Via Wikipedia, this map of world languages:
Thoughts:
- I know nothing about the language of Burma; is it really related Sino-Tibetan? What about their writing system?
- Australians: do Aboriginese languages really florish in the center of your island?
- Latin Americans: are non-Iberian languages widely spoken in the center of your continent?
- What is that Sino-Tibetan blob in the Malay peninsula (it’s not Singapore).
- Is the Ethiopian language in the same linguistic family as Arabic?
- What language is spoken on Hainan Island?
(An a final note, I get the feeling that China will be a topic of contention again…
Comments to this entry
Chirol
November 2, 2005
9:10 pm
Joe
November 2, 2005
9:15 pm
Also, there are theories that Japanese and Korean are Altaic languages, like Turkish and the Central Asian tongues. I can see some resemblances to Turkish myself (Istanbul could almost be a Korean name...)
davesgonechina
November 2, 2005
9:17 pm
Wouldn't some people take issue with Japan and Korean as isolates? Japanese even gets lumped with Altaic (kinda sorta) on occasion.
Chirol
November 2, 2005
9:18 pm
Joe
November 2, 2005
9:20 pm
Chirol
November 2, 2005
9:20 pm
sun bin
November 2, 2005
10:53 pm
burmese is definitely sino-tebetan. it is closer to tibetan, i think
penang state of malaysia is like singapore, han dominant. but it should be marked north from that spot, and smaller in area.
japan and korean being isolationist...LOL
taiwan as well....
Curzon
November 2, 2005
11:00 pm
sun bin
November 2, 2005
11:07 pm
it is not the basques
sun bin
November 2, 2005
11:14 pm
Curzon
November 2, 2005
11:16 pm
!http://www.raceandhistory.com/worldhotspots/images/basque.gif!
sun bin
November 2, 2005
11:37 pm
sun bin
November 2, 2005
11:50 pm
Click to enlarge.
Alexander Browne
November 3, 2005
12:26 am
That is Galicia.
I think the color of Hainan is an error. The color, which doesn't match either Sino-Tibetan or Tai-Kadai, seems to be left over from the previous version [big image warning], which was changed to harmonize with the Wikipedia language family colors. The same seems to have happened with Malta: Maltese is basically Arabic with lots of Romance vocab and the roman alphabet, but it is pink (ST or Austroasiatic) on this map.
J.Kende
November 3, 2005
12:55 am
J.Kende
November 3, 2005
12:57 am
Mutantfrog
November 3, 2005
3:12 am
As for Japanese and Korean, they are unquestionably related to each other, this is really only denied by people who have some kind of stake in the uniqueness of one or both of the ethnic groups. They are also probably related to the larger Altaic group, but split off many thousands of years ago.
Japanese was most likely formed by a mixture of the languages spoken by immigrants from the Korean penninsula over 2000 years ago, speaking one (or more!) of the many extinct languages related to ancient Korean that existed before political unification, and some variant of the Austronesian language family spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Japan.
I took one semester of Korean, and the grammar was so similar to Japanese that I can't even conceive of the possibility that they aren't related.
Interestingly, the Basque language is a leftover from before the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe.
The colors on Taiwan are definitely a mistake. Whether Taiwanese and Hakka should be considered mere dialects of Chinese or not, they are still part of the Sino-Tibetan language group. I think Taiwan also deserves a splash of the pink, since the 9 surviving native tribes speak languages that the entire Austronesian group is descended from.
scott
November 3, 2005
3:24 am
My friends who speak both Tibetan and Chinese say there is no such thing as sino-tibetan, they are very different languages.
Tibet was a mighty imperialist nation until the Arab/Persian armies institued their "no mortar left un-smashed" policy in Afganistan and sent all the Tibetans into what we think of today as tibet (around 700CE).
Tibetans at one time dominated what we call Indo-China, it should probably be called Indo-Tibet!
The Chinese Sung Dynasty fled the Mongols around 1200CE and the entire royal family inter-married with the Thai royal family. They transported their entire ceramics culture with them. ( That's why the most valuble ceramics in the world (Sung) suddenly started being made in Thailand.) It was a big migration and it changed the language. I don't think the Mongol invasions of Vietnam had such a strong linguistic effect.
Still, since the Tibetans don't want their history to be known, the massive influence they had on commerce, technology, warfare and of course language, prior to their bazzar retreat into Buddhism will be slow to get into the history books.
