AP Human Geography Language Families Flashcards
Terms : Hide Images [1]
| 9901109662 | Indo-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 Greek | 0 | |
| 9901113378 | Sino-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 Chinese | 1 | |
| 9901116665 | Austronesian | -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 | |
| 9901133922 | Austro-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 | |
| 9901146326 | Tai-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 | |
| 9901122495 | Japanese | -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 | |
| 9901150232 | Korean | -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 words | 6 | |
| 9901119309 | Dravidian | -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 | |
| 9901119310 | Altaic | -Thought to have originated near the Altai Mountains. -Includes Turkish the most spoken language. -Official in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan | 8 | |
| 9901178428 | Uralic | -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 | |
| 9901113379 | Niger-Congo | - More than 95% of the people in sub-Saharan Africa | 10 | |
| 9901116627 | Afro-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 | |
| 9901185114 | Nilo-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 | |
| 9901189657 | Quechuan | -Spoken primarily in Andes Mountains. -About 9 million people speak a Quechuan language. -44 distinct Quechuan languages. | 13 |