Presentation on World Language Regions

1. World Language Region
Submitted To_
Md. Abdul Malak
Courses Teacher of World Regional Geography
Dept. of Geography and Environment
Jagannath University, Dhaka.
Submitted By_
Group ‘C’
ID- 110602039- 110602055
3rd Year, 1st Semester
Dept. of Geography and Environment
Jagannath University, Dhaka.
Presentation On_

2.  Introduction
┧ Language is, in fact, the foundation of every culture. It is an abstract system of the world meaning
and symbols for all aspects of culture. It includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols and
expressions of nonverbal communication.
┧ It is the human ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, and a language is
any specific example of such a system.
┧ Language promotes the transmission of ideas and functioning of political, economic, social and
religious systems.
┧ Although the language is studied by linguists, but the spatial (regional) and ecological aspects are
studied primarily by geographers. Where the various languages located? How did those spatial
distribution develop? How are linguistic variations related to other aspects of human geography
such as settlement patterns and national boundaries? And, how do languages reflect human
interaction with the physical environment?
┧ All these questions are answered by the Geograpers through Reogional Geography of Language.

3. What is Language and Region?
 Language is more than just communication, is the primary method by which we do things
together. It is the accumulation of shared meaning- of common ground.
 It the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words
in a structured and conventional way.
 Is the system or processes of communication that exchange massage and create meaning used
by a particular community or country.
 Thus the definition of language indicate a location(region) of a group of users. Where the term
‘Region’ means_
 "an area on the earth's surface marked by certain properties“
 Any particular area on the earth’s surface of similler language user is called a language region.

4. Origin of Language
 It is an intriguing question, to which we may never have a complete answer: How did we get from
animal vocalization (barks, howls, calls...) to human language?
 Animals often make use of signs, which point to what they represent, but they don’t use symbols, which
are arbitrary and conventional. Examples of signs include sniffles as a sign of an on-coming cold, clouds
as a sign of rain, or a scent as a sign of territory. Symbols include things like the words we use. Dog,
Hund, chien, cane, perro -- these are symbols that refer to the creature so named, yet each one contains
nothing in it that in anyway indicates that creature.
 Bees returning from their first flight out of the hive know perfectly how to perform their complex nectar
dances. With humans, the precise form of language must be acquired through exposure to a speech
community. Words are definitely not inborn, but the capacity to acquire and language and use it
creatively seems to be inborn.
 Concerning the origin of the first language there are many theories. Many of these have traditional
amusing names (invented by Max Müller and George Romanes a century ago). Neither can be proven or
disproved given present knowledge.

5. List of therories or hypothesises of the
origin of language_
I. The mama theory
II. The ta-ta theory
III. The bow-wow theory
IV. The pooh-pooh theory
V. The ding-dong theory
VI. The yo-he-ho theory
VII. The sing-song theory
VIII. The hey you! Theory
IX. The hocus pocus theory
X. The eureka! Theory
XI. Candelabra theory
XII. Mother Tongue Theory
XIII. Out of Africa theory

6. Language and Geography
 Language and geography are completely related to each other when language is described. It
should be pointed out that the discipline Language geography is the branch of Human geography
that studies the geographic distribution of language or its constituent elements.
 There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language: the "geography of
languages", which deals with the distribution through history and space of languages, and
"linguistic geography", which deals with regional linguistic variations within languages. The branch
of linguistics that involves the study of regional variations of speech forms. Also called dialect
geography.
 Study of language called linguistic geography and geolinguistics by geographers. As early
mentioned that but the spatial (regional) and ecological aspects are studied primarily by
geographers.
 Where the various languages located? How did those spatial distribution develop? How are
linguistic variations related to other aspects of human geography such as settlement patterns and
national boundaries? And, how do languages reflect human interaction with the physical
environment? All these questions are answered by the Geograpers and that’s why geographers
study language.

