THE CULTURAL EBOOK

118 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Folk and Popular Food consumption of these animals is thought to hel1
Preferences cape pain in childbirth and to prevent birth of a c
with abnormalities. During pregnancy, the Mbum I
Learning Outcome 4.2.2 avoid meat from antelopes with twisted horns, w
could cause them to bear offspring with deformitit
Understand reasons for folk food preferences and
taboos. FOODS FROM A GARDEN: THE BOSTANS OF ISTAN

According to the nineteenth-century cultural geogra- Bostans, which are small gardens inside Istanbul, Tu
pher Vidal de la Blache, "Among the connections that have been supplying the city with fresh produce
tie [people) to a certain environment, one of the most hundreds of years (Figure 4-18). According to geogr,
tenacious is food supply; clothing and weapons are more Paul Kaldjian, Istanbul has around 1,000 bostans,
subject to modification than the dietary regime, which ex- primarily by immigrants from Cide, a rural villai
perience has shown to be best suited to human needs in a Turkey's Kastamonu province. Bostan farmers are at
given climate." maximize yields from their small plots of land (typ
1 hectare) through what Kaldjian calls clever and effi
Food preferences are inevitably affected by the avail- manipulation of space, season, and resources. In a be
ability of products, but people do not simply eat what is 15 to 20 different types of vegetables are plant,
available in their particular environment. Food prefer- different times of the year, and the choice is varied
ences are strongly influenced by cultural traditions. What year to year, in order to reduce the risk of damage
is eaten establishes one's social, religious, and ethnic poor weather. Most of the work is done by older
memberships. The surest good way to identify a family's who prepare beds for planting, sow, irrigate, and OJ
ethnic origins is to look in its kitchen. motorized equipment, according to Kaldjian. W,
weed, and both men and women harvest.

FOLK FOOD CUSTOMS AND THE FOODS AND THE ENVIRONMENT. People adapt
ENVIRONMENT food preferences to conditions in the environme,
Asia, rice is grown in milder, moister regions; wheat t
Folk food habits are embedded especially strongly in the in colder, drier regions. In Europe, traditional prefe,
environment. Humans eat mostly plants and animals- for quick-frying foods in Italy resulted in part fror
living things that spring from the soil and water of a re- shortages. In Northern Europe, an abundant woods
gion. Inhabitants of a region must consider the soil, encouraged the slow stewing and roasting of food
climate, terrain, vegetation, and other characteristics of fires, which also provided home heat in the colder cl
the environment in deciding to produce particular foods.
Soybeans, an excellent source of protein, are ,
FOOD AND PLACE: :rHE CONCEPT OF TERROIR. The grown in Asia. ln the raw state they are toxic anc
contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to gestible. Lengthy cooking renders them edible, but
the way food tastes is known by the French term terroir. scarce in Asia. Asians have adapted to this environr
The word comes from the same root as tcrre (the French challenge by deriving from soybeans foods that do 1
word for "land" or "earth"), but terroiI does not translate quire extensive cooking. These include bean sprout
precisely into English; it has a similar meanlng to the minated seeds), soy sauce (fermented soybeans), an,
English expressions "grounded" and "sense of place." curd (steamed soybeans).
Terroir is the sum of the effects on a particular food item of
soil, climate, and other features of the local environment. FOOD TABOOS

FOODS TO CRAVE OR AVOID. In folk cultures, certain According to many folk customs, everything in natt
foods are eaten because their natural properties are ries a signature, or distinctive characteristic, based
perceived to enhance qualities considered desirable by the appearance and natural properties. Consequently,
I may desire or avoid certain foods in response to pe1
society. Here are some examples:
I

• The Abipone people in Paraguay eat jaguars, stags, and beneficial or harmful natural traits.

People refuse to eat particular plants or animals t
bulls to make them strong, brave, and swift. The Abi- thought to embody negative forces in the enviro:
pone believe that consuming hens or tortoises will Such a restriction on behavior imposed by social cust
make them cowardly.
taboo. Other social customs, such as sexual practice

• The Ainu people in Japan avoid eating otters because prohibitions, but taboos are especially strong in the

they are believed to be forgetful animals, and consum- food. Some folk cultures may establish food taboos I

ing them could cause loss of memory. of concern for the natural environment. These tabo

• The Mbum Kpau women in Chad do not eat chicken help to protect endangered animals or to conserv1

or goat before becoming pregnant. Abstaining from natural resources. To preserve scarce animal species

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 119

Et,t,y Manure
Gate
Pile

CJ Building:shed,work yard, □•• Fruitor shadetree,
storage,kitchen,quarters typicallyfig or mulberry
Seedbed
Well
Vegetablecrop
Nursery/ hothousefor Poolfor washingand
startingplantsearly preparingvegetables

Beehive

I. FIGURE4-18 ISTANBUL VEGETABLE GARDEN GeographePr aul and in part because its meat spoils relatively quickly in hot
Kaldji.insketcheda typicalbostan,a traditionalvegetablegardenin the center climates, such as the Mediterranean. These biblical taboos
of IstanbulT, urkeyB. ostansprovideresidentsof the largecityof Istanbulwith a were developed through oral tradition and by rabbis into
sourceof freshvegetables. the kosher laws observed today by some Jews.

few high-ranking people in some tropical regions are per- Similarly, Muslims embrace the taboo against pork be-
mitted to hunt, and the majority cultivate crops. cause pigs are unsuited for the dry lands of the Arabian
Peninsula. Pigs would compete with humans for food and
Relatively well-known taboos against consumption water, without offering compensating benefits, such as
of certain foods can be found in the Bible. The ancient being able to pull a plow, carry loads, or provide milk and
Hebrews were prohibited from eating a wide variety wool. Widespread raising of pigs would be an ecological
of foods, including animals that do not chew their cud disaster in Islam's hearth.
or that have cloven feet and fish lacking fins or scales
(Figure 4-19). These taboos arose partially from concern Hindu taboos against consuming cattle can also be
for the environment by the Hebrews, who lived as pasto- partly explained by envirnnmental reasons. Cows are the
ral nomads in lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean. source of oxen (castrated male bovine), the traditional
The pig, for example, is prohibited in part because it is choice for pulling plows as well as carts. A large supply of
more suited to sedentary farming than pastoral nomadism oxen must be maintained in India because every field has
to be plowed at approximately the same time-when the
l' FIGURE4-19 KOSHERRESTAURANTR, OME monsoon rains arrive. Religious sanctions have kept India's
cattle population large as a form of insurance against the
, ,; -',,-:.__ loss of oxen and increasing population.

But the taboo against consumption of meat among
many people, including Muslims, Hindus, andJews, cannot
be explained primarily by environmental factors. Social
values must influence the choice of diet because people in
similar climates and with similar levels of income consume
different foods. The biblical food taboos were established
in part to set the Hebrew people apart from others. That
Christians ignore the biblical food injunctions reflects their

desire to distinguish themselves from Jews. Furthermore,

as a universalizing religion, Christianity was less tied to ta-
boos that originated in the Middle East (see Chapter 6).

Pauseand Reflect4.2.2

What foods do you avoid?Do you avoid foods
becauseof taboosor for other reasons?

120 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

POPULAR FOOD CULTURE In Southwest Asia, religion influences cola prefere
At one time, the region's predominantly Muslim c
learning Outcome 4.2.3 tries boycotted products that were sold in predomin;
Jewish Israel. Because Coke but not Pepsi was sold in I:
Describe regional variations in popular food in most of Israel's neighbors Pepsi was preferred.
preferences.
REGIONAL DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE UNITED STA
In the popular culture of twenty-first century America,
food preferences seem far removed from folk traditions. Some of the leading franchised fast-food restau
Popular food preferences are influenced more by cultural display regional variations in popularity. Lexicalist (·
values than by environmental features. Still, some regional .lexicalist.com) reads through millions of words on Tv
variations can be observed, and environmental influences and other social media to see what kind of words are t
remain important in selected items. used throughout the United States. Based on the frequ
of referring to particular fast-food restaurants, Lexi,
DIFFERENCES AMONG COUNTRIES. Why do Coca-Cola concludes that Dunkin' Donuts is especially popular i.
and Pepsi have different sales patterns (Figure 4-20)? The Northeast, Krispy Kreme in the Southeast, White C
two beverages are similar, and many people are unable to in the Midwest, and In-N-Out Burger in the Soutt
taste the difference. Yet consumers prefer Coke in some (Figure 4-21).
countries and Pepsi in others.
Americans may choose particular beverages or st
Coca-Cola accounts for more than one-half of the in part on the basis of preference for what is prod1
world's cola shares, and Pepsi for another one-fourth. grown, or imported locally:
Coca-Cola is the sales leader in most of the Western
Hemisphere. The principal exception is Canada's French- • Wine consumption is relatively high in Califc
speaking province of Quebec, where Pepsi is preferred. where most of the U.S. production is concentr
Pepsi won over the Quebecois with advertising that tied and beer consumption is relatively low there. Bee:
Pepsi to elements of uniquely French Canadian culture. spirits consumption are relatively high in the t
The major indoor arena in Quebec City is named the Midwest, where much of the grain is grown. Cons1
Colisee Pepsi (Pepsi Coliseum). tion of wine is low in that part of the country, v
few grapes are grown.
Cola preferences are influenced by politics in Russia.
Under communism, government officials made a deal • Southerners may prefer pork rinds because more
with Pepsi to allow that cola to be sold in the Soviet are raised there, and northerners may prefer pOE
Union. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the and potato chips because more com and potatot
end of communism, Coke entered the Russian market. grown there.
Russians quickly switched their preference to Coke be-
cause Pepsi was associated with the discredited Commu- Cultural backgrounds affect the amount and tyi:
nist government. alcohol and snack foods consumed:

II

1

11

I

140' 120' 2,000 .t,OOMiOili!!t 40"

Percenmt arketshare 0 "2,~ -4.00K0llo1J1'?1"$
tiefdbyfeadfngsoftdrlnk
80' Cl' 20' 40" 60" 80' 100' 120' 140' 160' 1!0'
Pepsi Coke
• 75andabove

- -50-74
- 25-49

Below25
nodata

.A.FIGURE 4-20 COKE VERSUSPEPSICoca-Collaeadsinsalesinthe UnitedStates,LatinAmericaE, urope, Geographers cannot ex
andRussiaP. epsileadsinCanadaandSouthandSouthwesAt sia. most of the regional vari,
in food preferences. Vari,

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 12·1

that cause the fruit to rot are more active in hot, humid
weather.

• Topography. Vineyards are planted on hillsides, if pos-
sible, to maximize exposure to sunlight and to facilitate
drainage. A site near a lake or river is also desirable be-
cause water can temper extremes of temperature.

• Soil. Grapes can be grown in a variety of soils, but the
best wine tends to be produced from grapes grown in
soil that is coarse and well drained-a soil that is not
necessarily fertile for other crops.

A FIGURE4-21 FAST-FOOD RESTAURANTPREFERENCESDunkin' WINE PRODUCTION: CULTURAL FACTORS. Although
Donutsisespeciallpyopularin the NortheastK, rispyKremein theSoutheast, grapes can be grown in a wide variety of locations, the
WhiteCastlein theMidwesta, ndln-N-OuBt urgerin theSouthwest. production of wine is based principally on cultural values,
both historical and contemporary. The distribution of wine
within the United States are much less significant than dif- production shows that the diffusion of popular customs
ferences between the United States and developing coun- depends less on the distinctive environment of a location
tries in Africa and Asia. than on the presence of beliefs, institutions, and material
traits conducive to accepting those customs (Figure 4-22).
Pause and Reflect 4.2.3 Wine is made today primarily in locations that have a
tradition of excellence in making it and people who like to
Do your food preferences match the predominant drink it and can afford to purchase it.
ones in your region?
The social custom of wine production in much of
WINE PRODUCTION: ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS. The France and Italy extends back at least to the Roman
spatial distribution of wine production demonstrates Empire. Wine consumption declined after the fall of
that environmental factors can be of some influence in Rome, and many vineyards were destroyed. Monaster-
the distribution of popular food customs. The distinctive ies preserved the wine-making tradition in medieval Eu-
character of a wine derives from a vineyard's terroir-the rope for both sustenance and ritual. Wine consumption
unique combination of soil, climate, and other physical has become extremely popular again in Europe in recent
characteristics at the place where the grapes are grown: centuries, as well as in the Western Hemisphere, which
• Climate. Vineyards are best cultivated in temperate cli- was colonized by Europeans. Vineyards are now typically
owned by private individuals and corporations rather
mates of moderately cold, rainy winters and fairly long, than religious organizations.
hot summers. Hot, sunny weather is necessary in the
summer for the fruit to mature properly, whereas win- Wine production is discouraged in regions of the world
ter is the preferred season for rain because plant diseases dominated by religions other than Christianity. Hindus
and Muslims in particular avoid alcoholic beverages. Thus
wine production is limited in the Middle East (other than
Israel) and southern Asia primarily because of cultural val-
ues, especially religion.

.,.......---=-!--mrp~~--~+~-W~'- ... ◄ FIGURE4•22 WINE
PRODUCTION Thedistributionof wine
PACIFIC ' productionis influencedin partbythe
physicael nvironmenatndin partby
OCEAN

0'- . • E~~tO' socialcustomsM. ostgrapesusedfor
1£0' 140 winearegrownnearthe Mediterranean
-..,,_ Seaor in areasof similarclimate.Income,
Wineproducll<ln
(metrictons) I ~ •/2.0t

• 1 millionandabo~e II preferenceasn, dothersocialcustoms
- 100,000-999,999 -o--;---,lt-:2.00<J::---:--:+-~, ::---,,,-....,-..,,-- ◄O' alsoinfluencethedistributionof wine
consumptiona,sseenin the lower
1.000-99,999
Below1,000 0 •2,000 I,'° Kl~"'3/"' I productionlevelsof predominantlMy uslim
countriessouthof theMediterranean.
20' 40' 6ll' 80' I00' 120' 1'0' 1&1' 18!1'

~fflUIH■fH.IIUIII.UIIW

122 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Distribution of Folk and timber from the desert poplar tree, and they share
Popular Housing ilar objective-protection from extreme tempe
from very hot summer days to subfreezing winter
Learning Outcome 4.2.4 Despite their similarities, the houses in these four c
villages have individual designs, which McColl att
Understand factors that influence patterns of folk to local cultural preferences:
housing.
• Kashgar. Houses have second-floor open-air
French geographer Jean Brunhes, a major contributor to where the residents can catch evening breezes
the cultural landscape tradition, viewed the house as being and fruit trees can be planted around the ho,
among the essential facts of human geography. It is a cause the village has a river that is constantly
product of both cultural tradition and natural conditions. rather than seasonal, as is the case in much of
American cultural geographer Fred Kniffen considered the dry lands. These deciduous trees provide shad
house to be a good reflection of cultural heritage, current summer and openings for sunlight in the wintE
fashion, functional needs, and the impact of environment.
• Turpan. Houses have small, open courtyards fc
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES gatherings. Turpan is situated in a deep valley ,
ON FOLK HOUSING atively little open land because much of the
allocated to drying raisins. Second-story patio:
A group's unique folk customs develop through centuries would use even less land, are avoided beca
of relative isolation from customs practiced by other cul- village is subject to strong winds.
tural groups. As a result, folk customs observed at a point
in time vary widely from one place to another, even among • Yinchuan. Houses are built around large, open-~
nearby places. yards, which contain tall trees to provide shat
residents are Muslims, who regard courtyards a
The construction of a pitched roof is important in wet or spaces to be screened from outsiders. The ado!
snowy climates to facilitate runoff and to reduce the weight are square or cubic rather than rectangular, i
of accumulated snow. Windows may face south in temper- case in the other villages, though R. W. McCc
ate climates to take advantage of the Sun's heat and light. In no reason for this distinctive custom.
hot climates, on the other hand, window openings may be
smaller to protect the interior from the full heat of the Sun. • Dunhuang. Houses are characterized by wallet
courtyards, covered by an open-lattice grape a,
The type of building materials used to construct folk cover allows for the free movement of air but
houses is influenced partly by the resources available in shade from the especially intense direct sum1
the environment. Stone, grass, sod, and skins may be used, and light. Rather than the flat roofs characteris
but the two most common building materials in the world lands, houses in Dunhuang have sloped roof
are wood and brick: of wetter climates, so that rainfall can run off.~
tice is apparently influenced by Dunhuang'~
• Wood. If available, wood is generally preferred for proximity to the population centers of easter
house construction because it is easy to build with it. In where sloped roofs predominate.
the past, pioneers who settled in forested regions built
log cabins for themselves. Today, people in developed SACRED SPACES IN HOUSES
countries buy lumber that has been cut by machine
into the needed shapes. Cut lumber is used to erect a The distinctive form of folk houses may derive J
frame, and sheets or strips of wood are attached for the from religious values and other customary beliE
floors, ceilings, and roof. than from environmental factors. Some comp,
tions may be more important than other directio
• Brick.In hot, dry climates-such as the U.S. Southwest,
Mexico, northern China, and parts of the Middle East- Houses may have sacred walls or comers. In ti
bricks are made by baking wet mud in the sun. Stone central part of the island of Java, for example,
is used to build houses in parts of Europe and South door always faces south, the direction of the S
America and as decoration on the outside of brick or Goddess, who holds the key to Earth. The easter
wood houses in other countries. a house is considered sacred in Hji, as is the n
ern wall in parts of China. Sacred walls or corner
Even in areas that share similar climates and available noted in parts of the Middle East, India, and Afri
building materials, folk housing can vary because of minor
differences in environmental features. For example, R. W. In Madagascar, the main door is on the wes
McColl compared house types in four villages situated in erect the most important direction, and the nor
the dry lands of northern and western China (Figure 4-23). corner is the most sacred. The northern wall is f,
All use similar building materials, including adobe and ing ancestors; in addition, important guests enti
from the north and are seated against the nortl
The bed is placed against the eastern wall of tl
with the head facing north.

Chapter 4: Folk and PopularCulture 123

The Lao people in northern Laos arrange beds perpen- ~ FIGURE4-23 HOUSETYPESIN FOURWESTERNCHINA
dicular to the center ridgepole of the house (Figure 4-24, COMMUNITIESHousetypesin fourcommunitieosf westernChina.Houses
top). Because the head is considered high and noble and havesecond-flooorpen-airpatiosin Kashgasr,mallopencourtyardsinTurpan,

the feet low and vulgar, people sleep so that their heads largeprivatecourtyardsinYinchuana,ndslopedroofsin Dunhuang.

will be opposite their neighbor's heads and their feet oppo-

site their neighbor's feet. There is one principal exception

to this arrangement: A child who builds a house next door

to his or her parents sleeps with his or her head toward the Pause and Reflect 4.2.4

parents' feet as a sign of obeying the customary hierarchy. What factors were considered in the arrangement of
Although they speak similar Southeast Asian languages the bed in your bedroom?

and adhere to Buddhism, the Lao do not orient their houses

in the same manner as the Yuan and Shan peoples in nearby

northern Thailand (Figure4-24, bottom). The Yuan and Shan

ignore the position of neighbors and all sleep with their heads ◄ FIGURE4-24 SACRED
toward the east, which Buddhists consider the most auspi- HOUSINGSPACE(top)Houses
cious direction. Staircases must not face west, the least aus- of LaopeopleInnorthernLaosT. he

picious direction and the direction of death and evil spirits. frontsof Laohousess.uchasthose

in thevillageof MuangNan,Laos,

Ban Mff Sllkud, Thailand faceoneanotheracrossa path,and
Ftom.s:el)s thebacksfaceeachotherat therear.
fl 1nd•7· I 8~f-JTflJ dllJ{JIJMuong Nan, Leos Theirridgepole(sthecenterlineof
theroof)aresetperpendiculator the

pathbutparalletlo a streamI,f one

is nearbyI.nsideadjacenht ouses,

peoplesleepin theorientation

~ shown,soneighborasrehead-
to-heador feet-to-fee(t.bottom)
I ARirlgopo-

Houseosf YuanandShanpeoples

Sheds;r,d in northernThailandIn. thevillage
fa,mbuildings of BanMaeSakudT,hailandth, e
housesarenotsetin a straightline
Ill ' becausoef a beliefthatevilspirits
movein straightlines.Ridgepoles
'!,··~-~510 1 ~.,o_orttt_~~~"--~~-""- paralletlhepath,andtheheadsof
'
allsleepingpersonpsointeastward.

