Reading notes

Asian has incredible diversity and existence of more than 2000 different languages is the most visible evidence.

Language is known for creating communities via mutual ineligibility as well as divide people through language boarders.

Language can really create division among people and some think their language is better than others and should be embraced by all.

People speaking the same language practices the same culture and it is a sense of identity

China is a country of linguistic diversity. To avoid division, the country has termed languages as dialect of Chinese although many of them are not.

People study the language so that they can converse with others

Asia language diversity to a large extent is not chaotic.

The study of language families often uncover startling connections and the historical linguistics is a primary tool of prehistorical research.

Voices from the past

Making family connections: the Indo-Europeans

According to European scholars languages shares some similarities and a good example are English, German and French and the assumption is because these languages had shared words as well as construction from each other.

Languages are also known for borrowing words extravagantly.

When French invaded English, thousands of French words were introduced to English.

Additionally when Hinduism and Buddhism spread south Asia, it absorbed thousands of Chinese and Japanese words.

It is essential to note that there some words that do not change and pronouns are one of these words and such words are known as core vocabulary.

Pro-Indo-European language is said to be used 5000 years since it is documented and many researchers have effectively studies the language.

The Indo-European people are said to have moved westward and southeast where they encountered the Indians, Iran and Turkish people. Those that move to India are said to have interfered with Indian civilization and their Sanskrit language spread across the region and it is used even today.

East Asian homelands

The reconstruction of Indo-European language family has led linguistics in east and Southeast Asia.

However, the family members do not just accept the language. The minute linguists present the language to them, they want to know where language was used and how it spread to a point of knowing it.

The region where China has many dialect, have their greatest diversity. Moreover, Chinese southern china has four additional language families and they include Miao-Yao, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic.

Austroasiatic

It is a family that has over 150 languages- it involves Vietnamese ad Khemer

They had widespread in the region

Through reconstructed vocabulary, there is evidence of attesting the rice agriculture knowledge.

Texts

“You Are Hurting My Language”

The linguist Becker describes his first lesson in writing Burmese at the beginning of 3 years of study with a U San Htwe. Htwe writes Burmese script and Becker writes in English and insisted it has makes no difference but Htwe indicates there is difference and Becker is hurting his language.

The Search for Sacred Texts

The script with sacred words were invented only twice in Asia while all others are adapted from them.

The sacred texts were able to spread across the region because the priests carried them and served the kings as well as religious communities far from their homes.

The translation of Sanskrit into Chinese was tedious. Therefore many Chinese did not pay attention to the language.

Xuanzang was one of most crucial early text gatherers in Chinese pilgrims and he grew in chaos due to fall of Sui dynasty in 618.

The book he was studying only contained military text as well as incomplete and he complained about the issue.

In India, he found Indian technique of bookmaking remarkable and Indians wrote on the palm leaves as they stung the leaves together on a string.

Scripts

South Asian Scripts

Two prominent families of scripts which dominate in Asia are based on principle differences from the Roman alphabet used.

The alphabet utilized for writing English is phonetic theoretically and there is graph for every sound for both constants as well as vowels.

There are actual sound of spoken English and the 26 graphs available for writing.

The Burma language focuses on the syllable and consonants are primary syllable.

Speech is made of many consonants modified by vowels.

When writing a speech, one has to write consonants and puts makes in front, back, above and below to indicate vowels.

Written Chinese

Written Chinese on the other hand involved has always been associated with civilization and for one to be termed as civilized, he or she must know to write.

Chinese have been developing scripts since 14th century.

The ancient Chinese communicated with their ancestors and sporadically used shadowy deity known as shangdi.

Chinese language mostly involve use of logographic where every graph represents a word and each word is a single syllable.

The language is quite rich and contain thousands of simple graphs. However, writing system cannot fully rely on graphs alone and the language begun adapting words which were picturable in order to make more words that have similar sound.