7. Language Family
 The geographical distribution of language through the time can be described by the major language
groups and major language families in different geographical regions.
 The study of the origins of languages and their classification into families is traditionally known as
‘philology’.
 A language family is a group of related languages that developed from a common historic ancestor,
referred to as protolanguage (proto- means ‘early’ in Greek). The ancestral language is usually not
known directly, but it is possible to discover many of its features by applying the comparative
method that can demonstrate the family status of many languages. Sometimes a protolanguage can
be identified with a historically known language.
 For various reasons it is not possible to be precise about the number of languages in the world, but
most philologists agree that there are between 6,000 - 7,000 living languages.
 These languages are divided into about 100 language families;The major language families can be
further divided into groups of languages that are also called families.

8. Figure 01 : Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families).

9.  Here is a list of the 10 major language families (in terms of the number of speakers of those
languages worldwide and/or the number of sub-families/languages they contain.)
 In each case, the language family is followed by one of its sub-families, followed by an
example of a language from that sub-family.
I. Afro-Asiatic Language family: Semitic - Arabic
II. Altaic Language family: Turkic - Turkish
III. Austro-Asiatic Language family: Mon-Khmer - Khmer
IV. Austronesian Language family: Malayo-Polynesian - Tagalog
V. Dravidian Language family: Tamil - Kannada
VI. Indo-European Language family: Germanic - English
VII. Niger-Congo Language family: Volta-Congo - Dogon
VIII. Sino-Tibetan Language family: Chinese - Mandarin
IX. Uralic Language family: Finno-Ugric - Hungarian

10. As early mentioned that each Language family contains a number of sub families and
Laguages through the world. Here is a list of major language families, the number of
languages it(family) contains and Where the languages are spoken_
Language
families
Number of
languages Where the languages are spoken
Niger-Congo 1,532
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African
Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-
Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Austronesian 1,257
Brunei, Cambodia, China, Cook Islands, East Timor, Fiji, French Polynesia,
Guam, Indonesia, Kiribati, Madagascar, Malaysia, Marshall Islands,
Mayotte, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand,
Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines,
Samoa, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Taiwan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tonga,
Tuvalu, USA, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Wallis and Futuna
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal,
Pakistan, Thailand, Viet NamSino-Tibetan 449

11. Afro-Asiatic
374
Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Cameroon, Chad, Cyprus, Egypt, Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Malta,
Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen
Australian 264 Australian
Dravidian 85 India, Nepal, Pakistan
Altaic 66
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
Uralic 37 Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Sweden
Indo-
European 439
Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus,
Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece,
Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Macedonia, Maldives, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru,
Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia,
Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland,
Tajikistan, Turkey, USA, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela
Altaic 66
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

12. Geographical Distribution of Major Language
Families.....

13. Indo-European Language family_
 The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects.
 It is spoken on all continents. Seven Indo-European tonguas are among the top 10 languages
spoken in the world.
 There are about 439 languages and dialects, according to the 2009 Ethnologue estimate, about half
(221) belonging to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch.
 It includes most major current languages of Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian Subcontinent,
and was also predominant in ancient Anatolia. With written attestations appearing since the Bronze
Age in the form of the Anatolian languages and Mycenaean Greek, the Indo-European family is
significant to the field of historical linguistics as possessing the second-longest recorded history,
after the Afro-Asiatic family.
 Indo-European languages are spoken by almost 3 billion native speakers, the largest number by far
for any recognised language family. Of the 20 languages with the largest numbers of native
speakers according to SIL Ethnologue, 12 are Indo-European: Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese,
Bengali, Russian, German, Sindhi, Punjabi, Marathi, French, Urdu, and Italian, accounting for over 1.7
billion native speakers. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other major language
families.

14. Figure02: Countries of Indo- European language family( deep color majority in user and another is minority.

15. Indo-European Language tree_
The Indo-European proto-languages themselves evolved, each giving rise to its own family of
languages. Each family is identified with the proto-language from which it sprung; these families are
conventionally listed in order, roughly from west to east with respect to the homelands their speakers
came to occupy.