124 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

U.S. Housing • Middle Atlantic. The principal house type was knowr
the "!"-house, typically two full stories in height, one re
Learning Outcome 4.2.5 deep and at least two rooms wide. Middle Atlantic
Understand variations in time and space of housing grants carried their house type westward across the C
in the United States. Valleyand southwestward along the Appalachian trail:

Older houses in the United States display local folk-culture • Lower Chesapeake/Tidewater. The style typically c
traditions. Housing built in the United States since the prised one story, with a steep roof and chimneys a
1940s demonstrates how popular customs vary more in ther end. Migrants spread these houses from the Ch
time than in place. In contrast with folk housing charac- peake Bay/Tidewater, Virginia, area along the South
teristic of the early 1800s, newer housing in the United Coast. In wet areas, houses in the coastal southeast,
States has been built to reflect rapidly changing fashion often raised on piers or on brick foundations.
concerning the most suitable house form.
• New England. The distinctive style was box sh:
U.S. FOLK HOUSING with a central hall. The New England house type!
be found throughout the Great Lakes region as far
When families migrated westward in the 1700s and 1800s, as Wisconsin because this area was settled primari
they cut trees to clear fields for planting and used the migrants from New England.
wood to build houses, barns, and fences. The style of pio-
neer homes reflected whatever upscale style was prevailing Folk housing can still be seen in the United Stat
at the place on the East Coast from which they migrated. older housing that survives from the nineteenth cer
As discussed in the following Contemporary Geogr.
HEARTHS OF HOUSE TYPES. Geographer Fred Kniffen Tools feature, geographers use field studies to docu
identified three major hearths, or nodes, of folk house the distribution and diffusion of house types.
forms in the United States (Figure 4-25):
U.S. POPULAR HOUSING

Houses built in the United States since the mid-twe·
century display popular culture influences. The deg
regional distinctiveness in housing style has dlmit
because rapid communication and transportation SJ
provide people throughout the country with knowle
alternative styles. furthermore, most people do not
the houses in which they live. Instead, houses are 1
mass-produced by construction companies.

Houses show the influence of shapes, materia
tailing, and other features of architectural style in
at any one point in time. In the years immediate!
World War II, which ended in 1945, most U.S. hous
built in a modern style. Since the 1960s, styles tha
tects call neo-eclectic have predominated (Figure 4.

Pause and Reflect 4.2.5

Can you describe your house through reference
one of the past or present styles?

ATLANTIC CHECK-IN:KEYISSUE2
OCEAN
Where Are Folk and Popular Materi
0 100 200MILES Culture Distributed?
0 100 200KILOMffillS
✓ Regional variations in folk food, clothing,,
,80'\V IS!W shelter derive from the physical environm,
well as from religion and other cultural vc:1
• FIGURE 4-25 HEARTHS OF U.S. FOLK HOUSING U.Sh. ousetypesin
the UnitedStatesoriginateidnthreemainsourceareasanddiffusedwestward ✓ Popular preferences in food, clothing, and
alongdifferenptathsT. hesepathscoincidewd ithpredominanrot utestakenby shelter vary more in time than in place.
migrantfsromtheEastCoastowardtheinterioor fthecountry. However, some regional variations in
preferences persist.

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 125

..... 1punfijB B i'@r--l--+ ◄ FIGURE 4--26 U.S. HOUSE

TYPES, 1945 TO PRESENTThe

Ranch (1935--1975) dominantypeof house

~ constructioinnthe UnitedStates

Minimal Tradllional •Nee-French (1970-present) wasminimatlraditionadl uring
(1936-1950) the late1940sandearly1950s,
~ ! ~ I iMansard (1960-present) followedbyranchhousesduringthe
Spli::::vel (1955-197.:/ late1950sand1960sT. hesplit-level
wasa popularvariantoftheranch
betweenthe1950sand1970sa, nd
the contemporarsytylewaspopular
---~~=:;;;WM.___T=I =_~, ~--. --~Contemporary (1940-1980) ,
forarchitect-designhedousesduring
~·-~~.,,""'""'""'Neo-eclecticStyles
thesameperiodT. heshedstyle

-~ooa1,~, .... nt) j waswidelybuiltin the late 1960s,

Neo-eclectsictylesb, eginningwith
1 themansardw, ereinvogueduring

1

thelate1960sT. heneo-Tudor

~ waspopularinthe 1970sand

, theneo-Frencihnthe 1980sT. he

Nee-Tudor (1965-presenl) neo-coloniastlylehasbeenwidely

1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 builtsincethe 1950sbut hasnever

Year dominatedpopulararchitecture.

CONTEMPORARGY EOGRAPHICTOOLS

DocumentingHouseTypesthrough Fieldwork

Fieldwork has been regarded as an ..,.r·<r~udS<>O,
important geographic method since <:J
the development of geography as a
modem science two centuries ago. ,J t ~
Given their concern with regularities
in space, geographers need to get out rIsLbo,g. RoclcviU&I,N
of their classrooms and laboratories Ho~.
to observe the visible elements of 1
other places with their own eyes. •'

Especially well suited to field rd,
studies have been VJsible everyday
elements of folk and popular culture, • Double Pile GA oc s~,
such as house styles. Field material
can be collected by delineating one C.,:} Port Gibson, MS. .NC
or more areas on a map and visiting Single Pile Columblana AL
the sites. Armed with a chart or a -Irregular Massed
spreadsheet, a geographer counts the Housel'jpe
number of times that something ap- Ranch
pears in the area, such as a particular - Bungalow
type of house. • DoublePie

According to fieldwork by geogra- SinglePile
phers John Jakle, Robert Bastian, and ~regularMilSSed
Douglas Meyer, regional differences Ranch
in the predominant type of h~Juse
persist to some extent in the United .I, FIGURE4-27 REGIONADLIFFERENCEINSHOUSETYPESJakie,Bastian,and Meyerallocated
States (Figure 4-27). Differences in the single-familhyousingin 20 smalltownsin the easternUnitedStatesintofivegroups:bungalow,
housing among U.S. communities doublepile,irregularlymassed,ranch,and singlepile.Ranchhousesweremorecommonmthe
derive largely from differences in southeasterntowns;double-pilehousespredominatedin northeasternareas.

the tJme period in which the houses

were built.

126 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

KEY ISSUE 3 human watched 3.1 hours of TV per day in 2009, a,
the average American watched 4.6 hours.
Why Is Access to
• TV has been the most important mechanism by whi
Folk and popular culture, such as professional sports, rapidly c
fuses across Earth.
Popular Culture
- -~-,--~'°"'lW' 1,W"ll!'l' 100" 80' t~ 4.., ?v- 11 2f' "1' W' ..1
Unequal?
1954 L ARCTIC
■ Electronic Diffusion of
Popular Culture flt' ,\ • OC~AN

■ Challenges in Accessing - -r .
Electronic Media
r
Learning Outcome 4.3.1
Describe the origin, diffusion, and '}< \,- ATUWTiC
distribution of TV around the world. OCEAN
PACIFIC
Popular culture diffuses rapidly around the OCEAN
world, primarily through electronic media.
The latest fashions in material culture and 20'
leisure activities can be viewed by anyone
in the world who has access to one or more 40"
forms of electronic media. Electronic media
increase accessto popular culture for people lOC"' 120" 1'r IIO' 180'
who embrace folk culture and at the same
time increase access to folk culture for peo- :i:.160" 1'0"I~ 100' 80" ~JI" u· II' 20'6f !O" ICIO,',,,. I.a" 11<7.1.,-
ple who are part of the world's popular cul-
ture scene. IO

The principal obstacle to popular cul- 1970 >
ture is lack of access to electronic media.
Access is limited primarily by lack of in- 60".
come. In some developing countries access
is also limited by lack of electricity, cell ...
phone service, and other electronic media.
lO'' />ACIFK
i>ACIFIC OCEAN
OCEAN
110" 110
O"

20'

JO"

160"

Electronic Diffusion 4!)"
of Popular Culture
_, 1--
The world's most important electronic
media format by far is TV. TV supplanted 100' 1 PAC.
other formats, notably radio and tele-
graph, during the twentieth century. Into TVsper 1,000 -~ OCE.
the twenty-first century, other formats popuJatlor, =~-INDIAH
have become popular, but they have not -..,_,.~
yet supplanted TV worldwide. • 30Dandabo,e
100-299 2:000 4,000MIi• ~.,.-
Watching TV remains especially impor- 10-99
tant for popular culture for two reasons: 1-9 O' Z" '4 0 ··um 4.000~ !fir \
BelowI
• Watching TV is the most popular lei- nodata 6:,,- 80' 100' 120" I~
sure activity in the world. The average
A FIGURE4-28 DIFFUSIOONFTVTelevisionpser1,000inhabitantisn(top)1954,(midd
1970,and(bottom2) 005.TelevisiohnasdiffusedfromNorthAmericandEuropeto otherre!

theworld.TheUnitedStatesandCanadahadfarmoreTVsetspercapitathananyothercou1
recentlyas the 1970sb, utseveraEl uropeancountriens owhavehigherratesofownership.

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 127

• FIGURE 4-29 TV HEARTH Oneof the first experimentaTl Vbroadcasts

wasbyGermanengineersat the 1936OlympicsIn Berlin.

DIFFUSION OF TV: MID-TWENTIETH J. FIGURE 4-30 TV DIFFUSESWORLDWIDE Uruguayanfanswatch
CENTURY UruguayplaySouthKoreain 2010WorldCup.

Through the second half of the twentieth century, televi- Europe and China, fictional programs in South Asia, and
sion diffused from the United States to Europe and other news programs in Russia.
developed countries and then to developing countries
(Figure 4-28): The technology by which TV is delivered to viewers
has changed. Between 2006 and 2013, the share of viewers
• Early twentieth century: Multiple hearths. Televi- around the world receiving programs over the air decljned
sion technology was developed simultaneously in the from 44 percent to 33 percent, and the share using cable
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and the increased modestly, from 35 percent to 37 percent. On
Soviet Union, as well as in the United States, though in the other hand, the share receiving programs through
the early years of broadcasting the United States held a a satellite dish increased from 20 percent to 26 percent,
near monopoly (Figure 4-29). and the share receiving TV programs through the Internet
increased from less than 1 percent to S percent.
• Mid-twentieth century: United States dominates. In
1954, the first year that the United Nations published Pause and Reflect 4.3.1
data on the subject, the United States had 86 percent of
the world's 37 million TV sets. How much TV do you watch? Which types of
programs do you watch? Do you watch on a
• Late twentieth century: Diffusion to Europe. Rapid
growth of ownership in Europe meant that the share traditional TV set, or do you watch on a computer,
of the world's sets in the United States declined to one-
fourth. Still, in 1970, half of the countries in the world, tablet, or smartphone?
including most of those in Africa and Asia, had little if
any TV broadcasting. Travel & Participatory
other leisure sports & exercise
• Early twenty-first century: Near-universal access. By
2005, ownership rates climbed sharply in many devel- Reading
oping countries, diminishing international differences
(Figure 4-30). 50.4%
WatchingTV
Despite diffusion of TV sets around the world, the
United States remains the country where people are most .i FIGURE 4-31 HOW AMERICANSSPENOTHEIRWEEKENDS Watching
likely to watch it. According to the U.S. Time Use Survey,
the average American male spent around 7 hours on leisure TV is byfar the mostcommonleisureactivityfor Americans.
and recreation in a typical weekend in 2010, and TV watch-
ing took up S1 percent of the time. Women spent around
6 hours on leisure in a typical weekend and watched TV for
49 percent of the time (Figure 4-31).

Although people around the world spend a lot of time
watching TV, they don't all watch the same programs.
Sports are the most popular programs in North America,
entertainment programs such as reality shows in most of

,qq1111fflIlIfHfllIllIlIlH

128 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET: the world took a half-century, whereas the diffusion of the
LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY Internet took only a decade. Given the history of television,
the Internet is likely to diffuse further in the years ahead at
rapid rate (Figure 4-33).

Learning Outcome 4.3.2 DIFFUSION OF SOCIAL MEDIA:
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Compare the diffusion of the Internet and social
media with the diffusion of TV.

The familiar pattern has repeated in the twenty-first cen

The diffusion of Internet service follows the pattern es- tury. People based in the United States have dominated th1
tablished by television a generation earlier, but at a more

rapid pace (Figure 4-32): "°'160' 120' 100' &I' 60' ,o- :io- ,o-11' 20' 60' tit' 100' 120' 14111'11()" 1w

• In 1995, there were 40 million In- 1995 .--=..~..,.-... ncnc_....._,_,_i,.,,.· -;,..-'~.:";'~-s._~1!0'
ternet users worldwide, including
---"" - ~ - _.,
25dmillion in th~ UnhitdedStates, ·· ~ · ~
an Internet service a not yet ...i_~; ~- -~

reached most countries. e~- · 6'r .,: I.!;/
•
• Between 1995 and 2000, Inter- -,,,; _ A~IC "9 jt-_~!cl~!'
,~
net usage increased rapidly in the 20' ' PACIFIC . - , :- , ~ '6'c~~·20
United States, from 9 percent to ocEAN ~ ,~,..~.~t1cao"n,~e.o:m.i1t-✓·•p-~,.~'-7,~"r~2~:- -
44 percent of the population. But k. - ...
o- r.
the worldwide increase was much AT1.ANT1c ~• c
grea ter, from 40 m1'II'ion 1n terne t 20':.--
- - OCEAN - -

users in 1995 to 361 million in -!,◄O'·:---\- ~ -, , j
2000. As Internet usage diffused
~

rapidly, the U.S. percentage share \( 60'1GO' 140' 120' 100' 00'~ olO' 20' O' 20' •O' _
declined rapidly in fi.ve years, 60' 10' 100' 120' 1,00 160' 1-

from 62 to 31 percent. lr.o' 140' 120' 100' 60' 60' 40" lf1' O' 211' 40' 60' 80' 100' 120' 14111'60' 180'

• Between 2000 and 201 l, Internet 2000 RCnc-.,,::-· ""- 150'
usage continued to increase rap-
idly in the United States, to 77 per- 411' .. EIIJol ' "". 60'
cent of the population. Agai.n, the ~
increa5e was more modest than in 'i. ~,;,

r\

the rest of the world, and the share 20• , i _..t _Jrr~at~•
of the world's Internet users found PACIFIC ,... PACIFrC
in the United States continued to "' ... OCEAN
fl'· ocEAN ' ,;·(!\
decline, to 10 percent in 2011.
~~: '"'-!~:.'. ,;--±.:-~".i -
Note that all six maps in Fig- 20' -•-~ ~\~

-,-- --ures 4-28 and 4-32 use the same in-
~----· - - .t ~N

tervals. For example, the highest class ~ ,- ', '"""-'"-c;;,._,,.~,,._:_A
41)1

in all maps is 300 or more per 1,000. 60'160' Ull' 120' 100' 00'

What is different is the time inter- ,00 20' O' 20' 40' 60' 90' 100" 120' 140' 160' IIO'

val period. The diffusion of television &,•--- 160' 1CO1' 20' 100' ao' 60" 40' 20' O' 10' ◄O' 60' 80' 100' 120' 140' lEI)' 180'
from the United States to the rest of -.

2011 ARC

► FIGURE 4-32 DIFFUSION OF THE Interneut sersper - -.- _,.._ -- Jrvc,;:C11Co1J'<I
1,000population
INTERNET Interneut sersper1,000inhabitants • - -1:-C:llloClc.;vicrn· -
in(top)1995,(middle2)000,and(bottom) • 300andabove
2011.Compareto thediffusionofTV(figure -100-299 PACIFIC
4-28).Internetserviceisfollowinga patternin OCEAN
thetwenty-firsctenturysimilartothe patternof I0-99
diffusionoftelevisioninthe twentiethcentury. 1-9 . _ _!!P
TheUnitedStatesstartedoutwitha much
below1 k',,.
higherrateof usagethanelsewhereu.ntilother nodata
countriescaughtup.Thedifferenceisthat the Pru,n1·dabyOlde,rts,own I
diffusionoftelevisiontooka half-centuraynd
the diffusionofthe Interneot nlya decade. j-"- 0 --rooo rooow,.,y-r;;)

I O •2.000 l,OCOK"""'""

0' 10' ~O' 60' 80' 100' 120' 140' 160' lllO'

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 129

diffuse to other parts of the world or be overtaken by other

forms of electronic social networking and be relegated to a
footnote in the continuous repeating pattern of diffusing
electronic communications.

j. FIGURE 4-33 DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET TO INDIA Accessto the DIFFUSION OF TWITTER. The United States was the
Interneitsavailableevenin manyruralareasofmanyLDCs. source of one-third of all Twitter messages in 2011.
Another one-third originated in six other countries-India,
use of social media during the early years. In the future, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Canada
will U.S. dominance be reduced and perhaps disappear al- (Figure 4-35). In the case of Twitter, the second leading
together, as occurred in the twentieth century with TV? Twitter country is one of the world's poorest, India. This
may be a preview of future trends, in which electronic
DIFFUSION OF FACEBOOK. Facebook, founded in 2004 communications advances diffuse rapidly to developing
by Harvard University students, has begun to diffuse countrie~, not just to other developed countries.
rapidly. As with the first few years of TV and the Internet,
once again the United States started out with far more Americans or U.S.-based sources dominate the most
Facebook users than any other country. In 2008, four popular Twitter postings. Nineteen of the 20 Twitter post-
years after Facebook's founding, the United States had er·s with the largest followings in 2010 were American,
one-third of all users worldwide. As Facebook has diffused led by Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres,
to other countries, the share of users in the United States Barack Obama, and Lady Gaga. The only exception in the
has declined, to one-fifth of the worldwide total in 2011 top 20 in 2010 was the UK band Coldplay.
(Figure4-34). In the years ahead, Facebook is likely to either
DIFFUSION OF YOUTUBE. Again, the United States
accounted for 30 percent of worldwide users in the early years
of YouTube. Seventeen other countries, mostly in Europe,
accounted for the remainder in 2011. Most countries of the
world did not have YouTubeusers as of 2011 (Figure 4-36).

Pause and Reflect 4.3.2

Which social media do you prefer to use? Why?

. 1/4 -c~ ,r---;,;-..__.~ooa
_;.if·:, 'C> ..... ..., - _,.<.,,.

