GES 102: Introduction to

Human Geography
Definition of Language:

Language is an innate faculty - that is to say that we are born with a set of
rules about language in our minds, which he refers to as the 'Universal
Grammar’- Noam Chomsky

The universal grammar is the basis upon which all human languages build.
Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them. They
deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that
they have never heard before. They do not learn a repertoire of phrases and
sayings, as the behaviorists believe, but a grammar that generates an
infinite number of new sentences.
Have you ever been around a toddler as they are acquiring
new language? They suddenly change from “I play.” to “I’m
playing.” without any formal instruction.

Children are born, then, with the Universal Grammar wired into
their brains. This grammar offers a certain limited number of
possibilities - for example, the word order of a typical sentence.
What are Languages?

A language is a set of sounds and symbols that is used for

communication. But language is also an integral part of culture,
reflecting and shaping it.
Language and Culture- Language is one of the cornerstones of
culture ; it shapes our very thoughts. We can use vast vocabularies
to describe new experiences, ideas, and feelings, or we can create
new words that represent these things. Who we are as a culture, as
a people, is reinforced and redefined moment by moment through
shared language. Language reflects where a culture has been, what
a culture values, even how people in a culture think, describe, and
experience things.
The easiest way to understand the role of language in culture is to
examine people who have experienced the loss of language under
pressure from others.

During colonization, both abroad and within countries, colonizers

commonly forced the colonized people to speak the language of the
colonizer.

American, Canadian, Australian, Russian, and New Zealand

governments each had policies of forced assimilation during the
twentieth century, including not allowing indigenous peoples to
speak native languages.
In the United States forced American Indians to learn and speak
English. Both mission schools and government schools enforced
English-only policies in hopes of assimilating American Indians
into the dominant culture.
In an interview with the producers of an educational video, Clare
Swan, an elder in the Kenaitze band of the Dena’ina Indians in
Alaska, eloquently describes the role of language in culture:
No one was allowed to speak the language—the Dena’ina
language. The American government didn’t allow it in schools, and
a lot of the women had married non native men, and the men said,
“You’re American now so you can’t speak the language.” So, we
became invisible in the community. Invisible to each other. And,
then, because we couldn’t speak the language— what happens when
you can’t speak your own language is you have to think with
someone else’s words, and that’s a dreadful kind of isolation.
Shared language makes people in a culture visible to each other and
to the rest of the world. Language helps to bind a cultural identity.
Language is also quite personal. Our thoughts, expressions, and
dreams are articulated in our language; to lose that ability is to lose
a lot.
Language can reveal much about the way people and cultures view
reality.
Some African languages have no word or term for the concept of a
god.
Some Asian languages have no tenses and no system for reporting
chronological events, reflecting the lack of cultural distinction
between then and now.
Language is so closely tied to
culture that people use
language as a weapon in
cultural conflict and political
strife.
In the United States, where the
Spanish-speaking population
is growing, some Spanish
speakers and their advocates
are demanding the use of
Spanish in public affairs.
Language is so closely tied to
culture that people use
language as a weapon in
cultural conflict and political
strife.
In the United States, where the
Spanish-speaking population
is growing, some Spanish
speakers and their advocates
are demanding the use of
Spanish in public affairs.
In turn, people opposed to the use of Spanish in the United States
are leading counter movements to promote “Official English”
policies, where English would be the official language of
government.

Of course, Spanish is not the only non-English tongue spoken in the

United States, but it overshadows all others and is therefore the
focus of the English first movement.
During the 1980s, over 30 different States considered passing laws
declaring English the State’s official language. Some 30 States
today have declared English the official language of the State either
by statute or by amending the State constitution (one law was
subsequently overturned by the courts).

A few States have passed English-plus laws, encouraging

bilingualism for non-English speakers, and a few other States are
officially bilingual, such as Hawai’i (Hawai’ian and English), and
New Mexico has bilingual education (Spanish and English).
In Quebec, Canada, the focus is on passing laws that promote the use
of the province’s distinct version of the French language.
The country of Canada is officially bilingual, a reflection of the
colonial division of the country between France and Great Britain.
Government documents and even scholarly journals are printed in
both English and French. Most of the country’s French speakers live
in the province of Quebec. The majority of people in Quebec speak
French at home.
In recent history, the Quebecois (people of Quebec) have periodically
called for more independence for their province within Canada, even
voting on secession at times. Although a majority has never voted for
secession, the provincial government has passed several laws
requiring and promoting the use of French in the province.
In 1977, the Quebec government compelled all businesses in the
province to demonstrate that they functioned in French. Upon
passage of this law, many businesses and individuals moved out of
the province of Quebec into neighboring Ontario.

