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AP Human Geography Language Families Flashcards

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9901109662Indo-European-Most widely used language family. -Found in Europe, South Asia, North and Latin America. -8 branches (Widely used) Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Romance, and Balto-Slavic. (Relatively few people use) Albanian, Armenian, Celtic, and Greek0
9901113378Sino-Tibetan-Encompasses People's Republic of China (most populated country) -Chinese languages belong to Sintic branch -Mandarin=putonghua/Common Speech (imposed language in China) - Other languages include Wu, Yue (Cantonese), Min, Jinyu, Xiang, Hakka, and Gan. Note: Sino means Chinese1
9901116665Austronesian-Spoken by about 6% of world pop. Mostly in Indonesia -Due to Indonesia being made up of many islands many distinct languages and dialects arise. -According to Ethnologue they have 706 living languages. -Most widely used is Javanese, spoken by 84 million people mostly on Java where 2/3 of the pop. is clustered.2
9901133922Austro-Asiatic-Spoken by about 2% if the world's pop. -Vietnamese is the most spoken and written with Roman alphabet, with diacritical marks above vowels devised by RCC missionaries.3
9901146326Tai-Kadai-Once classified as Sino-Tibetan. -Principle languages of this family are found in Thailand. -Similarites with Austronesian family have caused some linguistic scholars to speculate the speakers originally came from the Philippines.4
9901122495Japanese-Written in part with Chinese characters along with two systems of phonetic symbols (instead of Chinese or alongside) -Chinese cultural traits diffused into Japan. But language structures differ. -Foreign terms may be written with one set of phonetic symbols.5
9901150232Korean-Written in hankul(Hangul or Onmum) different from Chinese and Japanese. -Each letter represents a sound like in western languages. -More than half of the Korean vocabulary derives it self from Chinese words6
9901119309Dravidian-Principle languages in South Asia. -Two widely used languages are Tamil and Taluga. -Unknown origin and less studied. Present in India when Indo-European speakers arrived.7
9901119310Altaic-Thought to have originated near the Altai Mountains. -Includes Turkish the most spoken language. -Official in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan8
9901178428Uralic-Traced back to Ural Mountains, first used 7,000 years ago. -Migrated into Europe in the midst of Germanic and Slavic speaking people. -Examples include Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian.9
9901113379Niger-Congo- More than 95% of the people in sub-Saharan Africa10
9901116627Afro-Asiatic-Arabic is the major language of the Afro-Asiatic family. It is the official language of 24 UN nations and 206 million people speak and write official Arabic. -Many people speak a second language distinct from standard Arabic. -Large portion of the world have some knowledge of Arabic due to the Quran (Koran). -Hebrew is also Afro-Asiatic.11
9901185114Nilo-Saharan-More than 95% of the people in sub-Saharan Afric speak a Nilo-Congo language. -Three most spoken are Yoruba, Igbo, and Swahili.12
9901189657Quechuan-Spoken primarily in Andes Mountains. -About 9 million people speak a Quechuan language. -44 distinct Quechuan languages.13

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