"t 't I
l· if

...;_. I

~~·:::-1 ;; ' ~1'\}!)~-~,,
,(!'.. '
.V )

' ., / ,, j. FIGURE 4-35 DISTRIBUTION OF TWITTER USERS Morethanone-third
of theworld'sTwitteruserswereInthe UnitedStatesin2011.
~:I§. ~~~t/l.
4

facabookusers ~, .. Percenotr ,,
(mllllons)
'' YouTubuesers ,.I '
• 100andabove
-10-99 2.000 4,00:, MIit! "/ • 30andabove I
0 2,000 4.000 l(ltOffltltrt
1-9 •1-29 ?,000 4,WOM&I~ \I /
Below1 Below1 o C.000c.oooICJ!ometers
nodata

.i FIGURE 4-34 DIFFUSIONOF FACEBOOKFacebookusersin(top)2008 .4 FIGURE 4-36 DISTRIBUTION OF YOUTUBE USERS Nearlyone-thirdof
and(bottom)2011. theworld'sYouTubeuserswereinthe UnitedStatesin2011.

130 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Challenges in Accessing~ The diffusion of information to newspapers around
Electronic Media world is dominated by the Associated Press (AP) anc
uters, which are owned by American and British cot
Learning Outcome 4.3.3 nies, respectively. The AP and Reuters also supply me
the world's television news video. The world's 25 la
Understand external and internal threats to folk media companies are all based in developed countrie:
culture posed by electronic media. eluding 15 in the United States, 4 in the United King
(including the parent company of the publisher of
People in developing countries who embrace folk culture book), and 2 each in France, Germany, and Japan.

are challenged by the diffusion of p'opular culture through NEWS COVERAGE AND PRESSFREEDOM. Many Af
and Asian government officials criticize the We
electronic media. On the one hand, they welcome the op- concept of freedom of the press. They argue thaf
portunity to view the Olympics or the latest fashions. On American news organizations reflect American value!
the other hand, increased availability of electronic media do not provide a balanced, accurate view of other coun
poses threats to the future of folk culture. U.S. news-gathering organizations are more interest,
covering earthquakes, hurricanes, and other sensat
The threat to folk culture can be either external or in- disasters than more meaningful but less visual and dra1
ternal. The external threat is that most of the content dif- domestic stories, such as birth-control programs, ht
fused through electronic media originates in a handful of care innovations, and construction of new roads.
developed countries. The internal threat is that the latest
forms of social media enable people in developing coun- Pause and Reflect 4.3.3
tries to originate the content themselves-as long as they
can afford the cost of access. What would be a specific example of a distinctive
American perspective on a U.S. TV show?
EXTERNAL THREAT: DEVELOPED
COUNTRIES CONTROL THE MEDIA INTERNAL THREAT: SOCIAL MEDIA

Tluee developed countries dominate the television indus- George Orwell's novel 1984, published in 1949, G
try in developing countries-Japan, the United Kingdom, pated that TV-then in its infancy-would play a
and the United States. These three countries are also the role in the ability of undemocratic governments tc
major exporters of programs. trol people's daily lives. In fact, many governments v
TV as an important tool for fostering cultural intcgr
ENTERTAINMENT, OR CULTURALIMPERIALISM? Leaders TVcould extol the exploits of the leaders or the accom
of many developing countries view control of TV by a hand- men ts of the political system. People turned on their 1
ful of developed countries- especially the United States- and watched what the government wanted them to s
as a new method of economic and cultural imperialism.
American TV programs present characteristically American Blocking foreign programming was easy for gc
beliefs and social forms, such as upward social mobility, ments when TV service consisted of only a few over-t
relative freedom for women, glorification of youth, and channels. Because over-the-air TV signals weakenec
stylized violence. These attractive themes may conflict distance and were strong only up to roughly 100 kilor
with and drive out traditional folk culture. (60 miles), few people could receive TV from other
tries, so most were totally dependent on what thei
To avoid offending traditional folk culture, many satel- government preferred to broadcast.
lite and cable providers in developing countries block of-
fending networks such as MTV and censor unacceptable LIMITINGACCESS TO TV. Changing technology has
programs. The entertainment programs that are substi- TV a force for political change rather than stability. $,
tuted emphasize family values and avoid controversial or dishes and the Internet enable people to choose f
edgy cultural, economic, and political content. wide variety of programs produced in other countrit
just the local government-controlled station. The d,
NEWS-FAIR OR BIASED? Developing countries fear of programs in the future is likely to be closely inte
the threat of the news-gathering capability of the media with other lntemet services. This will facilitate pee
even more than their entertainment function. The news different countries watching the same program.
media ln most developing countries are dominated by the
government, which typically runs the radio and TV service Governments have had little success in shutting
as well as the domestic news-gathering agency. satellite technology. Despite the threat of heavy fim
eral hundred thousand Chinese still own satellite •
Sufficient funds are not available to establish an inde- Consumers can outwit the government because thE
pendent news service in developing countries. The pro- size of satellite dishes makes them easy to smugg·
cess of gathering news worldwide is expensive, and most the country and erect out of sight, perhaps behind
broadcasters and newspapers are unable to afford their wall or under a canvas tarpaulin. A dish may be exf
own correspondents. Instead, they buy the right to use the by local standards-twice the annual salary of a
dispatches of one or more of the main news organizations.

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 131

Chinese worker, for example-but several neighbors can 1. Political content that expresses views in opposition to
share the cost and hook up all of their TV sets to it. those of the current government or that is related to
human rights, freedom of expression, minority rights,
LIMITING ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. Aswith television, and religious movements.
governments try to limit Internet content. According to
OpenNet Initiative, countries limit access to four types of 2. Social content related to sexuality, gambling, and ille-
Internet con tent (Figure 4-37): gal drugs and alcohol, as well as other topics that may
be socially sensitive or perceived as offensive.
Political Content
3. Security content related to armed conflicts, border dis-
putes, separatist movements, and militant groups.

4. Internet tools, such as e-mail, Internet hosting, and
searching.

ELUDING CONTROL: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND SOCIAL

.... MEDIA. Social m.edia have started to play a significant role
in breaking the monopoly of government control over

diffusion of information. Asdifficult as it is for governments
to block satellite and Internet communications, it is even

harder to block individual social media. Popular uprisings
against undemocratic governments in Egypt, Libya, and
other countries in Southwest Asia and North Africa in 2011

relied on individuals sending information through cell
phones, Twitter, biogs, and other social media (Figure 4-38).

CHECK-IN: KEY ISSUE 3 ~

Why Is Accessto Folk and Popular 'riJ!

Culture Unequal?

Popular culture diffuses l)rimarily through
electronic media, especially TV, as well as
increasingly through other formats.

✓ Electronic media can pose a combination of

external and internal threats to developing
countries.

2,000 4,000l(Mcmele1$

• Pervasive • Substantiasle,lective, Noevidence nodata A FIGURE4-38 PROTESTORSSHARING INFORMATION DURING ARAB
of filtering SPRING TwoEgyptianprotestertsookphotographws ith theirmobilephones
littering orsuspectefidltering whenEgyptianriot policefiredtear gasduringanArabSpringprotestin 2011.

A FIGURE4-37 LIMITINGFREEDOMON THEINTERNETCountrielsimit
accessto four typesof Internetcontent:(top)politicalcontent(,seconds)ocial
content,{third)securitycontent,(bottom)Internetools,

- lfflfHf ffllfflllHllItHffI

132 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

KEY ISSUE4

Why Do Folk and SD
NE
Popular Culture
Face Sustainability

Challenges? l<S

■ Sustainability Challenges for PercentOldOrderAr
Folk Culture Below0.05

■ Sustainability Challenges for
Popular Culture

Learning Outcome 4.4.1 & FIGURE4-39 DISTRIBUTIONOF AMISH Amishsettlementsare
distributedthroughoutthe northeasternUnitedStatesA. mishfarmersrr

Summarize challenges for folk culture from diffusion the useof mechanicadl evices.

of popular culture. the diffusion of their culture through migration.

Elements of folk and popular culture face challenges in 1600s, a Swiss Mennonite bishop named Jakob Am
maintaining identities that are sustainable into the future. gathered a group of followers who became known
For folk cultu.re, the challenges are to maintain unique Amish. The Amish originated in Bern, Switzerlar
local landscapes in an age of globalization. For popular sace in northeastern France; and the Palatinate ref
culture, the challenges derive from the sustainability of southwestern Germany. They migrated to other pc
practices designed to promote uniform landscapes. of Northwestern Europe in the 1700s, primarily
ligious freedom. ln Europe, the Amish did not d
Many fear the loss of folk culture, especially because ris- distinctive language, clothing, or farming practiC(
ing incomes can fuel demand for the posses~ions typical of they gradually merged with various Mennonite ,
popular culture. When people turn from folk to popular cul-

ture, they may also turn away from the society's traditional groups.
values. And the diffusion of popular culture from developed Several hundred Amish families migrated to
countries can lead to dominance of Western perspectives.
America in two waves. The first group, primaril

Bern and the Palatinate, settled in Pennsylvania

Sustainability Challenges early 1700s, enticed by William Penn's offer of low
for Folk Culture land. Because of lower land prices, the second grou
Alsace, settled in Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa in the
For folk culture, increased connection with popular culture States and Ontario, Canada, in the early 1800s. Fro1
can make it difficult to maintain centuries-old practices. core areas, groups of Amish migrated to other le
The Amish in the United States and marriage customs in
where inexpensive land was available.
Living in rural and frontier settlements relativ

India are two examples. lated from other groups, Amish communities 1
their traditional customs, even as other Europear

THE AMISH: PRESERVING grants to the United States adopted new ones.
CULTURAL IDENTITY observe Amish customs on the landscape in such
areas as southeastern Pennsylvania, northeasten
Although the Ami.sh number only about one-quaiter and east-central lowa. These communities are n
million, their folk culture remains visible on the landscape isolated from each other but share cultural traditi
in at least 19 U.S. states (Figure 4-39). Shunning mechan-
ical and electrical power, the Amish still travel by horse tinct from those of other Americans.
and buggy and continue to use hand tools for farming. Amish folk culture continues to diffuse slowly
The Amish have distinctive clothing, farming, religious
interregional migration within the United States. I
practices, and other customs.
The distribution of Amish folk culture across a major years, a number of Amish families have sold thf
in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania-the oldest an
portion of the U.S. landscape is explained by examining
time largest Amish community in the United Sta
migrated to Christian and Todd -counties in soutl

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 133

A FIGURE4-40 AMISH AND TOURISTS AnAmishmandemonstrateas Germany, and the Netherlands), include airfare, hotels,
cowmilkingmachineto touristsin Shipshewanaln, diano. and the use of a predetermined number of women. Lead-
ing destinations include the Philippines, Thailand, and
Kentucky. According to Amish tradition, every son is given South Korea. International prostitution is encouraged
a farm when he is an adult, but land suitable for farming is in these countries as a major source of foreign currency.
expensive and hard to find in Lancaster County because of its Through this form of global interaction, popular cul-
proximity to growing metropolitan areas. With the average ture may regard women as essentially equal at home but
price of farmland in southwestern Kentucky less than one- as objects that money can buy in foreign folk societies.
fifth that in Lancaster County, an Amish family can sell its
farm in Pennsylvania and acquire enough land in Kentucky Global diffusion of popular social customs has had an
to provide adequate farmland for all the sons. Amish fami- unintended negative impact for women in India: an in-
lies are also migrating from Lancaster County to escape the crease in demand for dowries. Traditionally, a dowry was
influx of tourists who come from the nearby metropolitan a "gift" from one family to another, as a sign of respect.
areas to gawk at the distinctive folk culture (Figure4-40). In the past, the local custom in much of India was for the
groom to provide a small dowry to the bride's family. In
Pause and Reflect 4.4.1 the twentieth century, the custom reversed, and the fam-
ily of a bride was expected to provide a substantial dowry
In what ways might Amish people need to interact to the husband's family (Figure 4-41).
with popular culture?
The government of India enacted anti-dowry laws in
MARRIAGE IN INDIA: CHALLENGING 1961, but the ban is widely ignored. In fact, dowries have
CULTURAL VALUES become much larger in modern India and an important
source of income for the groom's family. A dowry can take
Rapid changes in long-established cultural values can lead the form of either cash or expensive consumer goods, such
to instability, and even violence, in a society. This threat- as cars, electronics, and household appliances.
ens not just the institutions of folk culture but the sustain-
ability of the society as a whole. The government has tried to ban dowries because of the
adverse impact on women. If the bride's family is unable to
The global diffusion of popular culture has challenged pay a promised dowry or installments, the groom's family
the subservience of women to men that is embedded in may cast the bride out on the street, and her family may re-
some folk customs. Women may have been tradition- fuse to take her back. Husbands and in-laws angry over the
ally relegated to performing household chores, such as small size of dowry payments killed 8,391 women in India
cooking and cleaning, and to bearing and raising large in 2010, and disputes over dowries led to 90,000 cases of
numbers of children. Those women who worked out- torture and cruelty toward women by men.
side the home were likely to be obtaining food for the
family, either through agricultural work or by trading To raise awareness of dowry abuses, Shaadi.corn, an
handicrafts. Indian matrimonial web site with 2 million members,
created an online game called Angry Brides. Each groom
At the same time, contact with popular culture has has a price tag, starting at 1.5 million rupees ($29,l 65).
also had negative impacts for women in developing Every time the player hits a groom, his value decreases,
countries. Prosti tut ion has increased in some devel- and money is added to the player's Anti-Dowry Fund,
oping countries to serve men from developed coun- which is shown on her Facebook page.
tries traveling on "sex tours." These tours, primarily
from Japan and Northern Europe (especially Norway, T FIGURE4-41 INDIA DOWRY Thephotographis heldbythe sisterof a
womanmurderedby herhusbandfor not meetinghisdowrydemands.

134 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Sustainability Challenges The diffusion of fast-food restaurants is a good examr
for Popular Culture of such uniformity. Such restaurants are usually organized
franchises. A franchise is a company's agreement with bu
Leaming Outcome 4.4.2 nesspeople in a local area to market that company's produ
The franchise agreement lets the local outlet use the com1
Summarize the two principal ways that popular ny's name, symbols, trademarks, methods, and architectu
styles. To both local residents and travelers, the buildings;
culture can adversely affect the environment. immediately recognizable as part of a national or multi1
tional company. A uniform sign is prominently displayec
Popular culture can significantly modify or control the en-
vironment. It may be imposed on the environment rather Much of the attraction of fast-food restaurants con
than spring forth from it, as with many folk customs. For from the convenience of the product and the use of t
many popul;u customs the environment is something to building as a low-cost socializing location for teenag
be modified to enhance participation in a leisure activity or or families with young children. At the same time, 1
to promote the sale of a product. Even if the resulting built success of fast-food restaurants depends on large-scale n
environment looks "natural," it is actually the deliberate bility: People who travel or move to another city imme
creation of people in pursuit of popular social customs. ately recognize a familiar place. Newcomers to a partict:
place know what to expect in the restaurant because ·
The diffusion of some popular customs can adversely establishment does not reflect strange and unfamiliar lo
impact environmental quality in two ways: customs that could be uncomfortable.

• Pollution of the landscape Fast-food restaurants were originally developed to
• Depletion of scarce natural resources tract people who arrived by car. The buildings gener.
were brightly colored, even gaudy, to attract motorists.
LANDSCAPE POLLUTION cently built fast-food restaurants are more subdued, ""
brick facades, pseudo-antique fixtures, and other styli
Popular culture can pollute the landscape by modifying it detalls. To facilitate reuse of the structure in case the
with little regard for local environmental conditions, such taurant fails, company signs are often free-standing rat
as climate and soil. To create a uniform landscape, hills than integrated into the building design.
may be flattened and valleys filled in. The same building
and landscaping materials may be employed regardless Uniformity in the appearance of the landscape is r
of location. Features such as golf courses consume large
quantities of land and water; nonnative grass species are mated by a wide variety of other popular structure~
planted, and fertilizers and pesticides are laid on the grass North America, such as gas stations, supermarkets, ,
to ensure an appearance considered suitable for the game. motels. These structures are designed so that both le
residents and visitors immediately recognize the purr:
UNIFORM LANDSCAPES. The distribution of popular of the building, even if not the name of the company.
culture around the world tends to produce more uniform
landscapes. The spatial expression of a popular custom in Physical expression of uniformity in popular culture
one location will be similar to another. In fact, promoters diffused from North America to other parts of the wc
of popular culture want a uniform appearance to generate American motels and fast-food chains have opened in 01
"product recognition" and greater consumption (Figure4-42). countries. These establishments appeal to North Ameri
travelers, yet most customers are local residents who v
T FIGURE 4-42 UNIFORM LANDSCAPE Route 66 in Springfield, Illinois. to sample American customs they have seen on televis.

Pause and Reflect 4.4.2

How might fast-food restaurants reduce adverse
impacts on the environment?

GOLF COURSES. Golf courses, because of their large
(80 hectares, or 200 acres), provide a prominent examp
imposing popular culture on the environment. A sur~
U.S.golf popularity spawned construction of several hun

courses during the late twentieth century. Geographer J

Rooney attributed this to increased income and leisure t
especially among recently retired older people and you

people with flexible working hours. This trend slowed
the twenty-first century because of the severe recession

The distribution of golf courses is not uniform a,

the United States. Although golf is perceived as a w
weather sport, the number of golf courses per person i
tually greatest in north-central states (Figure 4-43). PE

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 135

Golfcoursesper in the local climate and still be suitable for the needs of
greens, fairways, and roughs. Existing trees and native
100,000poopte vegetation are retained if possible. (Few fairways in
• 10.0andab011e Michigan are lined by palms.) Yet, as with other popular
customs, golf courses remake the environment-creating
5.0-9.9 or flattening hills, cutting grass or letting it grow tall,
Betow50 carting in or digging up sand for traps, and draining or
expanding bodies of water to create hazards. Ironically,
1,,.FIGURE4-43 GOLFCOURSESThehighesctoncentrationof golf courses golf originated as part of folk culture, as you can read in
isin the upperMidwest. the following Sustainability and Inequality in Our Global
Village feature.
in these regions have a long tradition of playing golf, and
social clubs with golf courses are important institutions in ENVIRONMENTAL CAPACITY. The environment can
the fabric of the regions' popular customs. accept and assimilate some level of waste from human
activities. But popular culture generates a high volume of
In contrast, access to golf courses is more limited in the waste-solids, liquids, and gases-that must be absorbed
South, in California, and in the heavily urbanized Middle into the environment. Although waste is discharged
Atlantic region between New York City and Washington, in all three forms, the most visible is solid waste-cans,
D.C. Rapid population growth in the South and West and bottles, old cars, paper, and plastics. These products are
lack of land on which to build in the Middle Atlantic re- often discarded rather than recycled. With more people
gion have reduced the number of courses per capita in adopting popular customs worldwide, this problem grows.
those regions. Selected southern and western areas, such
as coastal South Carolina, southern Florida, and central Folk culture, like popular culture, can also cause envi-
Arizona, have high concentrations of golf courses as a re- ronmental damage, especially when natural processes are
sult of the arrival of large numbers of golf-playing north- ignored. A widespread belief exists that indigenous peoples
erners, either as vacationers or as permanent residents. of the Western Hemisphere practiced more "natural,"
ecologically sensitive agriculture before the arrival of
Golf courses are designed partially in response to local Columbus and other Europeans. Geographers increasingly
physical conditions. Grass species are selected to thrive question this idea. In reality, pre-Columbian folk customs
included burning grasslands for planting and hunting,
cutting extensive forests, and overhunting some species.
Very high rates of soil eroslon have been documented in
Central America from the practices of folk cultures.

