Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Highlands and islands of Scotland (Scots Gaelic). The
use of Romanian extends well into Moldavia, signifying a
past loss of national territory. Greek and Albanian are also
Indo-European languages, and their regional distribution
corresponds signifi cantly (though not exactly) with state
territories. Figure 6.2 underscores the complex cultural
pattern of eastern Europe: German speakers in Hungary;
Hungarian speakers in Slovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia;
Romanian speakers in Greece and Moldavia; Turkish
speakers in Bulgaria; and Albanian speakers in Serbia.
Although the overwhelming majority of Europeans
and Russians speak Indo-European languages, the Uralic
and Altaic language families are also represented. Finnish,
Estonian, and Hungarian are major languages of the Uralic
family, which, as Figure 6.8 shows, extends across Eurasia
to the Pacifi c Coast. The Altaic family to which Turkish
belongs is equally widespread and includes Turkish,
Kazakh, Uigur, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek languages.
One language on the map of Europe stands out
for two reasons: fi rst, it covers a very small land area,
and second, it is in no way related to any other lan-
guage family in Europe. Did you fi nd it? This tantaliz-
ing enigma is the Basque language, Euskera. Isolated
in the Andorra Mountain region between Spain and
France, the Basque people and their Euskera language
survived the tumultuous history of Europe for thou-
sands of years—never blending with another language
or diffusing from the Andorra region. (Some recent
genetic evidence points to a link between Euskera and
an extinct language in the Middle East.) The Basques
have a strong identity tied to their language and inde-
pendent history, an identity that was cemented by the
horrid treatment they received under fascist dictator
Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain during and after
World War II. After Franco died in 1975, a Basque sep-
aratist group demanded autonomy within Spain. The
Spanish government recognized Basque autonomy in its
1979 constitution, granting the Basque region its own
parliament, giving their language offi cial status, and
transferring some taxation and education powers from
the capital to the Basque region. A group of Basque sep-
aratists continue to demand more, waging a campaign
of violence against Spanish targets and even moderate
Basque leaders (Fig. 6.13).
Figure 6.13
San Sebastián, Spain. Graffi ti on the wall of this building uses
the English language, “Freedom for the Basque Country,” to show
support for the Basque separatist movement.
© Denise Powell.
Studying language subfamilies helps us under-
stand migration and settlement patterns in Subsaharan
Africa. The oldest languages of Subsaharan Africa are
the Khoisan languages, which include a “click” sound.
Although they once dominated much of the region,
Khoisan languages were marginalized by the invasion of
speakers of the Bantu languages. Studying the languages
in the Bantu subfamily, we can see that the languages
are still closely related, with similar prefi xes and vocab-
ularies. Similarities among the Bantu languages mean
that the languages have been in Subsaharan Africa for a
shorter time—typically, the longer a language has been
in a place, the more likely sounds will have shifted and
languages splintered.
Linguistic diversity is evident not just at the world
regional scale, but at the country scale. Nigeria encom-
passes several subfamilies of the Niger-Congo fam-
ily, and its population includes speakers of two major
Subsaharan African language families. Indeed, Nigeria's
141 million people speak more than 500 different lan-
guages. The three most prominent languages are dis-
tributed regionally: Hausa is in the north and is spoken
by some 35 million, Yoruba is in the southwest and is
spoken by 25 million and Ibo is in the southeast and is
spoken by more than 25 million people (Fig. 6.15). Of
the remaining languages spoken in Nigeria, the vast
majority are spoken by fewer than one million people.
These minor languages persist because daily survival,
community, and culture are tied closely to the local scale
in Nigeria. Even people who leave their hometowns for
work send money back to their hometown associations
to support their culture and economy.
Were it not for British colonialism, the country of
Nigeria would never have existed. The diverse people
of this place have been amalgamated into the Nigerian
Languages of Subsaharan Africa
The world map of language families masks the extreme
fragmentation of languages in parts of the world such as
Subsaharan Africa. In Subsaharan Africa, the map of world
language families refl ects the dominance of the Niger-
Congo language family. By including language subfami-
lies, we can gain a more meaningful picture of Subsaharan
Africa's linguistic diversity (Fig. 6.14).
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