In 1993, the Quebec government passed a law requiring the use of

French in advertising. The Quebec law allows the inclusion of both
French and English (or another language) translations on signage,
as long as the French letters are twice the size of the other
language’s letters.
Not all of Quebec’s residents identify with the French language.
Within the province, a small proportion of people speak English at
home, others speak indigenous languages, and still others speak
another language altogether—one associated with their country of
origin
When the Quebec Parliament passed several laws promoting French
during the 1980s and 1990s, members of Canada’s First Nations,
such as the Cree and Mohawk (who live in Quebec), expressed a
desire to remain part of Canada should Quebec secede from the
country. During the same period, Quebec has experienced a flow of
international migrants, many of whom seek residence in Quebec as
a way to enter Canada and North America at large. These new
immigrants must learn French under Quebec law.
What is a Language?
Many geography textbooks differentiate languages based on a
criterion of mutual intelligibility.
Mutual intelligibility means that two people can understand each
other when speaking.
The argument goes that if two of us are speaking two different
languages, say Spanish and Portuguese, we will not be able to
understand each other, but if we are speaking two dialects of one
language, we will achieve mutual understanding.
Yet linguists have rejected the criterion of mutual intelligibility as
strongly as geographers have rejected environmental determinism.
Mutual intelligibility is almost impossible to measure. Even if we used
mutual intelligibility as a criterion, many languages would fail the test.
Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese as dialects of the same
language, when two people speaking the language to each other cannot
understand what each other is saying? Both can read the standard form
of Chinese that has been built up by a strongly centralized Chinese
government. But the spoken dialects are not mutually intelligible. Yet,
we see Chinese as one language because of the weight of political and
social institutions that lie behind it.

People in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore speak Mandarin, while those
in Hong Kong and Guangdong province speak Cantonese. Mandarin uses
simplified Chinese characters while Cantonese uses traditional Chinese
characters.
Standardized Language- Language is dynamic: new discoveries, technologies,
and ideas require new words. Technologically advanced societies are likely to have
a standard language , one that is published, widely distributed, and purposefully
taught.
In some countries, the government sustains the standard language through official
state examinations for teachers and civil servants.
Dialects- Variants of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines are called
dialects. Differences in vocabulary, syntax (the way words are put together to form
phrases), pronunciation, cadence (the rhythm of speech), and even the pace of
speech all mark a speaker’s dialect. Even if the written form of a statement adheres
to the standard language, an accent can reveal the regional home of a person who
reads the statement aloud.
In the United States, the words “horse” and “oil” are written the same way in New
England and in the South, but to the Southerner, the New Englander may be saying
“hahse,” and to the New Englander, the Southerner seems to be saying “all.”
 Languages Families of the World

1. Indo-European 2. Afro-Asiatic
3. Niger-Congo 4. Saharan
5. Sudanic 6. Khoisan
7. Uralic 8. Altaic
9. Sino-Tibetan 10. Japanese and Korean
11. Dravidian 12. Austro-Asiatic
13. Austronesian 14. Trans-New Guinea and Australian
15. Amerindian
The Indo-European languages- Majority of Europe, the Iranian
plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent.

The Austroasiatic languages- Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia

and East Asia.

Niger–Congo languages- Majority of sub-Saharan Africa.

Trans–New Guinea languages- The island of New Guinea and

neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua
New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia.
The Turkic languages- The Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe
and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia, and West Asia.

The Mongolic languages- The Mongolic peoples in Eastern Europe, Central

Asia, North Asia and East Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas
and in Kalmykia and Buryatia.

The Germanic languages- Mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and

Southern Africa

The Romance languages- It also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages.

They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European
language family.
The Slavic/Slavonic languages- They are Indo-European languages
spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants.

The North Germanic languages- They are one of the three

branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-
European languages—along with the West Germanic languages
and the extinct East Germanic languages.

The Bantu languages- The Bantu peoples of Central, Southern,

Eastern and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the
Southern Bantoid languages.
The Semitic languages- They are a branch of the Afroasiatic
language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and
numerous other ancient and modern languages.

The Iranian/Iranic languages- They are a branch of the Indo-Iranian

languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken
natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian
Plateau.

The Eskaleut, Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan language are