SUSTAINABILITAYND INEQUALITYIN OURGLOBALVILLAGE

Golf: Falkor PopularCulture?

The modern game of golf originated often with little regard for local • FIGURE4-44 SCOTLANDANO U.S.
as a folk custom in Scotland in the environmental conditions. Mod- GOLFCOURSESTheCongressionCaol untry
fifteenth century or earlier and dif- ern golf also departs from its folk Clubgolfcoursein BethesdaM,aryland(left),
fused to other countrjes during the culture roots by being a relatively madesubstantiaallterationtso thelandscape.
n ineteenlh century. ln this respect, expensive sport to play in most Scotland'RsoyaTl roonGolfClubwasbuilt
the hi!>lory of golf is not unlike that intoa seasiddeunewithlittlealterationof the
of soccer, described earlier in this places.
chapter. Early Scottish golf courses landscape.
were primarily lald out on sand
dunes adjacent to bodies of water
(Figure -1--1-1). Largely because of
golf's origin as a local folk custom,
golf courses in Scotland do not
modify the environment to the
same extent as those constructed
in more recent years in the United

States and other countries, where
hills, sand, and grass are imported,

136 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

.........·.~...-------------------------- As a result of recycling, about 85 million of t
250 million tons of solid waste generated in the Unit
RESOURCE DEPLETION States in 2010 did not have to go to landfills and incine·
tors, compared to 34 million of the 200 million tons ge
Learning Outcome 4.4.3 erated in 1990. In other words, the amount of solid wa
Summarize major sources of waste and the extent to generated by Americans increased by 50 million tons l
which each is recycled. tween 1990 and 2010, and the amount recycled increai
by 51 million tons, so about the same amount went it
Increased demand for the products of popular culture can landfills or incinerators over the period. The percentage
strain the capacity of the environment. Diffusion of some
popular customs increases demand for animal products, w,materials recovered by recycling varies widely by prodt
ranging from rare wildlife to common domesticated ani-
mals, and for raw materials, such as minerals and other 63 percent of paper products and 58 percent of yard
substances found beneath Earth's surface. The depletion of are recycled, compared to only 8 percent of plastic ,
resources used to produce energy, especially petroleum, is 3 percent of food scraps (Figure 4-46).
discussed in Chapter 9.
RECYCLING COLLECTION. Recycling involves two rn
series of activities:

DEMAND FOR ANIMAL PRODUCTS. Popular culture 1. Pick-up and processing. Materials that would otl
may demand a large supply of certain animals, resulting in wise be "thrown away" are collected and sorted, in J
depletion or even extinction of some species. For example, principal ways:
some animals are killed for their skins, which can be shaped
into fashionable clothtng and sold to people living thousands • Curbside programs. Recyclables can often be pl,
of kilometers from the animals' habitat. The skins of the at the curb in a container separate from the no
mink, lynx, jaguar, kangaroo, and whale have been heavily cyclable trash at a specified time each week, ei
consumed for various articles of clothing, to the point that at the same or different time as the other trash.
the survival of these species is endangered. This unbalances trash collector usually supplies homes with spec
ecological systems of which the animals are members. Folk marked containers for the recyclable items.
culture may also encourage the use of animal skins, but the
demand is usuaJly smaller than for popular culture. • Drop-off centers. Drop-off centers are sites, typi
with several large containers placed at a centr,
Increased meat consumption in popular culture has cation, for individuals to leave recyclable mate
not caused extinction of cattle and poultry-we sim- A separate container is designated for each ty1
ply raise more. But animal consumption is an inefficient recyclable material, and the containers are pe,
way for people to acquire calories-90 percent less effi- cally emptied by a processor or recycler but are
erwise left unattended.

cient than i£ people simply ate grain directly. To produce • Buy-back centers. Commercial operations s

1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef sold in the supermarket, times pay consumers for recyclable materials,

nearly 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of grain are consumed cially aluminum cans, but also sometimes i;

by the animal. For every kilogram of chicken, nearly 3 ki- containers and glass bottles. These materials ara

lograms (6.6 pounds) of grain are consumed by the fowl. ally not processed at the buy-back center.

This grain could be fed to people directly, bypassing the in- • Deposit programs. Glass and aluminum cont,
efficient meat step. With a large percentage of the world's
population undernourished, some question this in- can sometimes be returned to retailers. The r:

efficient use of grain to feed animals for eventual 5..----------------------
human consumption.
j
RECYCLING OF RESOURCES. The developed
countries that produce endless supplies of consumer "O
products for popular culture have created the
technological capacity both to create large-scale ... 4 •

&

~

C::,

.0s

environmental damage and to control it. However,

a commitment of time and money must be made

to control the damage. - Wastepercapita

Unwanted by-products are usually "thrown - Recyclinragte

away," perhaps in a "trash can." Recycling is the 0'---------------------
separation, collection, processing, marketing, and
reuse of the unwanted material. Recycling increased 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

Year

in the United States horn 7 percent of all solid waste A FIGURE4.45 RECYCLINGIN THE UNITEDSTATES

in 1970 to 10 percent in 1980, 17 percent in 1990, RecyclinhgasincreasesdubstantialliyntheUnitedStatesA. sa resultt,heamoun

and 34 percent in 2010 (Figure 4-45). generatedperpersonhasnotchangedmuch.

Before recycling Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture 137
249.8 million to.ns
◄ FIGURE4-46 SOURCES OF SOLID WASTE

Morethanone-halfofpaperandyardwasteisrecycled,
whereasonlya smallpercentageof plasticand food
waste is recycled.

Foodwaste 20.5%
Yard was!e 8.6%

Paper28.5%

consumer pays for a beverage may include a deposit • Glass. Glass can be used repeatedly with no loss
fee of 511o: r 1011t:hat the retailer refunds when the in quality and is 100 percent recyclable. The pro-
container is returned. cess of creating new glass from old is extremely ef-
ficient, producing virtually no waste or unwanted
Regardless of the collection method, recyclables are sent to by-products. Though unbroken clear glass is valu-
a materials recovery facility to be sorted and prepared as able, mixed-color glass is nearly worthless, and bro-
marketable commodities for manufacturing. Recyclables ken glass is hard to sort.
are bought and sold just like any other commodity; typical
prices in recent years have been 30Q:per pound for plastic, • Aluminum. The principal source of recycled alumi-
$30 per ton for clear glass, and $90 per ton for corrugated num is beverage containers. Aluminum cans began
paper. Prices for the materials change and fluctuate with to replace glass bottles for beer during the 1950s and
the market. for soft drinks during the 1960s. Aluminum scrap is
readily accepted for recycling, although other met-
Pause and Reflect 4.4.3 als are rarely accepted.

Which, if any, recycling systems operate in your Four major manufacturing sectors accounted for more
community? than half of the recycling activity-paper mills, steel mills,
plastic converters, and iron and steel foundries. Common
2. Manufacturing. Materials are manufactured into new household items that contain recycled materials include
products for which a market exists. Important inputs newspapers and paper towels; aluminum, plastic, and
into manufacturing include recycled paper, plastic, glass soft-drink containers; steel cans; and plastic laundry
glass, and aluminum: detergent bottles. Recycled materials are also used in such
industrial applications as recovered glass in roadway as-
• Paper. Most types of paper can be recycled. Newspa- phalt ("glassphalt") and recovered plastic in carpet, park
pers have been recycled profitably for decades, and benches, and pedestrian bridges.
recycling of other paper, especially computer paper,
is growing. Rapid increases in virgin paper pulp CHECK-IN: KEY ISSUE4
prices have stimulated construction of more plants
capable of using waste paper. The key to recycling is Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face
collecting large quantities of clean, well-sorted, un- Sustainability Challenges?
contaminated, and dry paper.
✓ Folk culture faces loss of traditional values in
• Plastic. Different plastic types must not be mixed, as. the face of rapid diffusion of popular culture.
even a small amount of the wrong type of plastic can
ruin the melt. Because it is impossible to tell one type ✓ Popular culture can cause two environmental
from another by sight or touch, the plastic industry concerns-pollution of the landscape and
has developed a system of numbers marked inside tri- depletion of scarce resources.
angles on the bottom of containers. Types 1 and 2 are
commonly recycled, and the others generally are not.

138 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Summary and Review KEY ISSUE2
1KEY ISSUE

Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Where Are Folk and Popular Material Culture
Distributed?
Distributed?
Culture can be divided into folk and popular culture. Leisure
activities, such as music and sports, can be classified as folk or 'lImportant elements of material culture Include clothing,
popular, depending on their characteristics.
and shelter. Folk and popular material culture have dlffl
LEARNING OUTCOME4.1.1: Compare the origin, diffusion, and origins, patterns of diffusion, and distribution.
distribution of folk and popular culture.
LEARNINGOUTCOME4.2.1: Compare reasons for distributi
• Folk culture is more likely to have an anonymous origin and clothing styles in folk and popular culture.
to diffuse slowly through migration, whereas popular culture
Is more likely to be invented and diffuse rapidly with the use • Folk clothing is more likely to respond to environmental
of modern communications. ditions and cultural values, whereas clothing styles vary
in time than in place.
LEARNING OUTCOME4.1.2: Compare the characteristics of folk
and popular music. LEARNING OUTCOME4.2.2: Understand reasons for folk
preferences and taboos.
• Popular music has wide global distribution because of con-
nections among artists and styles. • Folk food culture is especially strongly embedded in env
mental conditions.
LEARNINGOUTCOME4.1.3: Describe how sports have been trans-
formed from folk to popular culture. LEARNINGOUTCOME4.2.3: Describe regional variations in~
lar food preferences.
• Sports that originated as isolated folk customs have been or-
ganized into popular culture with global distribution. • Popular food culture can display some regional varlatiol

THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY4.1: In what ways might gender af- LEARNING OUTCOME 4.2.4: Understand factors that infh
fect the distribution of leisure aetivlties in folk or popular culture? patterns of folk housing.

GOOGLEEARTH4.1: Connections among Nepal's diverse folk cul- • Folk housing styles, like other folk material culture, res
ture groups are hindered by what feature of the physical environ- to environmental and cultural factors.
ment? What does the white represent in the image of Nepal?
LEARNINGOUTCOME4.2.5: Understand variations in tlm
space of housing in the United States.

• U.S. housing has roots in folk culture, but newer housir
plays features of popular culture.

THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY4.2: Which elements of m
culture do countries depict in campaigns to promote tourii

GOOGLE EARTH 4.2: Rildesheim, Germany, a wine-proc
community, is surrounded by hillside vineyards. Towards

direction (east, west, north, or south) do most of these
yards slope, and how does this orientation maximize ex
to sunlight?

Key Terms Popular culture (p. 108) Culture found in a large, heterogc11
ety that shares certain habits despite differences in other ptrs<
Lustom (p. 109) The frequent repetition of an act, to tl1eextent that it charactenstics
becomes characteri~ticof thl' group ol people performing the act.
Folk culture (p. 108)Culture tr,1d1tionallypracticed by a sm~ll. Taboo (p. ll8l Arestriction on t>ehavtorimposed by socialc
homogeneous, rural group li\·mg in relative isolation from other Terroir (p, 118) fhe contribution or a location's di~rincti\·eph]
i-1roups tures to the way food tastes.
Habit (p. 109) A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Cultute 139

KEY ISSUE 3 J KEY ISSUE4

Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal? Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face
Sustainability Challenges?
Popular culture is diffused around the world through electr©nic
media. TV was the dominant format in the twentieth century. LEARNINGOUTCOME4.4.1: Summarize challenges for folk culture
Social media formats are expandil\g In the twenty-first century. ffom diffusion of popular culture.

LEARNING OUTCOME 4.3.1: Describe the origin, diffusion, and • Popular culture threatens ttaditional elements of cultui:al
distribution of TV around the World. identity in folk culture.

• TV diffused during the twentieth century frem the United LEARNING OUTCOME4.4.2: Summarize the two principal ways
States to Europe and then to developing countries. that populat culture can adversely affect the enviEonment.

LEARNINGOUTCOME4.3.2: Compare the diffusion of the Inter- • Popular culture can deplete scarce resources and p01lute the
net and social media with the diffusion of TV. landscape,

• Diffusion of the Inter.net and of social media has followed the LEARNING OUTCOME4.4.3: Summarize major sources of waste
pattern of TV, but at a much faster rate. and the extent to which each is recycled.

LEARNING OUTCOME 4.3.3: Un<;lerstand external and internal • Paper ls the principal source of solid waste before Jecycling, but
threats to folk culture p,osed by electronic media. plastics and food waste are the leading sources after recycling.

• Polk culture may be threateoed by the dominance of popu- THINKING GEOGRAPHICALL4Y.4: Are there examples of groups in
lar culture in the media and by decreasing ability to control Nqrth America besides the Amish that have successfully ~eststed
people's access to the media. the diffusion of popular culture?

THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY4.3: Which elements of the physical GOOGLE EARTH 4.4: Paradise, Pennsylvania, is in the heart of
environment are emphasized in the portrayal of places on TV? Amish country. If you fly to 269 Old Leacock Road in Paradise
and drag to street view, what distinctive feature of Amish culture
GOOGLEEARTH 4.3: Kathmandu, Nepal, situated at the foot of is visible?
rugged mountains, is one of the world's most physically isolated
capitals. TripAdvisor considers BoudhaNath Stupa to be the top
attraction in Kathmandu. Using the Find Business and ruler fea-
tures of Google Earth, how far is it from the stupa to the nearest
Internet cafe?

MasteringGeographyTM

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languages

Whydid someonespreadgraffition this sign?Page 163. Whyisthis signin four languages- but not English?Page

1KEY ISSUE PLEASDEONOTFEED KEY ISSUE2
THEPIGEONS
Where Are Why Is English
Languages it mas at Related to Other
Distributed? Languages?

PORFAVONRODECOMIDA

ALASPALOMAS

A World of Languages p. 143 LanguagesAre Familiesp. 150

Languagesare likeleaves growingfrom languagefamiliesand Mostlanguagescan be classifiedinto a handfulof familie

branches.

140

HowYO<!<, , Galicia, p. 183 .A.No fishing in Israel'sAlexanderRiver.Can
you identifythe other three languageson the
J-\Ha,tl, p 153 Count,y, p. 16 sign? Canyou read any of them?Two-thirdsof
Americansbelievethat it is importantto learna
5'o Paul --..cc,-,""' ' second language,but onlyabout one-fourthof
Americanscan holda conversationin a second
language.

ge~a. p. 165 ~gascar, p. 142

--~-y--IS--S-U-E 3 ,-~------~~ ~

Why Do Individual KEY ISSUE4
Languages Vary
among Places? Why Do People
Preserve Local
Languages?

----~----.....•s......_,_

It Doesn'tSoundLikeEnglishp. 158 What DoesThisSay?p. 164

The Englishlanguage can sound very different in the United Manylanguages have disappeared, meaningthat no one who
Kingdomthan in the United States. Patterns of migrationex- speaks them is alive today. But some, like Welsh,are being
plaindifferences. preserved.

141

Introducing

Languages

Language is an important part of culture, I
which, as shown in Chapter 1, has two main i,.___
meanings-people's values and their tangi-
ble artifacts. Chapter 4 looked at the mate-
rial objects of culture. This chapter and the
next two discussthree traits that distinguish
cultural values-language, religion, and eth-
nicity. We start our study of the geographic
elements of cultural values with language in
part because it is the means through which
other cultural values, such as religion and
ethnicity, are communicated.

'Where are different languages spoken? Why in some cases

arc two different languages spoken in two locations, whereas

in other cases the same language is spoken in two locations?

Consistent with this book's where and why approach, thi~

chapter first looks at where different languages are used and _..,FIGURE 5-1 LANGUAGE AND MIGRATION Thepeopleof Madagascar,

how Lheselanguages can be logically grouped in space. a largeislandoff the eastcoastof Africa,speakMalagasya, languagethat

The second and third sections examine why languages belongsto thesamefamilyasthe languagespokenin Indonesia3,,000

have distinctive distributions. The study of language fol- kilometers(1,900miles)awayT. hisis strongevidenceof migrationfrom
lows logically from migration because the contemporary
distribution of languages around the world is largely a re- Indonesiato MadagascaLr.anguageexpertsconcludethat migrantssailedin J
sult of past migrations of peoples (Figme 5-1). People in
smallboatsacrosstheIndianOceanto Madagascaarpproximatel2y,000year

ago.Thesignin Malagasyis locatedin Madagascar'Ms asoalaNationalPark.

two locations speak the same language because of migra-

Asltion from one of the locations to another. Ifthe two groups source of pride to a people, a symbol of cultural unity.

have few connections with each other after the migration, culture develops, language is both a cause of that develoi

the languages spoken by the two groups will begin to dif- ment and a consequence.

I' fer. After a long period without contact, the two groups • KEYISSUE1 describes wl,ere languages are distribut
will speak languages U1at are so different, they are classi-
11· fied as ~eparate languages. The interplay between interac- around the world. The languages spoken by most oft
tion and isolation helps explain the distribution of regions world's population can be grouped into a handful o

of individual languages and entire language families. families. These families have distinctive distributions.

Language is like luggage: People carry it with them • KEYISSUE2 discusses the distribution of languages·
when they move from place to place. They incorporate
new words into their own language when they reach new the fndo-European family. Tndo-European languages a
places, and they contribute words brought with them to used by nearly one-half of the world's population, an
the existing language at the new location. Geographers lndo-European is the family to which English belongj
look at the similarities among languages to understand the
• KEYISSUE3 looks at the geographic differences with·

diffusion and interaction of people around the world. individual languages. The distribution of multiple d

The final section of this chapter discusses contradic- alects of a particular language is an example of lod

tory trends of scale in language. On the one hand, Eng- diversity of cultural traits.

lish has achieved an unprecedented globalization because 4• KEY ISSUE explains why English has become t
people around the world are learning it to participate in a
global economy and culture. On the other hand, people most important language for communications in
are trying to preserve local diversity in language because
world of globalization of culture and economy. At

language is one of the basic elements of cultural identity same time, some countries are preserving and prote
and a major feature of a region's uniqueness. Language is a ing a local diversity of languages.

