preview

Analysis of the Video Mother Tongues: Languages Around the World (2007)

Decent Essays
Open Document
The video Mother Tongues: Languages Around the World discusses the various languages found in Africa, Oceana, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The film starts with a brief description of Africa’s nearly 2000 languages. It explains that because of Africa’s relative isolation and long history of occupants it has the most languages of any land mass. The African languages include anything from Arabic, Swahili, or the ‘click’ language. Click languages are located only in Africa; in these languages the clicks function as normal consonants.The many languages of Africa all evolved differently due to separation between groups. For example the Nigeria area has over 400 languages and almost every language group is represented. Africa has unique sounds…show more content…
This means that the intonation creates different meanings.

The ancestral language of India was Sanskrit. Over time, Sanskrit evolved into Hindi and other Indian languages. The Indo-European language family is the largest in the world. The Indo-European language family is believed to have its origins in Eastern Europe. Indo-European offspring include languages such as Latin and the various Romance languages and Celtic languages among many others.

Old English dates back to approximately the year 700. If you go back even farther, Dutch, German and old English can all be traced back to the same source. French had a large impact on the English language during the medieval centuries primarily because England was ruled by the upper class that spoke French. English today has spread across the globe. People around the world will adapt English into their own cultural practices.

Before colonists arrived, America is projected to have had around a thousand languages from numerous language families. In North America there are 60 language families, while Central America has 15 language families, and South America has the largest group at 118. The languages of the America’s were as dissimilar to each other as Chinese and English. The Eskimo languages family has speakers from Siberia all the way to Greenland reaching farther than just the Americas. A sizeable language family of North America is Athabaskan, which has approximately 35
Get Access
Related
Get Access