16. Afro-Asiatic languages family
 Afro-Asiatic languages, also called Afrasian languages, formerly Hamito-Semitic, Semito-Hamitic, or
Erythraean languages, languages of common origin found in the northern part of Africa, the
Arabian Peninsula, and some islands and adjacent areas in Western Asia.
 It comprises about 300 or so living languages and dialects, according to the 2009 Ethnologue
estimate. It includes languages spoken predominantly in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of
Africa, and parts of the Sahel. The Afro-Asiatic family is significant to the field of historical
linguistics as possessing the longest recorded history of any language family.
 The most widely spoken Afroasiatic language, Arabic (including literary Arabic and the spoken
colloquial varieties), has about 200 to 230 million native speakers, living mostly in the Middle East
and in parts of North Africa. Berber (including all its varieties) is spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Libya,
Tunisia, northern Mali, and northern Niger by about 25 to 35 million people. Other widely spoken
Afroasiatic languages include:
 Hausa, the dominant language of northern Nigeria and southern Niger, spoken as a first language
by 25 million people and used as a lingua franca by another 20 million across West Africa and the
Sahel.
 Oromo of Ethiopia and Kenya, with about 33 million speakers total.
 Amharic of Ethiopia, with over 25 million native speakers, not including the millions of other
Ethiopians speaking it as a second language.
 Somali, spoken by 15.5 million people in Greater Somalia.

17. Figure 03: Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages.

18. Niger–Congo languages Family
 Niger-Congo languages, a family of languages of Africa, which in terms of the number of languages
spoken, their geographic extent, and the number of speakers is by far the largest language family in
Africa.
 The area in which these languages are spoken stretches from Dakar, Senegal, at the westernmost tip
of the continent, east to Mombasa in Kenya and south to Cape Town, South Africa. Excluding
northern Africa (Mauritania to Egypt and The Sudan) and the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia to Somalia),
some 85 percent of the population of Africa—at least 600 million people—speak a Niger-Congo
language.
 In two countries, Niger and Chad, Niger-Congo languages are spoken by a minority. In northern
Nigeria, northern Uganda, and Kenya there are substantial populations speaking other languages,
but even in these countries the majority of the population speaks a Niger-Congo language.

19. Figure 04: Distribution of the Niger-Congo languages.

20. Austronesian Language Family
 Austronesian languages, formerly called Malayo-Polynesian languages, family of languages
spoken in most of the Indonesian archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island
groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of
Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. In terms of the number of
its languages and of their geographic spread, the Austronesian language family is among the
world’s largest.
 The key to the Austronesian homeland problem is the Formosan languages. This grouping
includes some 20 languages aboriginal to Taiwan (formerly called Formosa), such as Kavalan,
Paiwan and Thao. However, the degree of diversity among these languages is so great that many
researchers treat the Formosan grouping as a number of distinct branches of Austronesian, on a par
with the Malayo-Polynesian branch.
 It should also be pointed out that as a group Formosan languages have nearly been replaced by
Chinese: while prior to 1600s all of Taiwan was Austronesian-speaking, now Formosan languages
are found mostly in the eastern, rugged part of the island. Sadly, most individual Formosan
languages are endangered.

21. Figure 05: Major divisions of the Austronesian languages.

22. Austroasiatic languages Family
 Austroasiatic languages, also spelled Austro-Asiatic, stock of some 150 languages spoken by
more than 65 million people scattered throughout Southeast Asia and eastern India. Most of
these languages have numerous dialects. Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese are culturally the
most important and have the longest recorded history.
 Austroasiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across India, Bangladesh and Southeast
Asia, separated by regions where other languages are spoken. They appear to be the
autochthonous languages of Southeast Asia, with the neighboring Indic, Tai, Dravidian,
Austronesian, and Tibeto-Burman languages being the result of later migrations (Sidwell &
Blench, 2011).
 The rest are languages of nonurban minority groups written, if at all, only recently. The stock
is of great importance as a linguistic substratum for all Southeast Asian languages.