a language family native to the northern portions of the North
American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia.
Why are languages distributed the way they are?
At the global scale, we classify languages into language families .
Within a single language family, the languages have a shared but
fairly distant origin. We break language families into subfamilies.
The Indo-European language family stretches across the greatest
extent of territory and also claims the greatest number of speakers.
Within the Indo-European language family, English is the most
widely spoken language (of all languages in the world, Chinese
claims even more speakers than English).
Speakers of English encircle the world, with 300 million in North
America, 64 million in Great Britain and Ireland, and 22 million in
Australia and New Zealand. Hundreds of millions of people in India,
Europe, and Africa use English as a second language.
The world map of language families shows several language families
spoken by dwindling, often marginally located or isolated groups.
The Indo-European languages of European colonizers surround the
language families of Southeast Asia.
Languages in the Austro-Asiatic language family survive in the
interior of eastern India and in Cambodia and Laos.
Languages in the Austronesian family are numerous and quite
diverse, and many of the individual languages are spoken by fewer
than 10 million people.
Remoteness helps account for the remaining languages in the
Amerindian language family. These languages remain strongest in
areas of Middle America, the high Andes, and northern Canada.
If we look carefully at the map of world language families, some
interesting questions arise. Consider, for example, the island of
Madagascar off the East African coast.
The primary languages people in Madagascar speak belong not to an
African-language family but to the Austronesian family, the languages of
Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Why is a language from this family spoken on an island so close to Africa?
Anthropologists have found evidence of seafarers from the islands of
Southeast Asia crossing the Indian Ocean to Madagascar. At the time,
Africans had not sailed across the strait to Madagascar, so no African
languages diffused to the island, preserving the Southeast Asian settlements
and language for centuries.
Later, Africans began to come to Madagascar, but by that time the language
and culture of Southeast Asia had been well established.
What role does language play in making places?
Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan researched the importance of language in
making places. He emphasized how people use language as a tool to
give meaning to points on the Earth’s surface. Each place is a unique
location—a reflection of people’s activities, ideas, and tangible
creations.
Tuan explains that by simply naming a place, people call the place
into being and impart a certain character to it.
Toponyms- Geographers call place names toponyms . People are
responsible for making places; places do not exist in a vacuum, nor
are they organic. The social processes going on in a place determine
whether a toponym is passed down or changed, how the people will
interpret the history of a place, and how the people will see a place.
“Mount Prospect” and “Mount Misery” to help us understand that a
name alone can color the character of a place and even the
experiences of people in a place. If you planned to travel to “Mount
Prospect,” your expectations and even your experiences might well
be quite different than a trip to “Mount Misery.”
A toponym can give us a quick glimpse into the history of a place.
Simply by knowing who named the place and how the name was
chosen helps us understand the uniqueness of a place.
Descriptive (Rocky Mountains); Associative (Mill Valley,
California); Commemorative (San Francisco); and Commendatory
(Paradise Valley, Arizona).
Toponyms also reflect incidents (Battle Creek, Michigan); a claim of
possession (Johnson City, Texas); or a folk culture (Plains, Georgia).
Changing Toponyms-
Tuan explained that when people change the toponym of a place, they have the
power to “wipe out the past and call forth the new.” For example, people in a
small town in Wales feared the loss of the Welsh language and despised the role
the English had played in diminishing the use of the Welsh language. They also
wanted to boost their local economy by attracting tourists to their town.
A century ago, the people renamed their town with a Welsh word
unpronounceable by others:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
For the last two decades, Wales has had an official policy of teaching both
Welsh and English in the schools in order to preserve and boost usage of the
Welsh language.
Pronouncing the name of this town correctly is now a benchmark for students
learning Welsh, and the residents of the town take pride in their ability to
pronounce it.
Post-Colonial Toponyms
The question of changing toponyms often arises when power changes
hands in a place.
When African colonies became independent countries, many of the
new governments immediately changed the toponyms of places named
after colonial figures.
The new governments renamed several countries: Upper Volta to
Burkina Faso, Gold Coast to Ghana, Nyasaland to Malawi, and
Northern and Southern Rhodesia to Zambia and Zimbabwe,
respectively.
Countries in Asia also chose new toponyms to mark their
independence and separate themselves from their past: East Pakistan
became Bangladesh, and the Netherlands East Indies became
Indonesia.
Post-revolution Toponyms
Independence prompts name changes, and so to do changes in power through
coups and revolutions. General Mobutu Sese Seko, authoritarian dictator,
changed the name of the Belgian Congo in Subsaharan Africa to Zaïre.
At first, other governments and international agencies did not take this move
seriously, but eventually they recognized Mobutu’s Zaïre. Governments and
companies changed their maps and atlases to reflect Mobutu’s decision. The
government of Zaïre changed the name of their money from the franc to the
Zaïre, and they even changed the name of the Congo River to the Zaïre.
In 1997, the revolutionary leader Laurent Kabila ousted Mobutu and
established his regime in the capital, Kinshasa. Almost immediately, he
renamed the country. Zaïre became the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(reflecting the colonial name). Again, governments and companies reacted,
changing their maps and atlases to reflect Kabila’s decision.
Memorial Toponyms
People can choose to change a toponym to memorialize an
important person or event.
Hundreds of parks in the United States are named Memorial Park
for hundreds of such persons and events.
Towns or government agencies can vote to change the name of a
school, a library, or a public building to memorialize people who
have played a role in shaping the place or who have had an
enormous influence on people in the place.