How Does Language Move?: Crash Course Geography #30

While we can’t explore every cultural trait in the world, language is an important system of spoken, signed, or written symbols humans use to express themselves. It’s a major marker of identity that often unites members of the same nation or people with similar cultural identities.
And it’s a cultural trait that has enormous power because language helps other cultural traits move through the spoken, visual, tactile, and musical words. So today, we’re going to explore how words move, because the activities that prompt that movement can tell us a lot about how ideas as well move around the world.

If you loved this episode, check out Crash Course Linguistics to learn more about how languages move!

SOURCES

Gregory, Derek, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2009. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Willey-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-4051-3288-6

Getis, Bjelland, and Getis. Introduction to Geography, 15 ed. McGraw-Hill Education. 2017. ISBN: 978-1-259-57000-1

Hobbs, Joseph J. Fundamental of World Regional Geography, 4th ed. Cengage. 2017.

Cracking the AP Human Geography Exam: 2020 edition. The Princeton Review.

Bilingualism
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/201011/bilingualisms-best-kept-secret

Chai
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/61786391/2019_chai20200114-100765-gqbui9-with-cover-page.pdf

Bantu
Isern N, Fort J (2019) Assessing the importance of cultural diffusion in the Bantu spread into southeastern Africa. PLoS ONE 14(5): e0215573. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215573

Click languages
Clicks in south-western Bantu languages: contact-induced vs. language-internal lexical change

Banjo
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-center-folklife-cultural-heritage/2021/02/16/quest-return-banjo-its-african-roots/
https://afropop.org/audio-programs/the-black-history-of-the-banjo

Endangered Languages Project
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/#/3/59.308/-47.527/0/100000/0/low/mid/high/unknown

Chickasaw Efforts to preserve language
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/10/06/oklahoma-chickasaw-language

Miami efforts to preserve language
http://miamioh.edu/myaamia-center/index.html