142

Chapter 5: Languages 143

KEY ISSUE 1 that were once British colonies designate English as an offi-
cial language, even though few of their citizens can speak it.
Where Are Languages
Earth's heterogeneous collection of languages is one of
Distributed? its most obvious examples of cultural diversity. Ethnologue,
one of the most authoritative sources of languages (see www
• Classification of Languages .eth.nologue.com), estimates that the world has 6,909 lan-
guages. Only 11 of these languages, including English, are
■ Distribution of Language Families spoken by at least 100 million people (Figure 5-2). Four of
these are relatively familiar to North Americans (German,
How many languages do you speak? If you are Dutch, you Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian), but others are less familiar
were required to learn at least two foreign languages in (Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Japanese, Lahnda, and Mandarin).
high school. For those of you who do not happen to be
Dutch, the number is probably a bit lower. Approximately 85 languages are spoken by at least
10 million people, and approximately 300 languages by
In fact, most people in the United States know only between 1 million and 10 million. The remaining 6,524
English. Fewer than one-half of American high school stu- languages are spoken by fewer than 1 million people each.
dents have studied a foreign language. In contrast, nearly The distribution of some of these languages is easy for ge-
two-thirds of graduates from Dutch high schools have ographers to document, whereas others-especially in
learned at least three foreign languages. Even in other Africa and Asia-are difficult, if not impossible.
English-speaking countries, foreign languages are stud-
ied more frequently than in the United States. For exam- The world's languages can be organized into families,
ple, 1'vo-thirds of 10-year-olds in the United Kingdom are branches, and groups:
learning a foreign language in school.
• A language family is a collection of languages related
Language is a system of communication through through a common ancestral language that existed
speech, a collection of sounds that a group of people un- long before recorded history.
derstands to have the same meaning. Many languages also
have a literary tradition, or a system of written commu- • A language branch is a collection of languages within
nication. However, hundreds of spoken languages lack a a family related through a common ancestral language
literary tradition. The lack of written records makes it dif- that existed several thousand years ago; differences are
ficult to document the distribution of many languages. not as extensive or as old as between language fami-
lies, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the
Many countries designate at least one language as their branches derived from the same family.
official language, which is the one used by the govern-
ment for laws, reports, and public objects, such as road signs, • A language group is a collection of languages within
money, and stamps. A country with more than one official a branch that share a common origin in the relatively
language may require all public documents to be in all lan- recent past and display many similarities in grammar
guages. Logically, an official language would be understood and vocabulary.
by most if not all of the country's citizens, but some countries

PLEASDEONOTFEED
THEPIGEONS

:~ mt AIQ A ht!

fjl;f -7-J Ni J:l P,';J

PORFAVONRODECOMIDA

ALASPALOMAS

A FIGURE5-2 THE WORLD'STHREEMOST WIDELYSPOKEN
LANGUAGES(left)Thissignin NewYork'sChinatownincludesEnglish,
Mandarina,ndSpanish(.right)MandarinonaniPhone.

144 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE POSSIBLEPREHISTORICSUPERfAMILIES
Sino-Caucasian?
Classification of Languages

Learning Outcome 5.1.1
Name the largest language families.

The several thousand spoken languages can be organized
logically into a small number of language families. Larger
language families can be further divided into language
branches and language groups.

Figure 5-3 depicts differences among language families,
branches, groups, and individual languages:
• Language families form the trunks of the trees.
• Individual languages are displayed as leaves.
• Some trunks divide into several branches, which logi-

cally represent language branches.
• The branches representing Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and

Indo-Iranlan in Figure 5-3 divide a second time into
language groups.
The larger the trunks and leaves are, the greater the
number of speakers of those families and languages.
Two-thirds of the people in the world speak il language
that belongs to the lndo-European or Sino-Tibetan lan-
guage family. Seven other language families are used by
between 2 and 6 percent of the world (Figure 5-4). The re-
maining 5 percent of the world's people speak a language
belonging to one of 100 smaller families.
Figure 5-3 displays each language family as a sepa-
rate tree at ground level because differences among fam-
ilies predate recorded history. Some linguists speculate
that language families were joined together as a handful
of superfamilies tens of thousands of years ago. Super-
families are shown as roots below the surface because
their existence is highly controversial and speculative.
A researcher in New Zealand, Quentin Atkinson, carries
the speculation further, arguing that all languages can be
ultimately traced to Africa. According to Atkinson, lan-
guages are most complex and diverse in Africa. Atkinson
thinks humans outside Africa display less linguistic di-
versity because their languages have had a shorter time
in which to evolve into new languages than have African
languages.

Pause and Reflect 5.1.1
Based on Figure 5-3, what are the language family,
branch, and group to which English belongs?

► FIGURE5-3 LANGUAGEFAMILYTREE Languagfeamiliews ithat least
1Dmillionspeakersaccordintgo Ethnologue areshownastrunksoftrees.
SomelanguagefamilieasredividedintobranchesandgroupsI.ndividual
languagetshat havemorethan5 millionspeakerasreshownas leavesB. elow
groundlevel,thelanguagetree's"roots"areshownb, utthesearespeculative
becausetheypredatedrecordedhistory.

Austronesian Chapter 5: Languages 145

Nlger-Con:'?6.0 ◄ FIGURE5-4 SHARE OF EACH LANGUAGE FAMILY Thechartshowsthe percentage
of peoplewho speaka languagefrom eachmajorfamily.

Austro-Asiatic
1.7

Sino-Tibetan
21.1

Incle-European
45.7

Neapolitan
7

Sunda Baghell
34 8

Minangkabau
6

Bikol
5

Hilgaynon
6

Madurese

Malagas~ 14

15

•~~logSantall

6

Nostralfc'! I II

IIUII I

146 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

Distribution of Language strength and unity. Unity is also fostered by a con
Families tent written form for all Chinese languages. Although
words are pronounced differently in each language, ti
learning Outcome 5.1.2 are written the same way.
Identify the names and distribution of the two
largest language families. You already know the general structure of In
European quite well because you are a fluent speake1
Language families with at least 10 million native speakers at least one Inda-European language. But the structuH
are shown in Figure 5-5. Individual languages with at least Chinese languages is quite different. They are written:
50 million speakers are named on the map. marily with logograms, which are symbols that repres
words, or meaningful parts of words, rather than sounds
INDO-EUROPEAN in English). Ability to read a book requires understand
several thousand logograms (Figure 5-6). Most logogr2
lndo-European, the most widely used language family, is are compounds; words related to bodies of water, for
the predominant one in Europe, South Asia, and North and ample, indude a symbol that represents a river, plus ac
Latin America. Its origin and distribution are discussed in tional strokes that alter the river in some way.
more detail in the next key issue.

SINO-TIBETAN

The Sino-Tibetan family encompasses

languages spoken in the People's Repub-

lic of China-the world's most popu-

lous state, at 1.3 billion-and in several

smaller countries in Southeast Asia. The

languages of China generally belong to

the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan

family. <O' ENGLISH

There is no single Chinese language.

Rather, the most commonly used is PACIFIC ATL
OCEAN
Mandarin (or, as the Chinese call it, Q(

Putonghua-"common speech"). Spo- ~.;,;.,.,c:;,:,,
- 'I-
ken by approximately three-fourths of
t
the Chinese people, Mandarin is by a 20'
gJ
wide margin the most-used language in
Q:
the world. Once the language of emperors ~

in Beijing, Mandarin is now the official ~

language of both the People's Republic .,

of China and Taiwan, and it is one of LO' --+
the six official languages of the United

Nations. Seven other Sinitic branch lan-

guages are spoken by at least 20 million I
each in China, mostly in the southern
140' 120' 100'

and eastern parts of the country-Wu, Langua99familieswithat least

Min, Yue (also known as Cantonese), 1Omillionnativespeakers 211'
Jinyu, Xiang, Hakka, and Gan. How-
11 Afro-Asla~c Niger-Congo

ever, the Chinese government is impos- • Allaic - Nao-Saharan
ing Mandarin countrywide.
• Austro-Asiatic • auechuan

Austronesian Sino-Tibetan

The relatively small number of lan- • Dravidian Urallc

guages in China (compared to India, lndo-European - Other

for example) is a source of national • Japanese Sparseliynhabited
Korean

► FIGURE5-5 DISTRIBUTIONOF SPANISH Languagewsithmorethan
LANGUAGEFAMILIES Mostlanguage 100millionspeakers
canbeclassifiedintooneof a handfuol f
Freeci> Languagewsith50-100
languagefamilies. millionspeakers

Chapter 5: languages 147

River {ij ◄ FIGURE 5-6 CHINESE Similar
River bed logogramsrepresenvt ariouswater-

rqJJ;;k relatedwords.

Lake™

Stream {')~IL

Riptide 1,;Trf,

ll' 140" 160" 180-'-....

' -60'

60'

Tropcorcanc_u_
10'

PACIFIC
OCEAN

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

- 7_______J__________ :·---------''20'
\_T!_C!o><fC.O«om\:_•_, •
I I -.
(I
1

I 'A

Il,llOO I~
~;. I I I:
re~I 1J
J'C
I ~no-1,000
2,000Mlle!!

2,000KJl:omttm I -,-

y

J

I "I
I I ,w IwO' 20' 40' 60'
I 1'0' 160'
100'

r "'"""'" ~, ftffl:

148 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE derives from Chinese words. In fact, Chinese and Japanese
words are the principal sources for creating new words to
-A-------------------------- describe new technology and concepts.

OTHER ASIAN LANGUAGE FAMILIES Pause and Reflect 5.1.3
If you are trying to recall where in the world
learning Outcome 5.1.3 language families are distributed, keep in mind that
Identify the names and distribution of the largest most of them are named for regions or countries.
language families in addition to lndo-European and Based on their names, how would you expect the
Sino-Tibetan. language families Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic
to differ in their distribution?
In addition to Sino-Tibetan, several other language fami-
lies spoken by large numbers of people can be found in LANGUAGES OF SOUTHWEST ASIA &
East and Southeast Asia. If you look at their distribution in
Figure 5-5, you can see a physical reason for their indepen- NORTH AFRICA AND CENTRAL ASIA
dent development: These language families are clustered
on either islands or peninsulas. The two largest language families in Southwest Asia &
North Africa and Central Asia are Afro-Asiatic and Altaic.
AUSTRONESIAN. Austronesian lang1.1agesare spoken by Uralic languages were once classified with Altaic.
about 6 percent of the world's people, who are mostly
in Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous country. AFRO-ASIATIC. Arabic is the major language of the
With its inhabitants dispersed among thousands of Afro-Asiatic family, an official language in two dozen
islands, lndonesia has an extremely large number of countries of Southwest Asia & North Africa, and one of
distinct languages and dialects; Etlznologueidentifies 722 six official languages of the United Nations. In addition
actively used languages in Indonesia. Indonesia's most to the 200-million-plus native speakers of Arabic, a large
widely used first language isJavanese, spoken by 85 million percentage of the world's Muslims have at least some
people, mostly on the island of Java, where two-thirds knowledge of Arabic because Islam's holiest book, the
of the country's population is clustered. As Figures 5-1 , Quran (Koran), was written in that language in the seventh
5-3, and 5-5 show, Malagasy also belongs to the Austronesian century. The Afro-Asiatic family also includes Hebrew, the
family because of migration from Indonesia to Madagascar language of the Bible.
2,000 years ago.
ALTAIC. Altaic languages are thought to have originated
AUSTRO-ASIATIC. Spoken by about 2 percent of the In the steppes bordering the Qilian Shan and Altai
world's population, Austro-Asiatic is based in Southeast Asia. mountains between Tibet and China. Present distribution
Vietnamese, the most-spoken tongue of the Austro-Asiatic covers an 8,000-kilometer (5,000-mile) band of Asia. The
language family, iswritten with our familiar Roman alphabet, Altaic language with by far the most speakers is Turkish
with the addition of a large number of diacritical marks (Figure 5-7).
above the vowels. The Vietnamese alphabet was devised in
the seventeenth century by Roman Catholic missionaries. When the Soviet Union governed most of the Altaic-
speaking region of Central Asia, use of Altaic languages
I TAI KADAI. The Tai Kadai family was once classified as was suppressed to create a homogeneous nation,al cul-
a branch of Sino-Tibetan. The principal languages of this ture. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early
1990s, Altaic languages became official in several newly
If family are spoken in Thailand and neighboring portions of independent countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
I Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
China. Similarities with the Austronesian family have led

I some linguistic scholars to speculate that people speaking

these languages may have migrated from the Philippines.

JAPANESE. Written in part with Chinese logograms, URALIC. Every European country is dominated by Indo-

Japanese also uses two systems of phonetic symbols, like European speakers, except for three-Estonia, Finland,

I, Western languages, used either in place of the logograms or and Hungary. The Estonians, Finns, and Hungarians speak

alongside them. Chinese cultural traits have diffused into languages that belong to the Uralic family.

Japanese society, including the original form of writing the The Altaic and Uralic language families were once

Japanese language. But the structures of the two languages thought to be linked as one family, but recent studies point

differ. Foreign terms may be written with one of these sets to geographically distinct origins. Uralic languages are

of phonetic symbols. traceable back to a common language, Proto-Uralic, first

I, used 7,000 years ago by people living in the Ural Moun-
KOREAN. Unlike Sino-Tibetan languages and Japanese, tains of present-day Russia, north of the Kurgan homeland

Korean is written not with logograms but in a system Migrants carried the Uralic languages to Europe, carvinl

known as hankul (also called hangul or onmun). In this out homelands for themselves in the midst of Germanic

system, each letter represents a sound, as in Western and Slavic-speaking peoples and retaining their languag1

languages. More than half of the Korean vocabulary as a major element of cultural identity.

Chapter 5: Languages 149

AFRICAN LANGUAGE FAMILIES Divisions within the Nila-Saharan family exemplify the
problem of classifying African languages. Despite have
No one knows the precise number of languages spoken in relatively few speakers, the Nilo-Saharan family is divided
Africa, and scholars disagree on classifying those known into six branches, plus numerous groups and subgroups.
into families. In the 1800s, European missionaries and co- The total number of speakers of each individual Nilo-
lonial officers began to record African languages using the Saharan language is extremely small.
Roman or Arabic alphabet. More than 1,000 distinct lan-
guages and several thousand named dialects have been KHOISAN. A distinctive characteristic of the
documented. Most lack a written tradition. Khoisan languages is the use of clicking sounds. Upon
hearing this, whites in southern Africa derisively and
NIGER-CONGO. More than 95 percent of the people in onomatopoeically named the most important Khoisan
sub-Saharan Africa speak languages of the Niger-Congo language Hottentot.
family (Figure 5-8). One of these languages-Swahili-is
the first language of only 800,000 people and an official T FIGURE5-8 AFRICA'SLANGUAGEFAMILIESMorethan1,000languages
language in only one country (Tanzania), but it is spoken as havebeenidentifiedinAfrica,andexpertsdonot agreeonhowto classifythem
a second language by approximately 30 million Africans. into familiese, specialllyanguagesin centraAl frica.Languagewsith morethan5
millionspeakerasrenamedonthe map.Thegreatnumberof languagersesults
Especially in rural areas, the local language is used fromat least5,000yearsof minimalinteractionamongthethousandosf cultural
to communicate with others from the same village, and groupsinha,.bitintgheAfricancontinent.Eachgroupdevelopedits own language,
Swahili is used to communicate with outsiders. Swahili religion,andotherculturaltraditionsin isolationfromothergroups.
originally developed through interaction among African
groups and Arab traders, so its vocabulary has strong Ara-
bic influences. Also, Swahili is one of the few African lan-
guages with an extensive literature.

NILO-SAHARAN. Languages of the Nilo-Saharan family _,,., ~ ,/~}
are spoken by a few million people in north-central Africa,
immediately north of the Niger-Congo language region. Oo

'f FIGURE5-7 TURKISH In 1928,Turkey'lseaderKemaAl taturkordered 10'
Turksto writeTurkishwith Romanlettersinsteadof ArabicA. taturkbelieved
that usingRomanletterswouldhelpmodernizeTurkey'seconomyandculture o•~i,rTLANTI
throughincreasedcommunicationwsith EuropeancountriesT. hispainting
depictsAtaturkwriting with Romanletters. OCEAN

IO'W 0' IND/AN
OCEAN
Languagefamilies I
• ..l-
Afro-Asia~c
Austronesian #
Inda-European
•Khoisan

m Niger-C011go

~I - Nilo·Saharan
Languagsepoken

ZULU by morelhan5 million

CHECK-IN: KEY ISSUE 1

Where Are Languages Distributed?

✓ Languages can be classified into families and
branches.

✓ The two largest families are lndo-European,
which is found primarily in Europe, North
America, Latin America, and South Asia, and
Sino-Tibetan, which is clustered primarily in
East Asia.

!lllllh, . 111111

150 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

KEY ISSUE2 of the Germanic language branch of the Indo-European
family (Figure 5-10).
Why Is English Related
to Other Languages? West Germanic is further divided into High Germanic
and Low Germanic subgroups, so named because they
• Distribution of lndo-European Branches are found in high and low elevations within present-day
• Origin and Diffusion of Language Germany. High German, spoken in the southern mountains
of Germany, is the basis for the modern standard German
Families language. English is classified in the Low Germanic subgroup
of the West Germanic group. Other Low Germanic lan-
Learning Outcome 5.2.1 guages include Dutch, which is spoken in the Netherlands,
Learn the distribution of the Germanic and lndo- as well as Flemish, which is generally considered a dialect
lranian branches of lndo-European. of Dutch spoken in northern Belgium. Afrikaans, a lan-
guage of South Africa, is similar to Dutch because Dutch
English belongs to lndo-European, the world's most widely settlers migrated to South Africa 300 years ago. Frisian is
spoken language family. Jndo-European is divided into spoken by a few residents in northeastern Netherlands.
eight branches (Figure 5-9). A dialect of German spoken in the northern lowlands of
Germany is also classified as Low Germanic.
Distribution of lndo-European
Branches The Germanic language branch also includes North
Germanic languages, spoken in Scandinavia. The four
This section discusses the distribution of the four most Scandinavian languages-Swedish, Danish, Norwegian,
widely spoken Indo-European branches. and Icelandic- all derive from Old Norse, which was the
principal language spoken throughout Scandinavia be-
GERMANIC BRANCH fore A.D. 1000. Four distinct languages emerged a~er that
time because of migration and the political organization of
German may seem the region into four independent and isolated countries.
like a difficult lan-
guage for many Eng- INDO-IRANIAN BRANCH
lish speakers to learn,
but the two languages The branch of the Indo-European language family with the
are structurally simi- most speakers is lndo-lranian. This branch includes more
lar and have many
words in common. I
Both belong to the
West Germanic group ATLANTIC

J OCEAN

/1/J"N

► FIGURE 5·9 --... CHINA

BRANCHES OF THE INDO· .o.~/ SPAIN A1ablan

EUROPEAN LANGUAGE \_ s.. )

FAMILY MostEuropeans lndo-Europebarnanches BO'f N J1) E A.
speaklanguagefsromthe
lndo-Europealannguage ..., •Albanian 500 1,00D\\&'fl I 10U
family.In Europet,hethree Armenian !lll't
mostwidelyusedbranches 500 1.000--
areGermani(cnorthand - Saito-Slavic
west),Romanc(esouthand
west},andSlavic(east)T. he •caltlc
fourthmajorbranchl,ndo-
lranian,clusteredin southern •Germanic
andwesternAsia,hasmore Greek
than1billionspeakersth, e
greatesnt umberof anylndo- • lndo-lra111an
Europeanbranch. Romance
Nonlndo-European
lang~es

I

21)''W !O"W lll'E 20'£ Chapter 5: Languages 151

f---~-200'--r-,---,-a400M~~ - Statebooodary
Z'00 400K!IGml"ttn H1No1Scheduleldanguage