23. Figure 06: Distribution of Austroasiatic languages Family.

24. Major languages of the World
 Half of the world's population natively speak the 13 most populous languages. The following table
lists the most commonly spoken languages of the world with the largest number of native speakers
as estimated by the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin (2007, 2010).
 Since the distinction of language and dialect is often arbitrary, some mutually intelligible idioms
with separate national standards or self-identification have been unified, including Indonesian and
Malay; Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian; etc., but not Standard Hindi and Urdu.
 The following table contains the top 10 languages by estimated number of speakers in the 2007
edition of Nationalencyklopedin.
 As census methods in different countries vary to a considerable extent, and some countries do not
record language in their censuses, any list of languages by native speakers, or total speakers, is based
on estimates. Updated estimates from 2010 are also provided.

25. Rank Language
Native
speakers
(millions)
% of world
population
Mainly spoken in Notes
1
Mandarin
官話/官话
955* 14.4% China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia
Part of Chinese
language family
2
Spanish
Español/Cast
ellano
470[2][3] 6.15%
Spain, Mexico, Parts of the United States,
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico,
Uruguay, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Western
Sahara. See List of countries where Spanish is an
official language
Partially mutually
intelligible with
Portuguese.
3 English 360* 5.43%
United Kingdom, United States of America,
Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand
and Commonwealth of Nations. See List of
countries where English is an official language
4
Hindi
हिन्दी
310* 4.70% India, Nepal
Part of Hindi
languages family.
Hindi languages
Mutually
intelligible
with Urdu.

26. 5
Arabic
‫العربية‬
295* 4.43%
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Chad,
Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco,
Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Western Sahara,
Somaliland, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab
Emirates, Yemen. See List of countries where
Arabic is an official language
Arabic also is
a liturgical languag
e of 1.6 billion
Muslims. The Arabic
language contains
many different
dialects.
6
Portuguese
Português
215* 3.27%
Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde,
Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-
Bissau, Timor-Leste, Macao. See List of countries
where Portuguese is an official language
Partially mutually
intelligible with
Spanish
7
Bengali
বাাংলা
205* 3.11% Bangladesh, India (West Bengal, Tripura, Assam)
8
Russian
Русский
155* 2.33%
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Israel and
Commonwealth of Independent States.
Intelligible with
Ukrainian
and Belarusian.
9
Japanese
日本語
125* 1.90% Japan
10
Punjabi
ਪੰ ਜਾਬੀ
‫پنجابى‬
102* 1.44%
Pakistan, India (Punjab region), United
Kingdom, Canada, United States

27. Figure 07: Geographical distribution of major language of the world.

28. Language of Bangladesh
The official language of Bangladesh is Modern Standard Bengali (Literary Bengali). It serves as the
lingua franca of the nation, with 98% of Bangladeshis fluent in Standard Bengali or Bengali dialects as
their first language. English, though not having official status, is prevalent across government, law,
business, media and education, and can be regarded as the de facto co-official language of
Bangladesh.
Bangladesh accounts for the majority of speakers of Bengali and as the 2001 census seems to
underestimate the total population of the country we have relied on several estimates that are more
or less coincidental: US State Department (144 millions in 2007), World Bank (160 million in 2008),
CIA World Fact Book (156 million in 2010), Word Population Reference (164 million in 2010). Based
on them, we estimate that the population of Bangladesh is 171 million of which 98 % speak Bengali
yielding 168 million to which the 97 million speakers of Bengali living in India must be added.
The indigenous people of northern and southeastern Bangladesh speak a variety of native languages,
notably Chakma and Shantali. Urdu is commonly spoken among Muslim migrants from India and
Pakistan.

29. Figure 08: Language of Bangladesh.

30. Conclusion
 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 redefi ned moment by moment through
shared language.
 Language refl ects where a culture has been, what a culture values, even how people in a culture
think, describe, and experience events.
 Perhaps 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.

31. References
1. Majid Hussain, Human Geography, Rawat Publications, New Delhi. 3rd Edition, 1994.
2. Richard T. Schaefer, Sociology, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 8th Edition
3. Erin H. Fouberg, Alexander B. Murphy and H. J. de Blij, Human Geography, 10th Edition.
4. Websites_
 http://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/largest.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Bangladesh
 http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/family
 http://www.mapsofworld.com/pages/world-trivia/major-world-languages/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
 http://my.ilstu.edu/~jrbaldw/370/Culture&Language.htm
 http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa
 http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html
 http://www.britannica.com/