Language Family Trees

Linguists use "Language Tree" diagrams to illustrate the historical development of languages and show relationships among them. The small diagram in the lower right corner represents all the languages in the world. Families of languages that are historically related, deriving from a common ancestor, are on the same branch. The larger diagram represents the Indo-European family branch, to which English belongs.

The diagram is copied from this link: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/05/the-language-tree/

In Language Tree diagrams, languages that evolved from a common "parent language," are charted on the same branch. This method of classification is similar to the one used in the physical sciences such as biology.

Each language family "branches" off from the trunk, and the smaller branches growing out of these are the "sub-families". Continuing upward, the sub-families divide, until each individual language is represented by its own little twig on the edges of the tree. You can see English in the top-left clump of leaves labeled "Germanic" - the family names are written horizontally across the top of each clump.

The Indo-European family includes many languages, spoken from India to Iran to England. Linguists believe that these languages evolved from a common theoretical ancestor (Proto-Indo-European) thousands of years ago. Its sub-families include the Romance languages (such as French and Spanish) and the Germanic languages (such as English and Dutch).

English is in the branch with German, not Latin, because of its history. Although the English we speak today includes a lot of Latin and Greek-based words, they were added later in its history. During the first six hundred years or so of its development, it was all Germanic. Latin and Greek-based words were added after the French-speaking Normans invaded England in 1066, and later during the Renaissance period.

The Latin and Greek words were considered more "fancy" or educated-sounding than the Germanic words. Many times In English there two words meaning basically the same thing – one is Germanic, the other Greek or Latin. Recently I read an obituary in which it was mentioned that the woman had loved her “felines and canines” – I guess the writer felt that those words sounded nicer than “cats and dogs.”

Uyghur Conflict in China

(I wrote this in July, during the early days of the Uyghur conflict in China.)

CULTURAL CONFLICTS

During times of clashes between world cultures, it’s interesting to know a little bit about what language each group speaks. Currently in the western part of China, Xinjiang, there is unrest among the Uyghur people (spelling of the name of the group varies). There is conflict between them and the Han Chinese, the dominant culture in that country.

The Uyghur people serve as an example of a culture without a homeland: they are a minority where-ever they live. There are Uyghurs in several geographic areas - Turkey, China, and countries like Kazakhstan that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

The book "Languages of the World" by Kenneth Katzner contains information about the Uyghur language. On the tree graph, it is located in the Altaic family, then in the subgroup Turkic, then to the smaller branch Southeastern (Chagatai).

The Uyghurs' Altaic language family is completely separate from the Sino-Tibetan family, which is the family of the language of Han Chinese. The Han are the dominant culture in China. (I think that most Han people speak Mandarin.) Languages spoken usually reflect a people's cultural genetic ancestry (with some exceptions, such as when a group adapts a conqueror's language). So it appears that the Han and the Uyghurs have a totally separate history, going back to ancient times.

There is information about the Uyghurs in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, in which the public can write or edit entries. It is interesting to consult Wikipedia during times of international crises, because the information may change often as people of differing perspectives edit and re-edit the entries.

According to the Wikipedia entry, and also to Katzner’s book, the Uyghurs have a long history of writing their language in different scripts, dating back about two thousand years. The ancient Uyghurs had adapted and developed a script of their own, which was written vertically, and from left to right. Over the centuries, this writing style then influenced the scripts of other cultures in Asia.

After the Uyghurs’ conversion to Islam in the 10th century, they adopted the Arabic script of the Koran. During the 1970s and 1980s, they experimented with, and apparently abandoned, using the Latin or Roman script (which is what English uses).

Today the Uyghurs who live in the former Soviet Union territories, such as Kazakhstan, use the Cyrillic script, adapted from the Russian alphabet. In China, the Uyghurs use a modified Arabic script, and in Turkey they use the Latin alphabet.

The Han Chinese use a completely different form of writing, with symbols representing concepts; they do not use a phonetic alphabet.

I would be curious to know how language affects the Uyghurs’ relationships with other cultural groups living in China. Also, do the Uyghurs in China have a close relationship with Uyghurs in other parts of the world? I don’t know if most Uyghurs also speak the majority languages of the country in which they live. And do they have media communications in their own language? In their schools, are they allowed to speak in their own language, or must they speak in the majority Chinese language?

"LANGUAGE FAMILIES" STAYING IN TOUCH BY CELL PHONE?

- August (This is an update to the above article.)
I've heard news reports that illustrate the way that modern technology has changed our world. Apparently Uyghurs from different countries are keeping apprised of developments in China through cell phones and other modern communications devices. They are also able to send electronic photos instantly to the media. It's not like in previous centuries, when sometimes we didn't learn the details of conflicts until many years later (if ever).