JCELAND 0 2SD 500~e1lft'I

Faor.oeIs. A

'N

ATLANTIC Ba/Ile Arabran
OCEAN Sea Sell

NorthGermanic ·20'11 Bay of
Bengal
• Danish 10"E
Faeroese -6
Icelandic lndo-European
Noiweglan ~I
Swedish -Hindi HJNOI/,
Otherlndo• 'N
WestGermanic European
language \./ 10"11
- English
• Frisian other language 1- IND/AN '•
•German families OCEAN
- Nelherlandish IIO'E \
• Austro-Asiatic
\Dutch) Dravidian ......
~Mixed with SinoT- ibetan

non-Germanic SO'E

I. FIGURE 5-10 LANGUAGE GROUPS OF THE GERMANIC I. FIGURE 5-11 LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN INDIA India'sprincipalofficial
BRANCH Germaniclanguagespredominatein NorthernandWesternEurope. languageis Hindi,whichhasmanydialectsT. hecountryhas22scheduled
languagesthat thegovernmenits requiredto protect.

than 100 individual languages. The branch is divided into Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali,
an eastern group (Indic) and a western group (Iranian). Oriya, Panjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu), 4 Dravidian
(Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu), 2 Sino-Tibetan
INDIC (EASTERN) GROUP. One of the main elements (Bodo and Manipuri), and 1 Austro-Asiatic (Santali). The
of cultural diversity among the l billion plus residents of government of India is obligated to encourage the use of
India is language (Figure 5-11). Ethnologue identifies 438 these languQges.
languages currently spoken in India, including29 languages
spoken by at least 1 mi1lion people. The most widely used Hindi is spoken many different ways-and therefore
languages in India, as well as in the neighboring countries could be regarded as a collection of many individual lan-
of Pakistan and Bangladesh, belong to the Indo-European guages. But there is only one official way to write Hindi,
language family and, more specifically, to the lndic group using a script called Devanagari, which has been used in
of the Indo-Iranian branch of Inda-European. India since the seventh century A.O. For example, the word
for sun is written in Hindi as~ and pronounced "surya."
The official language of lndia is Hindi, which is an
lndo-European language. Originally a variety of Hindustani Adding to the complexity, Urdu is spoken very much
spoken in the area of New Delhi, Hindi grew into a like Hindi, but it is recognized as a distinct language. Urdu
national language in the nineteenth century, when the is written with the Arabic alphabet, a legacy of the fact
British encouraged its use in government. that most of its speakers are Muslims and their holiest
book (the Quran) is written in Arabic.
After India became an independent state in 194 7,
Hindi was proposed as the official language, but speak- IRANIAN (WESTERN) GROUP. lndo-Iranian languages
ers of other languages strongly objected. Consequently, are spoken in Iran and neighboring countries in Central
English-the language of the British colonial rulers-has Asia. These form a separate group from Indic within the
been retained as a secondary official language. Speakers Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The
of different Indian languages who wish to communicate major Iranian group languages include Persian (sometimes
called Farsi) in Iran, Pashto in eastern Afghanistan and
with each other sometimes are forced to use English as a western Pakistan, and Kurdish, used by the Kurds of
western Iran, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey. These
common language. languages are written in the Arabic alphabet.
India also recognizes 22 so-called scheduled languages,

including 15 Inda-European (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri,

152 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE other than Russian, although Russian remains the

BALTO-SLAVIC BRANCH guage for communication among officials in the com
that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
Leaming Outcome 5.2.2
Learn the distribution of the Balta-Slavic and After Russian, Ukrainian and Belarman are the
Romance branches of Inda-European. most commonly used East Slavic languages and are ti
ficial languages in Ukraine and Belarus. Ukraine is a ~

word meaning "border," and bela- means "white."

Slavic was once a single language, but differences developed WEST AND SOUTH SLAVIC GROUPS. The most SI

in the seventh century A.O. when several groups of Slavs mi- West Slavic language is Polish, followed by Czect

grated from Asia to different areas of Eastern Europe and Slovak. The latter two are quite similar, and speak

thereafter lived in isolation from one other. As a result, this one can understand the other.

branch can be divided into East, West, and South Slavic The government of the former state of Czechoslc

groups as well as a Baltic group. Figure 5-9 shows the wide- tried to balance the use of the two languages,

spread area populated with Balto-Slavic speakers. though the country contained twice as many Cze<

Slovaks. For example, the announcers on televised
EAST SLAVICAND BALTICGROUPS. The most widely events used one of the languages during the first ha

used Slavic languages are the eastern ones, primarily switched to the other for the second half. These bala
?fRussian, which is spoken by more than 80 percent
measures were effective in promoting national unit

Russian people (Figure 5-12). Russian is one of the six ing the Communist era, but In 1993, four years aft

official languages of the United Nations. . fall of communism, Slovakia split from the Czech f.
lie. Slovaks rekindled their long-suppressed resentm
The importance of Russian increased with the Soviet perceived dominance of the national culture by the

Union's rise to power after the end of World War JI in 1945. ethnic group.
The most widely used South Slavic language is ti
Soviet officials forced native speakers of other languages to
spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Monteneg1
learn Russian as a way of fostering cultural unity among

the country's diverse peoples. In Eastern European countries

that were dominated politically and economically by the Serbia. When Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Monte
Soviet Union, Russian was taught as the second language. and Serbia were all part of Yugoslavia, the langua:

The presence of so many non-Russian speakers was a mea- called Serbo-Croatian. This name now offends Bo
sure of cultural diversity in the Soviet Union, and the de- and Croatians because it recalls when they were on

sire to use languages other than Russian was a major drive country that was dominated by Serbs. Instead, the

in its breakup. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian are preferred by

newly independent republics adopted official languages In these countries, to demonstrate that each la1

'Y FIGURE5-12 RUSSIAN NewYorkC.ty'sBrightonBeachneighborhoodis is unique, even though linguists consider then
hometo manyRussiainmmigrantsin, cludingthisbookselleTr.heredwordssay Bosnians and Croats write the language in the Ror
"ChristianLibrary,w" ith thetextbelowannouncingSaturdasyervicesat the phabet (what you are reading now), whereas Monter
RussianEvangelicaBlaptistChurch.
and Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet (for example, S

written Cp6Hja).

Differences have crept into the South Slavic Ian

Bosnian Muslims have introduced Arabic words 1

,I lf their religion, and Croats have replaced words rega
having a Serbian origin with words considered to be

Croatian. For example, the Serbo-Croatian word f,
tyr or hero-junak-has been changed to heroj by

and shahid by Bosnian Muslims. In the future, aftc
eration of isolation and hostility among Bosnians,

and Serbs, the languages spoken by the three may
fic1ently different to justify their classification as

II EC-"• nYTb II IICTHHA II IK/IJ~• • languages.
In general, differences among all of the Slavic la