Nathan
November 3, 2005
5:11 am
That's nice. Persian, Russian, and English are all very different from one another, but they're still all Indo-European languages. Sino-Tibetan is apparently not as accepted as Indo-European, but still...
I get the impression that the inclusion of Japanese and Korean into the Altaic family is becoming less controversial.
sun bin
November 3, 2005
6:43 am
even within the tibetans, the dialects are as different as, say cantonese vs mandarin. or italian vs german?
sun bin
November 3, 2005
7:03 am
!http://www.religionstatistics.net/indochinesia.gif!
lirelou
November 3, 2005
7:26 am
Regarding indigenous languages in Latin America. There are far too many to enumerate here, but indigenous languages are still spoken in the majority of Latin countries and Brazil. You won't hear indigenous languages spoken in Uruguay, Argentina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico, and the number of Chilean indigenous language speakers has to be extremely small. In only one country, is an indigenous language co-equal with Spanish, and that is Paraguay, whose native language is Guarani. You can find two versions of a Spanish-Guarani dictionary for sale inthe book stores, and even hear Blond hairred blue-eyed Mennonites conversing in the language. In Paraguay, Guarani is the language of the home, and Spanish the language outside the home. Paraguayans meeting each other for the first time overseas often slip into Guarani as a means of reaffirming their identity. Bolivia has Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani speakers, Peru has mostly Quechua speakers, as does Ecuador, but those two versions of Quechua are about as different as Engllish and German (both Germanic languages). Colombia and Venezuela have some Chibcha related languages. All countries sharing the Amazon have indigenous Ameridian populations there speaking their indigenous languages (many related to Guarani). Panama has Tule (San Blas Indians), Chokoi, Ngoble-Bugli, and several others. Costa Rica generally does not have indigenous languages, but one tribe in Western Panama in semi-nomadic and often moves into parts of Costa Rica. Nicaragua has some indigenous languages on the Atlantic coast spoken by the Miskitos, Honduras and El Salvador may have some small pockets of Mayan or Pipil speakers. Guatemala has major areas where various Mayan dialects are spoken. Mexico has many indigenous languages, some spoken by very small tribes. If you refuse to buy a small doll or souvenir from the indigenous women selling their wares on the block next to the U.S. Embassy, you'll likely hear some choice words in Nahuatl. Finally, Surinam should be mentioned in that it has both Amerindian and African derived (Maroon) languages that survive.
Generally, in Latin America, educated people do not take any pride in the fact that indigenous languages survive, and tend to view them as evidence of under-development. There is evidence to support this view, as indigenous languages tend to survive either in pocket areas outside those most closely tied to the national economy, or among the very poorest classes.
lirelou
November 3, 2005
7:31 am
sun bin
November 3, 2005
8:28 am
sun bin
November 3, 2005
8:31 am
for example, china should be agnostic.
if we color it using the largest faction.
and i don't understand why the portestants in taiwan hide in the mountains :)
Mutantfrog
November 3, 2005
12:02 pm
sun bin
November 3, 2005
5:29 pm
was just trying to show that it is difficult to make good representation in maps. the map maker probably just assigned some 15% pop-weighted area to christainity.
Mutantfrog
November 3, 2005
6:17 pm
Kushibo
November 4, 2005
1:11 pm
Like Mutantfrog says, the two languages have such uncannily similar grammar that it is nearly inconceivable that there is not some strong tie (and the connection may go back only 1300 years, as late as the fall of Paekche, not 2000 years). Proponents of theories of racial homogeneity on either side of the Tsushima Strait may wish to deny that, but more objective minds would acknowledge a connection.
In the 1920s and the 1930s some Japanese linguists theorized that one must have come from the other (the nationalistic conclusion then being that early Koreans were migrants from Japan, which justified bringing Chosen back into greater Japan).
Today, some Koreans like to point out the connection as proof that Korea is the big brother to Japan (for similar reasons, the Independence Hall museum used to mention the exceptionally large cranial capacity of Koreans and Japanese to demonstrate superiority, as well as an inadvertent genetic connection between the two, which was odd considering the theme of the museum itself).
Mutantfrog
November 4, 2005
3:18 pm
Check out this great article for some speculation on the relationship between ancient Japanese and Korean.
Kushibo
November 4, 2005
3:52 pm
I mentioned the theories of others that one came from the other only to show how some have tried to use this for nationalistic ends. While the linguists established a connection, the idea of one coming from the other was speculative.
sun bin
November 4, 2005
5:11 pm
the link probably goes back to long before Han dominated China proper.