM CZECH UKRAINE REP. SLOVAKIA MOLDOVA KAZAKHSTAN AUSTRIA FRANCE HUNGARY ROMANIA SWITZ. ITALY SLOVENIA SERB. Caspian S CROATIA Black Sea BULGARIA UZBEKISTAN BOS & HERZ. GEORGIA KYRGYZSTAN PORTUGAL MONT. ALBANIA MACEDONIA ARMENIA AZER. 40° SPAIN e KOSOVO a TURKEY TURKMENISTAN TAJIKISTAN GREECE CHINA SYRIA Mediterranean Sea AFGHANISTAN IRAQ IRAN PAKISTAN NEPAL BHUTAN BANGLADESH INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE BRANCHES INDIA Albanian Germanic Armenian Greek ARABIAN Balto-Slavic Indo-Iranian SEA BAY OF Celtic Romance BENGAL 0 500 1,000 MILES Non Indo-European 10° languages 0 500 1,000 KILOMETERS 60° 70° 80° 90° FIGURE 5-9 Branches of the Indo-European language family. Most Europeans speak languages from the Indo-European language family. In Europe, the three most important branches are Germanic (north and west), Romance (south and west), and Slavic (east). The fourth major branch, Indo-Iranian, clustered in southern and western Asia, has more than 1 billion speakers, the greatest number of any Indo-European branch. Germanic Branch of Indo-European group. Other Low Germanic languages include Dutch, which is spoken in the Netherlands, as well as Flemish, which is gener- German may seem a difficult language for many English speak- ally considered a dialect of Dutch spoken in northern Belgium. ers to learn, but the two languages are actually closely related. Afrikaans, a language of South Africa, is similar to Dutch, Both belong to the Germanic language branch of Indo-European. because Dutch settlers migrated to South Africa 300 years ago. English is part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European Frisian is spoken by a few residents in northeastern Nether- family due to the language spoken by the Germanic tribes that lands. A dialect of German spoken in the northern lowlands of invaded England 1,500 years ago. Germany is also classified as Low Germanic. A language group is a collection of languages within a The Germanic language branch also includes North branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent Germanic languages, spoken in Scandinavia. The four Scandina- past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vian languages—Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic— vocabulary. West Germanic is the group within the Germanic all derive from Old Norse, which was the principal language spo- branch of Indo-European to which English belongs. ken throughout Scandinavia before A.D. 1000. Four distinct lan- Although they sound very different, English and German are guages emerged after that time because of migration and the both languages in the West Germanic group because they are political organization of the region into four independent and structurally similar and have many words in common isolated countries. (Figure 5-10). West Germanic is further divided into High Germanic and Low Germanic subgroups, so named because they are found in Indo-Iranian Branch of Indo-European high and low elevations within present-day Germany. High The branch of the Indo-European language family with the most German, spoken in the southern mountains of Germany, is the speakers is Indo-Iranian. This branch includes more than 100 basis for the modern standard German language. English is individual languages. The branch is divided into an eastern group classified in the Low Germanic subgroup of the West Germanic (Indic) and a western group (Iranian). Chapter 5: Language 145 20° 10° 0° 10° 20° Austro-Asiatic A rc tic 0 200 400 MILES C KASHMIRI Dravidian irc le URDU DOGRI 0 200 400 KILOMETERS Indo-European 65° Hindi dialect Other language ICELAND PUNJABI Sino-Tibetan Y ASSAMESE HINDHINDINDN NEPALI A N MAITHILI URDU BODO E SINDHI W MANIPURI SANTALI 60° BENGALI Faeroe Is. D R GUJARATI BENGALI E Shetland Is. O W ATLANTIC N MARATHMARATHI ORIYA Bay of 20° S Bengal OCEAN TELUGU KONKANI 55° Scotland N. Ireland North KANNADA SANSKRIT UNITED Sea DENMARK Baltic Sea KINGDOM HINDI IRELAND TAMIL MALAYMALAYALAMALAYALALAA AM Frisian Is. 10° POLAND State boundary England 50° Wales NETHERLANDS 0 250 500 MILES HINDI Scheduled language GERMANY 0 250 500 KILOMETERS INDIAN OCEAN 70° 80° 90° BELGIUM CZECH REP. LUXEMBOURG FIGURE 5-11 Languages and language families in India. India’s official lan- FRANCE AUSTRIA guage is Hindi, which has many dialects. The country has 22 scheduled languages 45° that the government is required to protect. SWITZERLAND ITALY NORTH GERMANIC WEST GERMANIC of the British colonial rulers—has been retained as an official Danish English language. Speakers of different Indian languages who wish to Faeroese Frisian communicate with each other sometimes are forced to turn to Icelandic German English as a common language. Norwegian Netherlandish (Dutch) India also recognizes 22 so-called scheduled languages, Mixed with including 15 Indo-European (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Gujarati, Swedish non-Germanic Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pan- FIGURE 5-10 Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Germanic jabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu), four Dravidian (Kannada, languages predominate in Northern and Western Europe. Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu), two Sino-Tibetan (Bodo and Manipuri), and one Austro-Asiatic (Santali). The government of India is obligated to encourage the use of these languages. INDIC (EASTERN) GROUP OF INDO-IRANIAN Hindi is spoken many different ways—and therefore could LANGUAGE BRANCH. The most widely used languages be regarded as a collection of many individual languages. But in India, as well as in the neighboring countries of Pakistan and there is only one official way to write Hindi, using a script Bangladesh, belong to the Indo-European language family and, called Devanagari, which has been used in India since the sev- more specifically, to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian branch enth century A.D. For example, the word for sun is written in of Indo-European. Hindi as pronounced “surya.” Local differences arose in One of the main elements of cultural diversity among the the spoken forms of Hindi but not in the written form because 1 billion plus residents of India is language (Figure 5-11). Eth- until recently few speakers of that language could read or nologue identifies 438 languages currently spoken in India, write it. including 29 by at least one million people. Adding to the complexity, Urdu is spoken very much like The official language of India is Hindi, which is an Indo- Hindi, but it is recognized as a distinct language.