XPMCTMAHCKAA / are relatively small. A Czech, for example, can unc
most of what is said or written in Slovak and cc
&M&J\MOTEKA_come fluent without much difficulty. However,
language Is a major element in a people's cultural I
relatively small differences among Slavic as well
~~~:~JIOPYCCKAUREPKOEBBbAHfEflbCXKPHHXCTH~~
CnY>KtHMAnPOXOQATKA)K~~;~i,01T1r23i3457•516-: languages are being preserved and even accentuat
12l5ll'iffT0IBI UCWHE.~fl~I\IN\U · -
cent independence movements.

Chapter 5: Languages 153

ATLANTIC ~f.ffrFRANCE GERMA languages in the world, In addition
'OCEAN LUX. to the five languages already men-
tioned, two other official Romance
languages are Romansh and Cata-
lan. Romansh is one of four official

&Iyo/ languages of Switzerland, although
Biscay it is spoken by only 40,000 people.

Catalan is the official language of

~ l,IAN -Y~o,: Andorra, a tiny country of 70,000
MA!IINO-. inhabitants situated in the Pyre-
AHOORAA MONACO nees Mountains between Spain and

SPAIN ITALY

France. Catalan is also spoken by 6

million people in eastern Spain and

Mediterranean Sea GREECE is the official language of Spain's
highly autonomous Catalonia prov-
ALGERIA r N ince, centered on the city of Barce-
20'E lona (Figure 5-14), A third Romance
TUN. language, Sardinian-a mixture of
Italian, Spanish, and Arabic-was
Romancberanchoflndo-European once the official language of the
Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
• Portuguese French/Langdu'eoil Lombard •Sicilian -Ladin
• Gallcian • Friulian In addition to these official
Frenchllangude'oc Venetian •sardinian languages, several other Romance
Spanish (Occitan) Romanian
Catalan Llgurian Corsican NotRomance
Italian languages
Napoletano-Calabrese Romansh
Piemontese

• FIGURE 5-13 ROMANCE BRANCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE FAMILY Romance languages have individual literary tra-

branchlanguagespredominatein southwesternEurope. ditions, In Italy, Ladin (not Latin) is

spoken by 30,000 people living in the

South Tyrol, and Friulian is spoken by 800,000 people in

Pause and Reflect 5,2.2 the northeast. Ladin and Friulian (along with the official

On the map of Europe, which branch predominates Romansh) are dialects of Rhaeto-Romanic.
to the north, which to the south, and which to the A Romance tongue called Ladino-a mixture of Spanish,
east?
Greek, Turkish, and Hebrew-is spoken by 100,000
Sephardic Jews, most of whom now live in Israel. None of

these languages have an official status in any country, al-

ROMANCE BRANCH though they are used in literature.

The Romance language branch evolved from the Latin lan- A FIGURE 5-14 CATALAN Thesignsays"Passageis restrictedto workers."
guage spoken by the Romans 2,000 years ago. The four Thesignis in frontof SagradaFamiliachurch,designedbyAntoniGaudi,in
most widely used contemporary Romance languages are BarcelonaS, pain.
Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian (Figure 5-13),
Spanish and French are two of the six official languages of
the United Nations,

The European regions in which these four languages
are spoken correspond somewhat to the boundaries of the
modern states of Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. Rugged
mountains serve as boundaries among these four coun-
tries, France is separated from ltaly by the Alps and from
Spain by the Pyrenees, and several mountain ranges mark
the border between Spain and Portugal. Physical bound-
aries such as mountains are strong intervening obstacles,
creating barriers to communication between people living
on opposite sides.

The fifth most widely used Romance language, Roma-
nian, is the principal language of Romania and Moldova.
lt is separated from the other Romance-speaking European
countries by Slavic-speaking peoples.

The distribution of Romance languages shows the
difficulty in trying to establish the number of distinct

154 THECULTURALLANDSCAPE O S0 IOOM~
~
_., -·:--------------------------- O 50 100Kllometm

Origin and Diffusion of .N
Language Families il ,

Leaming Outcome 5.2.3 ~
Understand the origin and diffusion of English.

Like other cultural elements, the contemporary distribution Irish I' .-saxon--s---
of languages exists because of patterns of origin and diffu. See
sion. The origin and initial diffusion of language families IS-</; ·.:., I '\
predate recorded history, so we can only speculate about IUm~01 ~ GERMANY
them. On the other hand, language branches and individ-
ual languages have originated and diffused since recorded ,.~~',} ..._ Invasioannd
history began. The origin and diffusion of the English lan- migrationroutes
guage and the Romance language branches are examples. • loA.D629'---....... Middl• &st
;'" Wales wo,/"g1eAsnglo• -celts
ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF ENGLISH -Germans
"-" ~""~ -Normans
The British Isles had been inhabited for thousands of years,
but we know nothing of their early languages until tribes eo~a -Vikings
called the Celts arrived around 2000 s.c., speaking lan-
guages we call Celtic. Around A.o. 450, tribes from main- /. Normandy Present-dabyoundaries
land Europe invaded, pushing the Celts into the remote 1 an,.._ shownfor reference.
northern and western parts of Britain, including Cornwall
and the highlands of Scotland and Wales. • AGURE 5-15 INVASIONS OF ENGLAND Thefirstspeakerosf thelanguage
thatbecameknownasEnglishweretribesthatlivedin present-daGy ermanaynd
GERMAN INVASION. The tribes invading the British DenmarkT.heyinvadedEnglandin thefifth centuryT.heJutessettledprimarily
Isles were known as the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. All three in southeasterEnnglandt,heSaxonsin thesouthandwest,andtheAnglesin
were Germanic tribes-the Jutes from northern Denmark, thenorth,eventuallygivingthe countryitsname-Angles'Lando, r England.
the Angles from southern Denmark, and the Saxons from InvasionbsyVikingsin theninthcenturyandNormanisn theeleventhcentury
northwestern Germany (Figure 5-15). Modern English has broughtnewwordsto the languagespokenin theBritishIslesT. heNormanws ere
evolved primarily from the language spoken by the Angles, thelastsuccessfuinlvadersof England.
Jutes, and Saxons.
NORMAN INVASION. English is quite different from
The three tribes who brought the beginnings of Eng- German today primarily because England was conquered
lish to the British isles shared a language similar to that of by the Normans in 1066. The Normans, who came from
other peoples in the region from which they came. Today, present-day Normandy in France, spoke French, which
English people and others who trace their cultural heritage they established as England's official language for the
back to England are often called Anglo-Saxons, after the next 300 years. The leaders of England, including the
two larger tribes. royal family, nobles, judges, and clergy, therefore spoke
French. However, the majority of the people, who had
The name England comes from Angles' land. In Old Eng- little education, did not know French, so they continued
lish, Angles was spelled Engles, and the Angles' language to speak English to each other.
was known as englisc.The Angles came from a corner, or
angle, of Germany known as Schleswig-Holstein. England lost control of Normandy in 1204, during the
reign of KingJohn, and entered a long period of conflict with
At some time in history, all Germanic people spoke France. As a result, fewer people in England wished to speak
a common language, but that time predates written re- French, and English again became the country's unchal-
cords. The common origin of English with other Germanic lenged dominant language. Recognizing that nearly every-
languages can be reconstructed by analyzing language one in England was speaking English, Parliament enacted the
differences that emerged after Germanic groups mi- Statute of Pleading in 1362 to change the official language of
grated to separate territories and lived in isolation from court business from French to English. However, Parliament
each other, allowing their languages to continue evolving continued to conduct business in French until 1489.
independently.
During the 300-year period that French was the oifi-
Other peoples subsequently invaded England and cial language of England, the Germanic language used by
added their languages to the basic English. Vikings from the common people and the French used by the leaders
present-day Norway landed on the northeastern coast of mingled to form a new language. Modern English owes
England in the ninth century. Although defeated in their its simpler, straightforward words, such as sky, horse,man,
effort to conquer the islands, many Vikings remained in and woman, to its Germanic roots, and fancy, more elegant
the country and enriched the language with new words. words, such as celestial,equestrian,masculine,and feminine,
to its French invaders.

lI 11 'I I'IL { 1'1I '1 I I ' I f i f I . I II I
111m111IlfflH,'fmfllI I I L I LIp :1 ·11 II I;I • . I I Il I I
, I'
'' I , ,
1 , I' I ' 'Ir .II'' I,, ''II 1-1 ' Ii',

I •I I
I I~ I ' II

I'
I I' II

Chapter 5: languages 155

The contemporary distribution of English speakers Latin used in each province was based on that spoken by
around the world exists because the people of England the Roman army at the time of occupation. The Latin spo-
migrated with their language when they established colo- ken in each province also integrated words from the lan-
nies during over the course of four centuries. guage formerly spoken in the area.

Pause and Reflect 5.2.3 The Latin that people in the provinces learned was
not the standard literary form but a spoken form, known
School and university: which word is Germanic and as Vulgar Latin, from the Latin word referring to "the
which is Romance? masses" of the populace. Vulgar Latin was introduced to
the provinces by the soldiers stationed throughout the
DIFFUSION TO NORTH AMERICA. English first diffused
west from England to North America in the seventeenth 1empire. For example, the literary term for horsewa equus,
century. The first successful English colonies were built
in North America, beginning with Jamestown, Virginia, from which English has derived such words as equ1~eand
in 1607, and Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. After equestrian. The Vulgar term, used by the common Pf.Opie,
England defeated France in a battle to dominate the was cabal/us, from which are derived the modern terms
North American colonies during the eighteenth century, for horsein Italian (cavallor), Spanish (caballo), Portuguese
the position of English as the principal language of North (cavafo), French (cheval), and Romanian (cal).
America was assured.
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth
Similarly, the British took control of Ireland in the sev- century, communication among the former provinces de-
enteenth century, South Asia in the mid-eighteenth cen- clined, creating still greater regional variation in spoken
tury, the South Pacific in the late eighteenth and early Latin. By the eighth century, regions of the former empire
nineteenth centuries, and southern Africa in the late nine- had been isolated from each other long enough for ~
teenth century. In each case, English became an official tinct languages to evolve. But Latin persisted in parts of
language, even if only the colonial rulers and a handful of the former empire (Figure 5-16). People in some areas re-
elite local residents could speak it. verted to former languages; others adopted the languages
of conquering groups of people from the north and east
More recently, the United States has been responsible for who spoke Germanic and Slavic.
diffusing English to several places, most notably the Phil-
ippines, which Spain ceded to the United States in 1899, a In the past, when migrants were unable to communi-
year after losing the Spanish-American War. After gaining cate with speakers of the same language back home, major
full independence in 1946, the Philippines retained Eng- differences emerged between the languages spoken in the
lish as one of its official languages, along with Filipino. old and new locations, leading to the emergence of dis-
tinct, separate languages. This was the case with the migra-
tion of Latin speakers 2,000 years ago.

ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF ROMANCE
LANGUAGES

The Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, -" FIGURE5-16 PARISLATINQUARTERTheuniversityareaof Parisgetsits
French, Italian, and Romanian, are part of the same branch namefromthe Latinlanguagew, hichwasthelanguageof instructionwhenthe
because they all developed from Latin, the "Romans' lan- universitiews erefoundedduringtheMiddleAges.
guage." The rise in the importance of the city of Rome
2,000 years ago brought a diffusion of its Latin language.

At its height in the second century A.D., the Roman
Empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to
the Black Sea on the east and encompassed all lands bor-
dering the Mediterranean Sea. (The empire's boundary is
shown in Figure 8-11.) As the conquering Roman armies
occupied the provinces of this vast empire, they brought
the Latin language with them. In the process, the lan-
guages spoken by the natives of the provinces were ei-
ther extinguished or suppressed in favor of the language
of the conquerors.

Even during the period of the Roman Empire, Latin var-
ied to some extent from one province to another. The em-
pire grew over a period of several hundred years, so the

156 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

snow but not for ocean. Therefore, linguists conclude that

Origin and Diffusion original Proto-Inda-European speakers probably lived in a
of lndo-European cold climate, or one that had a winter season, but did not
come in contact with oceans.

Linguists and anthropologists generally accept that

Learning Outcome 5.2.4 Proto-Indo-European must have existed, but they disagree
on when and where the language originated and the process
Understand the two theories of the origin and and routes by which it diffused. The debate over place of ori-
diffusion of lndo-European. gin and paths of diffusion is significant; one theory argues

If Germanic, Romance (Figure 5-17), Balto-Slavic, and Indo- that language diffused primarily through warfare and con-
Iranian languages are all part of the same Inda-European quest, and another theory argues that the diffusion resulted
language family, then they must be descended from a sin- from peaceful sharing of food. So where did Inda-European
gle common ancestral language. Unfortunately, the exis- originate? Not surprisingly, scholars disagree on where and
tence of a single ancestor-which can be called Proto-Jndo- when the first speakers of Proto-Inda-European lived.

European-cannot be proved with certainty because it NOMADIC WARRIOR HYPOTHESIS. One influential
would have existed thousands of years before the inven- hypothesis, espoused by Marija Gimbutas, is that the first
tion of writing or recorded history. Proto-lndo-European speakers were the Kurgan people,
whose homeland was in the steppes near the border between
The evidence that Proto-Inda-European once existed is present-day Russia and Kazakhstan. The earliest archaeological
"internal," derived from the physical attributes of words evidence of the Kurgans dates to around 4300 s.c.
themselves in various Inda-European languages. For ex-
ample, the words for some animals and trees in modern The Kurgans were nomadic herders. Among the first
lndo-European languages have common roots, including people to domesticate horses and cattle, they migrated in
beech, oak, bear, deer, pheasant, and bee. Because all Indo- search of grasslands for their animals. This took them west-
European languages share these similar words, linguists ward through Europe, eastward to Siberia, and southeast-
believe the words must represent things experienced in ward to Iran and South Asia. Between 3500 and 2500 s.c.,
the daily Jives of the original Proto-lndo-European speak- Kurgan warriors, using their domesticated horses as weap-
ers. In contrast, words for other features, such as elephant, ons, conquered much of Europe and South Asia(Figure 5-18).
camel, rice, and bamboo, have different roots in the vari-

ous Inda-European languages. Such words therefore can- SEDENTARYFARMER HYPOTHESIS. Archaeologist Colin
not be traced back to a common Proto-lndo-European Renfrew argues that the first speakers of Proto-Jndo-
ancestor and must have been added later, after the root European lived 2,000 years before the Kurgans, in eastern
language split into many branches. Individual Indo-Euro- Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey (Figure 5-19). Biologist
pean languages share common root words for winter and Russell D. Gray supports the Renfrew position but dates

the first speakers even earlier, at around 6700 s.c.

T FIGURE5-17 A ROMANCELANGUAGE:PORTUGUESETheMuseum Renfrew believes they diffused from Anatolia westward

of PortugueseLanguagein SaoPauloB, razil,hasexhibitsrelatedto the to Greece (the origin of the Greek language branch) and

Portuguesleanguages, uchasauthorswho havewritten in Portuguese. from Greece westward toward Italy, Sicily, Cor-
11 ,-,.-----r---,,..,,..,.-..,....-, sica, the Mediterranean coast of France, Spain,
and Portugal (the origin of the Romance lan-

guage branch). From the Mediterranean coast,

the speakers m !grated northward toward cen-

tra I and northern France and on to the British

Isles (perhaps the origin of the Celtic language

branch).

Inda-European is also said to have diffused

northward from Greece toward the Danube

River (Romania) and westward to central Europe,

according to Renfrew. From there the language

diffused northward toward the Baltic Sea (the

origin of the Germanic language branch) and

eastward toward the Dnestr River near Ukraine

(the origin of the Slavic language branch). From

the Dnestr River, speakers migrated eastward to

the Dnepr River (the homeland of the Kurgans).

The Indo-lranian branch of the lndo-Euro-

pean language family originated either directly

through migration from Anatolia along the

A ,► ;?-"----'----~ Chapter 5: Languages 157

N ,' K111gmanigration Areainfiltratebdy 4000e.c ◄ FIGURE 5-18 ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION
OF INDO-EUROPEAN (NOMADIC WARRIOR
ATLANTIC - 5000-4000s.c. • Aleainfiltratedby3500e.c ,
OCEAN THEORY) TheKurganhomelandwasnorthof the
- 4000-30006.C. I CaspianSea,nearthe present-dabyorderbetween
3000-20008 C RussiaandKazakhstanA.ccordingto thistheory,the
KurgansmayhaveinfiltratedintoEasternEurope
beginningaround4000s.c.andintocentralEurope
andSouthwesAt siabeginningaround2500s.c.

KURGAN
HEARTH_/"""

..,.

250 bOCIMir:s
0 250 500 l<lt:lm@tara

Ana1ollanmigration ◄ FIGURE 5-19 ORIGIN

-- 6000-50008.C AND DIFFUSION OF INDO-
-- 5000-4000B.C
- 4000-3COBO.C. EUROPEAN (SEDENTARY

FARMER THEORY) lndo-
Europeanmayhave
originatedin present-day
Turkey2,000yearsbeforethe
KurgansA.ccordingto this
theory,the languagediffused
alongwith agricultural
innovationswestinto Europe
andeastintoAsia.

2$0 SOCIMiles Oman

D 2$0 ~Kilom11ters CHECK-IN:KEY ISSUE2

\ Why Is English Related to Other
Languages?
south shores of the Black and Caspian seas by way of Iran
and Pakistan, or indirectly by way of Russia north of the ✓ The lndo-European family has four widely
Black and Caspian seas. spoken branches.

Renfrew argues that Tndo-European diffused into ✓ Individual languages, such as English and
Europe and South Asia along with agricultural practices languages of the Romance branch, have
rather than by military conquest. The language triumphed documented places of origin and patterns of
because its speakers became more numerous and pros- diffusion.
perous by growing their own food instead of relying on
hunting. ✓ The origin and early diffusion of language
families such as lndo-European is speculative
Regardless of how lndo-European diffused, communi- because these language families existed before
cation was poor among different peoples, whether warriors recorded history.
or farmers. After many generations of complete isolation,
individual groups evolved increasingly distinct languages.

Pauseand Reflect5.2A

Which hypothesis appeals more to you: the "war" or
the "peace" hypothesis? Why?

158 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

KEY ISSUE3 the seventeenth century, determined the future speech
patterns for their communities because later immigrants
Why Do Individual adopted the language used in their new homes when they
Languages Vary among arrived. The language may have been modified somewhat
Places? by the new arrivals, but the distinctive elements brought
over by the original settlers continued to dominate.
■ Dialects of English
SETTLEMENT IN THE EAST. The original American
■ Distinguishing between Languages settlements stretched along the Atlantic Coast in 13
and Dialects separate colonies. The settlements can be grouped into
three dialect regions (Figure 5-20):
Learning Outcome 5.3.1
Describe the main dialects in the United States. • New England. These colonies were established and in-
habited almost entirely by settlers from England. Two-
thirds of the New England colonists were Puritans from
East Anglia in southeastern England, and only a few
came from the north of England.

• Southeastern. About half came from southeastern
England, although they represented a diversity of

A dialect is a regional variation of a language distinguished w England
by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Generally, speakers of one dialect can understand speakers Metropolitan
of another dialect. Geographers are especially interested in New York
differences in dialects because they reflect distinctive fea-
tures of the environments in which groups live. Sout ATLANTIC
OCEAN
The distribution of dialects is documented through the Writ
study of particular words. Every word that is not used na- '?0 200M1~1
tionally has some geographic extent within the country -vlrginia
and therefore has boundaries. Such a word-usage bound- 100 200 IG.tometer:i
ary, known as an isogloss, can be constructed for each
word. Isoglosses are determined by collecting data directly EasternU.S.speechamas
from people, particularly natives of rural areas. People are Northeaslern
shown pictures to identify or are given sentences to com- Midlands
plete with a particular word. Although every word has a
unique isogloss, boundary lines of different words coalesce • Southeastern
in some locations to form regions.
4 FIGURE5-20 DIALECTSIN THE EASTERNUNITED STATESThemost
Dialects of English comprehensivcelassificatioonfdialectsinthe UnitedStateswasmadeby
HansKurathin1949.Hefoundthe greatestdiversityofdialectsintheeastern
When speakers of a language migrate to other locations, partofthe countrye,speciallyinvocabularyusedon farms.Kurathdividedthe
various dialects of that language may develop. This was easternUnitedStatesintothree majordialectregions-Northern,Midlands,
the case with the migration of English speakers to North and Southern-each ofwhichcontaineda numberofImportantsubareas.
America several hundred years ago. Because of its large Comparethisto the mapofsourceareasofU.Sh. ousetypes(Figure4-25).As
number of speakers and widespread distribution, English Americanms igratedwest.theytookwiththemdistinctivehousetypesas well
has an especially large number of dialects. North Americans
are well aware that they speak English differently from the as distinctivedialects.
British, not to mention people living in India, Pakistan,
Australia, and other English-speaking countries. Further,
English varies by regions within individual countries. In
both the United States and England, northerners sound
different from southerners.

DIALECTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Major differences in U.S. dialects originated because of dif-
ferences in dialects among the original settlers. The Eng-
lish dialect spoken by the first colonists, who arrived in

.. i

1

.f'ffflft1'"'""'''"'''"'"1'nt, 1•••"''"'""'m,,,"""•

Chapter 5: Languages 159

• The southeastern dialect in-
cludes making such words as
half and mine into two sylla-
bles ("ha-af" and "ml-yen").

TheWest • The northeastern dialect is
well known for dropping the
UnitedStatesdialects F)o<ldo
Ir/ sound, so that heart and
Northern Midlands
Western Southeastern lark are pronounced "hot"
and "lock." This characteristic
A FIGURE5-21 U.S. DIALECTSAND SUBDIALECTSThefourmajorU.S.
dialectregionsare NorthernS, outhernM, idlandsa, ndWest. dropping of the Ir/ sound is

shared with speakers from the

south of England and reflects
the place of origin of most
New England colonists.

It also reflects the rela-

tively high degree of contact be-
tween the two groups. Residents
of Boston, the Northeast's main
port city, maintained especially
close ties to the important ports
of southern England.

social-class backgrounds, including deported prisoners, The diffusion of particular English dialects is a result of
indentured servants, and political and religious refugees. the westward movement of colonists from the three East
Coast dialect regions. The northeastern and southeastern
• Midlands. These immigrants were more diverse. The early accents sound unusual to the majority of Americans because
settlers of Pennsylvania were predominantly Quakers the standard pronunciation throughout the American West
from the north of England. Scots and Irish also went to comes from the Midlands rather than the northeastern and
Pennsylvania, as well as to New Jersey and Delaware. The southeastern regions. This pattern occurred because most
Middle Atlantic colonies also attracted many German, western settlers came from the Midlands. The three eastern
Dutch, and Swedish immigrants who learned their Eng- dialect regions can also be divided into several subdialects,
lish from the English-speaking settlers in the area. several of which are shown in Figure 5-Zl.

The English dialects now spoken in the U.S. Southeast Pause and Reflect 5.3.1
and New England are easily recognizable. The dialects spo-
ken in the former Midland colonies differ significantly Does your English fall into one of these dialects?
from those spoken farther north and south because most Why or why not?
of the settlers came from the north rather than the south
of England or from other countries.

CURRENTDIALECTDIFFERENCESIN THE EAST. Major
dialect differences continue to exist within the United
States. The three major East Coast dialect regions have been
joined by a fourth that developed in the West (Figure 5-21).

Many words that were once regionally distinctive
are now national in distribution. Mass media, especially
television and radio, influence the adoption of the same
words throughout the country. Nonetheless, regional dia-
lect differences persist in the United States. For example,
the word for soft drink varies. Most people in the Northeast
and Southwest, as well as the St. Louis area, use soda to
describe a soft drink. Most people in the Midwest, Great

Plains, and Northwest prefer pop. Southerners refer to all

soft drinks as coke (Figure 5-22).

PRONUNCIATIONDIFFERENCES. Regional pronunciation A FIGURE 5-22 SOFT-DRINK DIALECTS Softdrinksarecalled soda In the
differences are more familiar to us than word differences,
although it is harder to draw precise isoglosses for them: Northeasat ndSouthwestp.op Inthe MidwestandNorthwesta, ndCoke in
theSouthT. hemapreflectsvotingat www.popvssoda.com.

lit: ,,_ I 1111

160 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

"' ~ .-..--------------------------- eighteenth century establlshed rules for spelling and
grammar that were based on the London dialect. These
DIALECTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM frequently arbitrary rules were then taught in schools
throughout the country.
Learning Outcome 5.3.2
Despite the current dominance of RP, strong regional
Understand the main ways that British and U.S. differences persist in English dialects spoken in the Unitectl
English dialects vary. Kingdom, especially in rural areas (figure 5-23, center).
They can be grouped into three main ones-Northern,
"If you use proper English, you're regarded as a freak; why Midland, and Southern. For example:
can't the English learn to speak?" asked Professor Henry
Higgins in the Broadway musical My FairLady. He was re- • Southerners pronounce words like grass and path with
ferring to the Cockney-speaking Eliza Doolittle, who pro- an /ah/ sound; Northerners and people in the Midlands
nounced rain like "rine" and dropped the /hi sound from use a short fa/, as do most people in the United States.
the beginning of words like happy. Eliza Doolittle's speech
illustrates that English, like other languages, has a wide va- • Northerners and people in the Midlands pronounce
riety of dialects that use different pronunciations, spellings, butterand Sunday with the Joo/sound of words like boot.
and meanings for particular words.
As in the United States, the main British dialects can be
As already discussed, English originated with three in- divjded into subdialects. For example, distinctive south-
vading groups from Northern Europe who settled in dif- western and southeastern accents occur within England's
ferent parts of Britain-the Angles in the north, the Jutes Southern dialect:
in the southeast, and the Saxons in the southwest. The
language each spoke was the basis of distinct regional dia- • Southwesterners pronounce thatch and thing with th€
lects of Old English-Kentish in the southeast, West Saxon /t/1/ sound of then rather than thin. Freshand eggshav€
in the southwest, Mercian in the center of the island, and an /ail sound.
Northumbrian in the north (Figure 5-23).
• Southeasterners pronounce the /al in appleand cat likE
In a language with multiple dialects, one dialect may the short /el in bet.
be recognized as the standard language, which is a dialect
that is well established and widely recognized as the most The isoglosses between English dialects have been mov-
acceptable for government, business, education, and mass ing (Figure 5-23, right). The changes reflect patterns of mi•
communication. In the case of England, the standard lan- gration. The emergence of a subdialect in London reflecti
guage is known as Received Pronunciation (RP). It is weU migration of people from other countries into the capita
known around the world as the dialect commonly used by city, and the northern expansion of the southeastern sub
politicians, broadcasters, and actors. dialect reflects the outmigration of Londoners.

RP was the dialect used by upper-class residents in the BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH
capital city of London and the two important univer-
sity cities of Cambridge and Oxford. The diffusion of the DIALECTS
upper-class London and university dialects was encour-
aged by the introduction of the printing press to England Why don't Americans speak RP?The English language wa
in 1476. Grammar books and dictionaries printed in the brought to the North American continent by colonists fron
England who settled along the Atlantic Coast beginning ir
the seventeenth century. The early colonists naturally spok,

► FIGURE5·23 DIALECTS IN 1000 1

ENGLAND lsoglossebsetween OldEnglis, 2030
Celli~
England'sdialectsof Englishare 17 ~orec st)

changing.

,Jontu!rnDialects
MidlardScti!kct:s
Sou1htrndiAl!ets

\ Jc

J ro

La

uv.ey~

'' Midlands

/wis1..

M'~•

Chapter 5: Languages 161

the language they had been using in England

at the time.

Later immigrants from other countries

found English already implanted here. Al-

though they made significant contributions

to American English, they became accultur-

ated into a society that already spoke English. BRITISHAmerican
Therefore, the earliest colonists were most re-

sponsible for the dominant language patterns PETROGLas WINDSCREEWNindshield CAT'SEYERAISEDPavement

that exist today in the English-speaking part LORRYTruck BOOTTrunk Marker

of the Western Hemisphere. SLEEPINPGOLICEMASNpeed REVERSINLGIGHTSBack-up CARAVAN/CAMPERVAN

Why is the English language in the United Bump Lights PAVEMENSTidewalk
States so different from that in England? As is
so often the case with languages, the answer CARPARKParkingLot EXHAUSPTIPETailPipe ESTATCEARStationWagon
is isolation. Separated by the Atlantic Ocean,
English in the United States and in England CARJOURNERYoadTrip DUALCARRIAGEWDAiYvided MANUALCARStickshifCt ar
evolved independently during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, with little influence ZEBRACROSSINCGrosswalk Highway GEARSTICKStick
on one another. Few residents of one country
MOTORWAFYreeway NUMBERPLATELicensePlate INDICATORTSurnSignal

SALOONSedan FLYOVEORverpass TRAFFILCIGHTStoplight

PETROSLTATIOGNasStation MULTI-STORCEAYRPARK AMBERLIGHT(TRAFFIC

BONNEHT ood ParkingGarage LIGHTSY)ellowLight

could visit the other, and the means to transmit .4 FIGURE 5-24 DlfFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH Numerous
the human voice over long distances would not featuresrelatedto a carareidentifiedbydifferentwordsinAmericanandBritishEnglishdialects.
become available until the twentieth century.

U.S. English differs from the English of England in three

significant ways-vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

VOCABULARY. The vocabulary of U.S.English differs from PRONUNCIATION. From the time of their arrival in
the English of England largely because settlers in America North America, colonists began to pronounce words
encountered many new objects and experiences. The new differently from the British. Such divergence is nmmal, for
continent contained physical features, such as large forests interaction between the two groups was largely confined
and mountains, that had to be given new names. to exchange of letters and other printed matter rather than
direct speech.
New animals were encountered, including the moose,
raccoon, and chipmunk, all of which were given names Such words as fast, palh, and half are pronounced in
borrowed from Native Americans. Indigenous American England like the /ah/ in father rather than the /a/ in man.
"Indians" also enriched American English with names for The British also eliminate the r sound from pronunciation
objects such as canoe, moccasin, and squash. except before vowels. Thus lord in British pronunciation
sounds like laud.
As new inventions appeared, they acquired different
names on either side of the Atlantic. For example, the ele- Americans pronounce unaccented syllabics with more
vator is called a Ii~ in England, and the flashlight is known clarity than do British English speakers. The words secre-
as a torch.The British call the hood of a car the bonnetand tary and necessaryhave four syllables in American English
the trunk the boot (Figure 5-24). but only three in British (secret'ryand necess'ry).

SPELLING. American spelling diverged from the British Surprisingly, pronunciation has changed more in
standard because of a strong national feeling in the United England than in the United States. The letters a and r are
States for an independent identity. Noah Webster, the pronounced in the United States closer to the way they
creator of the first comprehensive American dictionary were pronounced in Britain in the seventeenth century,
and grammar books, was not just a documenter of usage; when the first colonists arrived. Asingle dialect of Southern
he had an agenda. English did not emerge as the British national standard
until the late eighteenth century, after the American col-
Webster was determined to develop a uniquely American onies had declared independence and were politically as
dialect of English. He either ignored or was unaware of well as physically isolated from England. Thus people in
recently created rules of grammar and spelling developed the United States do not speak "proper" English because
in England. Webster argued that spelling and grammar when the colonists left England, "proper" English was not
reforms would help establish a national language, reduce what it is today. Furthermore, few colonists were drawn
cultural dependence on England, and inspire national from the English upper classes.
pride. The spelling differences between British and Amer-
ican English, such as the elimination of the u from the Pause and Reflect 5.3.2
British spelling of words such as honour and colour and
the substitution of s for c in defence,are due primarily to In British English dialect, circus has a second meaning
the diffusion of Webster's ideas inside the United States. in addition to a carnival with clowns. What is it?

162 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE The Portuguese and Spanish languages spoken in the
Western Hemisphere differ somewhat from their European
. ~--------------------------- versions, as is the case with English. The members of the
Spanish Royal Academy meet every week in a mansion in
Distinguishing between Madrid to clarify rules for the vocabulary, spelling, and
Languages and Dialects pronunciation of the Spanish language around the world.
The academy's official dictionary, published in 199Z, has
Learning Outcome 5.3.3 added hundreds of "Spanish" words that originated either
in the regional dialects of Spain or the Indian languages of
Understand why it is sometimes difficult to Latin America.
distinguish between a language and a dialect.
Brazil, Portugal, and several Portuguese-speaking coun-
Dialects are not confined to English; other languages, tries in Africa agreed in 1994 to standardize the way their
such as those in the Romance branch, have dialects. The common language is written. Many p_eoplein Portugal are
Romance branch also demonstrates difficulties in distin- upset that the new standard language more closely resem-
guishing between dialects and distinct languages. bles the Brazilian version, which eliminates some of the
accent marks-such as tildes (as in Sao Paulo), cedillas (as
ROMANCE BRANCH DIALECTS in Alcoba<;a),circumflexes (as in Estancia), and hyphens-
and the agreement recognizes as standard thousands of
Distinct Romance languages did not suddenly appear in words that Brazilians have added to the language, such as
the former Roman Empire. As with other languages, they flowers, animals, and other features of the natural envi-
evolved over time. Numerous dialects existed within each ronment found in Brazil but not in Portugal.
province, and many of them are still spoken today. The
creation of standard national languages, such as French The standardization of Portuguese is a reflection of the
and Spanish, occurred relatively recently. level of interaction that is possible in the modern world
between groups of people who live tens of thousands of
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE. Spain, like France, con- kilometers apart. Books and television programs produced
tained many dialects during the Middle Ages. One dialect, in one country diffuse rapidly to other countries where the
known as Castilian, arose during the ninth century in Old same language is used. Refer to Figure 5-17, which shows
Castile, located in the north-central part of the country. an exhibit at the Museum of Portuguese Language in Sao
The dialect spread southward over the next several Paulo, Brazil.
hundred years, as independent kingdoms were unified
into one large country. Pause and Reflect 5.3.3
Five hundred years from now, why might Spanish
Spain grew to its approximate present boundaries in the tourists in Peru not be easily understood by
fifteenth century, when the Kingdom of Castile and Leon Peruvians if they speak their own version of Spanish?
merged with the Kingdom of Aragon. At that time, Cas-
tilian became the official language for the entire country. DIALECT OR LANGUAGE?
Regional dialects, such as Aragon, Navarre, Leon, Asturias,
and Santander, survived only in secluded rural areas. The Difficulties arise in determining whether two languages are
official language of Spain is now called Spanish, although distinct or whether they are two dialects of the same lan-
the term Castilian is still used in Latin America. Portuguese guage. Here are several examples from Romance languages.
developed as a separate language because of Portugal's rela-
LANGUAGES OF ITALY. Several languages in [taly that
I tive isolation on the west coast of the Iberian peninsula, have been traditionally classified as dialects of Italian are
now viewed by Ethnologue as sufficiently different to merit
I especially after the fall of the Roman Empire. consideration as languages distinct from Italian (number
Spanish and Portuguese have achieved worldwide of speakers in parentheses):
importance because of the colonial activities of their
European speakers. Approx.imateJy 90 percent of the speak- • Emiliano-Romagnolo (2 million)
ers of these two languages live outside Europe, mainly in
Central and South America. Spanish is the official lan- • Liguria (2 million)
guage of 18 Latin American states, and Portuguese is spo-
ken in Brazil, which has as many people as all the other • Lombard (9 million)
South American countries combined and 18 times more • Napoletano-Calebrese (7 million)
people than Portugal itself.
These two Romance languages were diffused to the • Piemontese (3 million)
Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers. The divi-
sion of Central and South America into Portuguese- and • Sicilian (5 million)
Spanish-speaking regions resulted from a 1493 decision
by Pope Alexander VI to give the western portion of the • Venetian (2 million)
New World to Spain and the eastern part to Portugal. The Refer to Figure 5-13 for the distribution of these lan-
Treaty of Tordesillas, signed a year later, carried out the
papal decision. guages (or dialects) within Italy.

Chapter 5: Languages 163

written, like Russian, in Cyrillic letters, a legacy of Moldova
being a part of the Soviet Union, whereas Romanian is
written in Roman letters.

CREOLE LANGUAGES. Romance languages spoken in
some former colonies can also be classified as separate
languages because they differ substantially from the
original introduced by European colonizers. Examples
include French Creole in Haiti, Papiamento (creolized
Spanish) in Netherlands Antilles (West [ndies), and
Portuguese Creole in the Cape Verde Islands off the African
coast. A creole, or creolized language, is defined as a
language that results from the mixing of the colonizer's
language with the indigenous language of the people being
dominated (Figure 5-26). A creolized language forms when
the colonized group adopts the language of the dominant
group but makes some changes, such as simplifying the
grammar and adding words from the former language.

• FIGURE5-25 CATALAN Thissignwarningthatthis isprivatepropertywas CHECK-IN: KEY ISSUE3
writtenin SpanishT.hegraffiti is in Catalan.
Why Do Individual Languages Vary
among Places?

CATALAN-VALENCIAN-BALEAR. Catalan was once ✓ A dialect is a regional variation of a language;
regarded as a dialect of Spanish, but linguists now agree the United States has several major dialects.
lh.:ttit is a separate Romance language (refer to Figure 5-13).
Like other Romance languages, Catalan can be traced to ✓ Dialects vary based on vocabulary, spelling, and
Vulgar Latin, and it developed as a separate language after pronunciation.
the collapse of the Roman Empire (Figure 5-25).
✓ The distinction between a dialect and an
As the status of Catalan as a separate language is settled, entirely different language is not always
linguists are identifying its principal dialects. Linguists clear-cut.
agree that Balear is a dialect of Catalan that is spoken in
Lhe Balearic ls.lands, which include Ibiza and Majorca. T FIGURE5-26 CREOLELANGUAGEThisnote,writtenin FrenchCreolein
More controversial is the status of Valcncian, which is spo- Haiti.shortlyaftera devastatingearthquakekilled40,000in January2010,is
ken mostly in and around the city of Valencia. Most lin- thebeginningof 2nmothy3:16,"AllScriptureisgivenbyinspirationof God."
guists consider Valencian a dialect of Catalan. However,
many in Valencia, including the Valencian Language In-
stitute, consider Valencian a separate language, because it
contains words derived from people who lived In the re-
gion before the Roman conquest. Ethnologuenow calls the
language Catalan -Valencian-Balear.

GALICIAN. Whether Galician, which is spoken in
northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, is a dialect
of Portuguese or a distinct language is debated among
speakers of Galician. The Academy of Galician Language
considers it a separate language and a symbol of cultural
independence. The Galician Association of the Language
prefers to consider it a dialect because as a separate
language, it would be relegated to a minor and obscure
status, whereas as a dialect of Portuguese it can help to
Influence one of the world's most widely used languages.

MOLDOVAN. Generally classified as a dialect of Romanian,
Moldovan is the official language of Moldova. Moldovan is

164 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

KEY ISSUE4 North Sea

Why Do People West
Flanders

Preserve Local

Languages?

■ Language Diversity FRANCE
■ Global Dominance of English
A
Learning Outcome 5.4.1
Understand how several countries peacefully N
embrace more than one language.
~ 50 MJH ProtecteMd inorities
The distribution of a language is a measure of the fate of 15 soKiiom.ten
a cultural group. English has diffused around the world • WalloonsInFlanders
from a small island in northwestern Europe because of the Ethnicities • FlemingsInWallonia
dominance of England and the United States over other Flemings(speakingDutchdialects)
territory on Earth's surface. Icelandic remains a little-used Walloons(speakingFrench) GermansIn Wallonia
language because of the isolation of the Icelandic people.
•Germans
As in other cultural traits, language displays the two FlemlngsandWalloons(legallybilingual)
competing geographic trends of globalization and local di-
versity. English has become the principal language of com- "- FIGURE 5-27 LANGUAGESIN BELGIUMFlemingsin the northspeak
munication and interaction for the entire world. At the Flemisha, Dutchdialect.Walloonsin the southspeakFrenchT.hetwo groups
same time, local languages endangered by the global dom- havehaddifficultysharingnationalpower.
inance of English are being protected and preserved.
differences. Historically, the Walloons dominated Bel-
Language Diversity gium's economy and politics, and French was the official
state language. Brussels, the capital city, is officially bilin-
In some countries, multiple languages coexist, with vary• gual, and signs are in both French and Flemish (Figure S-28).
ing degrees of success. Other countries maintain the use
of languages that have little if any relationship to other In response to pressure from Flemish speakers, Belgium
languages. has been divided into two autonomous regions, Flanders
and Wallonia. Each elects an assembly that controls cul-
MULTILINGUAL STATES tural affairs, public health, road construction, and urban
development in its region. But for many in Flanders, re•
gional autonomy is not enough. They want to see Belgium
divided into two independent countries. Were that to
occur, Flanders would be one of Europe's richest countries
and Wallonia one of the poorest.

Difficulties can arise at the boundary between two lan- 'f FIGURE 5-28 LANGUAGE DIVERSITY IN BELGIUM Delhaizea,
guages. Helgium, Switzerland, and Nigeria offer examples supermarkecthainin Belgiuma, dvertisesonadjacentposters"the bestat the
of varying degrees of difficulties. bestprices"(left)in Frenchand(right)in Flemish.

BELGIUM. Note in Figures 5.9 (Inda-European languages)
and 5-10 (Germanic languages) that the boundary between
the Romance and Germanic branches runs through
the middle of two small European countries, Belgium
and Switzerland. Belgium has had more difficulty than
Switzerland in reconciling the interests of the different
language speakers.

Southern Belgians (known as Walloons) speak French,
whereas northern Belgians (known as Flemings) speak
Flemish, a dialect of the Germanic language Dutch (Fig-
ure 5-27). The language boundary sharply divides the
country into two regions. Antagonism between the Flem-
ings and Walloons is aggravated by economic and political

Chapter 5: Languages 165

SWITZERLAND. In contrast with Belgium, Switzerland Groups living in different regions of Nigeria have often
peacefully exists with multiple languages. The key is a battled. The southern lgbos attempted to secede from
Jong tradition of decentralized government, in which Nigeria during the 1960s, and northerners have repeatedly
local authorities hold most of the power, and decisions claimed that the Yombas discriminate against them. To re-
are frequently made by voter referenda. Switzerland has duce these regional tensions, the government has moved
four official languages-German (used by 65 percent of the capital from Lagos in the Yoruba-dominated southwest
the population), French (18 percent), Italian (10 percent), to Abuja in the center of Nigeria.
and Romansh (1 percent). Swiss voters made Romansh an
official language in a 1938 referendum, despite the small Nigeria reflects the problems that can arise when great
percentage of people who use the language. cultural diversity-and therefore language diversity-
is packed into a relatively small region. Nigeria also illus-
Switzerland is divided into foUJ main linguistic regions, trates the importance of language in identifying distinct
asshown in Figure 5-29, but people living in individual com- cultural groups at a local scale. Speakers of one language
munities, especially in the mountains, may use a language are unlikely to understand any of the others in the same
other than the prevailing local one. The Swiss, relatively tol- language family, let alone languages from other families.
erant of citizens who speak other languages, have institu-
tionalized cultural diversity by creating a form of govern-
ment that places considerable power in small communities.

NIGERIA. Africa's most populous country, Nigeria,
displays problems that can arise from the presence of
many speakers of many languages. Nigeria has 527 distinct
languages, according to Ethnologue, only three of which
have widespread use-Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo, each
spoken by one-eighth of the population (Figure 5-30).

Lagos

ATLANTIC CAMEROON
OCEAN
0 lotl 200 Milti
f-r-'-...----'
o 100 200lr.llometm

Niger-CangFeamily Afro-AsiaticFamily

• Ar!amawa-Fulful~e• lwn • Hausa
otherpeoples ~
• Anaang NigelianFulfulde
Nilo-SaharanFamily
Ebira Tlv

Edo Yoruba

lb1b10 otherpeoples • KanU!i
lgbo otherpeoples

All languageswithover1millionspeakers

-' FIGURES-29 LANGUAGE DIVERSITY IN SWITZERLAND Themap .A FIGURE5-30 LANGUAGE DIVERSITY IN NIGERIA Themapshows
showsSwitzerland'sfourofficial languagesT.hephotoshowsa signthat Nigeria'sprincipallanguagesT.hephotoshowsNigeria'scapitalcityAbuja,
preventshikersv, ehiclesa, ndhorsesfromenteringtheforestbecauseof timber whichwasbuilt in the centerof the countryw, herenoneof the threelargest
cutting.Germanis top left, Frenchtop right,Italianlowerleft, andRomansh languagesdominatesT. hecityskylineincludesa cathedral(left},nationalbank
lowerright.Switzerlandlivespeacefullywith fourofficiallanguagesin, cluding (center)a, ndmosque(right).
Romanshw, hichis usedby only1 percentof the population.

166 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

ISOLATED LANGUAGES "~

Learning Outcome 5.4.2 VARUar
Understand what is meant by an isolated language
and an extinct language. HVERASVJEE>I

An isolated language is a language unrelated to any other WARNING!
and therefore not attached to any language family. Simi-
larities and differences between languages-our main form HOTSPRINGAREA
of communication-are a measure of the degree of interac-
tion among groups of people. A FIGURE5-32 ICELANDIC Thewarningsignin IcelandicandEnglishis
locatedin HveragerdIic, eland.
The diffusion of lndo-European languages demon-
strates that a common ancestor dominated much of AN UNCHANGING LANGUAGE: ICELANDIC. Icelandic
Europe before recorded history. Similarly, the diffusion of is related to other languages in the North Germanic group
Inda-European languages to the Western Hemisphere is a of the Germanic branch of the lndo-European family (Fig-
result of conquests by lndo-European speakers in more re- ure 5-32). Icelandic's significance is that over the past 1,000
cent times. In contrast, isolated languages arise through years, it has changed less than any other language in the
lack of interaction with speakers of other languages. Germanic branch. As was the case with England, people in
Iceland speak a Germanic language because their ancestors
A PRE-INDO-EUROPEAN SURVIVOR: BASQUE. The best migrated to the island from the east, in this case from
example of an isolated language in Europe is Basque, Norway. Norwegian settlers colonized Iceland in A.O. 874.
apparently the only language currently spoken in Europe
that survives from the period befdre the arrival of lndo- When an ethnic group migrates to a new location, it
European speakers. No attempt to link Basque to the takes along the language spoken in the former home. The
common origin of the other European languages has language spoken by most migrants-such as the Germanic
been successful. invaders of England-changes in part through interac-
tion with speakers of other languages. But in the case of
Basque was probably once spoken over a wider area but Iceland, the Norwegian immigrants had little contact with
was abandoned where its speakers came in contact with speakers of other languages when they arrived in Iceland,
lndo-E.uropeans. It is now the first language of 666,000 and they did not have contact with speakers of their
people in the Pyrenees Mountains of northern Spain and language back in Norway. After centuries of interaction
southwestern l~rance (refer to Figure 5-13, the gray area in with other Scandinavians, Norwegian and other North
northern Spain). Basque's lack of connection to other lan- Germanic languages had adopted new words and pronun-
guages reflects the isolation of the Basque people in their ciation, whereas the isolated people of Iceland had less
mountainous homeland. This isolation has helped them opportunity to learn new words and no reason to change
preserve their language in the face of the wide diffusion of their language.
lndo-European languages (Figure 5-31).
A "DISCOVERED" LANGUAGE: KORO AKA. Isolated
T FIGURE5-31 BASQUE Protesterhsoldbannersthat say,in Basque",Stop languages continue to be identified and documented. For
the stateof emergencys;elf-determinatiofnor BasqueCountry,•duringa example, a research team from Oregon's Living Tongues
demonstrationin the Basque-speakincigtyof SanSebastianS,paini,n 2009. Institute for Endangered Languages was in India in 2008
to study other rarely spoken languages. The team heard
people in the area speaking another language that was
not listed in authoritative sources such as Ethnologue.The
researchers concluded that the language, known as Koro
Aka, is a distinct language that belongs to the Tibeto-
Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan, but they were not able to
classify it in a group. Koro Aka has around 1,000 speakers,
in northeastern India.

EXTINCT AND REVIVED LANGUAGES

Thousands of languages are extinct languages that were
once in use-even in the recent past-but are no longer
spoken or read in dally activities by anyone in the world.
Ethnologue considers 473 languages to be nearly extinct

Chapter 5: Languages 167

because only a few older speakers are still living, and they are version to Christianity. Similarly, indigenous languages are
not teaching the languages to their children. According to disappearing in Peru as speakers switch to Spanish.
Et/mologue,46 of these nearly extinct languages are in
Africa, 182 in the Americas, 84 in Asia, 9 in Europe, and REVIVING AN EXTINCT LANGUAGE: HEBREW. Hebrew
is a rare case of an extinct language that has been revived
152 in the Pacific. (Figure 5-34). Most of the Jewish Bible (Christian Old
Testament) was written in Hebrew. (A small part of it
MANY EXTINCT LANGUAGES: NATIVE AMERICANS. was written in another Afro-Asiatic language, Aramaic.)
A language of daily activity in biblical times, Hebrew
When Spanish missionaries reached the eastern Amazon
region of Peru in the sixteenth century, they found more diminished in use in the fourth century o.c. and was
tJ1an500 languages. Only 92 survive today, according to
Etlmologue,and 14 of these face immediate extinction thereafter retained only for Jewish religious services. At the
because fewer than 100 speakers remain. Of Peru's time of Jesus, people in present-day Israel generally spoke
92surviving indigenous languages, only Cusco, a Quechuan Aramaic, which in turn was replaced by Arabic.
language, is currently used by more than 1 million people.
When Israel was established as an independent coun-
Ethnologue lists 74 languages based in the United try in 1948, Hebrew became one of the new country's two
States that are now extinct. These are languages once official languages, along with Arabic. Hebrew was chosen
poken by groups of Native Americans, especially in the because the Jewish population of Israel consisted of refu-
West (Figure 5-33). gees and migrants from many countries who spoke many
languages. Because Hebrew was still used in Jewish prayers,
AN EXTINCT LANGUAGE: GOTHIC. Gothic was widely no other language could so symbolically unify the dispa-
rate cultural groups in the new country.
spoken by people in Eastern and Northern Europe in the
The task of reviving Hebrew as a living language was
third century. Not only is Gothic extinct but so is the entire formidable. Words had to be created for thousands of ob-
jects and inventions unknown in biblical times, such as
language group to which it belonged, the East Germanic telephones, cars, and electricity. The revival effort was ini-
tiated by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who lived in Palestine before
group of the Germanic branch of Inda-European. The last the creation of the State of Israel and who refused to speak
any language other than Hebrew. Ben-Yehuda is credited
speakers of Gothic lived in the Crimea in Rusl!a in the with the invention of 4,000 new Hebrew words-related
when possible to ancient ones-and the creation of the
sixteenth century. - first modern Hebrew dictionary.

rhe Gothic language died because the descendants

of the Goths were converted to other languages through

processes of integration, such as political dominance and

cultural preference. For example, many Gothic people

switched to speaking the Latin language after their con-

T FIGURE5-33 ALGONQUIN StudentinChisasibiQ, uebecw, ritesinCree, Pause and Reflect 5.4.2
anAlgonquianlanguage.
Can you think of other words that would not have
existed in ancient times?

T FIGURE5-34 HEBREW Theroadsignsare in(top)Hebrew(,middle)
Arabic,andEnglish.

,.,m,'""m111,m1