Intro to culture/what is it?
What is a custom?
What is a repetitive act of a group, performed to the extent that it becomes the characteristic of that group.
What is cultural convergence and what are two positives and two negatives of it?
Cultural convergence is when cultures come together and mix.
Pos: Democrazation and sharing knowledge
Neg: Loss of indigenous languages and only a few languages are widely used in important business.
What is a centripetal force?
A force that tends to unify people.
What are the main language families? Which has the most speakers?
Turkic, Dravidian, Austronesian, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Sino-Tibetan, and Indo-European.
Indo-European has the most.
What is a working language?
Designated by an International corporation as its primary means of communication for daily correspondence and conversation.
Folk .vs. Pop culture
Folk culture is small, homogeneous groups in rural isolated areas.
Pop culture is large, heterogeneous societies that are ever-changing.
What is this an example of: A skater practices everyday and also does dance to improve their form.
Culture complex (2 cultural traits interact and help influence/define people)
How can language be a centrifugal and centripetal force?
Language can unite people because they can communicate and share their ideas. It can also divide them by people not being able to communicate effectively and therefore creating tension between certain groups.
What are the most used languages in Indo-Iranian and Germanic? Name 2
Indo-Iranian: Hindi and Urdu
Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic.
What is a dialect and sub dialect?
Dialect is a regional variation of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation.
Sub dialect is a subdivision of dialect.
Define ethnocentrism
The belief that your culture is at the center and you base your feelings about someones culture off of your own.
What is contemporary cultural diffusion?
Improved communication and technology diffuse and create a hyperconnected world.
Name the 5 ways to organize languages.
Institutional, developing, vigorous, threatened, and dying.
What are the most used Balto-Slavic and Romance languages? Name 2
Balto-Slavic: Polish, Czech, and Slovak
Romance: Spanish, French, Italian, and Portugese
What is a pidgin?
It's created by learning few grammar rules and words of linga franca and mixing some elements of diff languages.
What is idea is this; cultures can be separate from one another and still co-exist.
multicultralism
What is placemaking?
Where people want to live, work, learn, and play.
Why may certain languages be dying?
Because only a small population use them and the language is not being transmitted to children.
What is an informal language? Give examples
When you take two things and mix them. Spanglish, Franglais, and Denglish.
What is a literary tradition?
It means written as well as spoken.
Describe how to break down a natural landscape and what to look for?
Look at physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, evidence of sequent occupancy, traditional and modern architecture, and land use patterns.
What are artifacts, sociofacts, and mentifacts? Give examples
Artifacts: Objects, material items, and technology created by a culture. Car, tools, and buildings
Sociofacts: Structures and organizations of a culture which influence social behavior. Sports and education
Mentifacts: Shared ideas, values, and beliefs. Religion, language, and beliefs.
What is Vulgar Latin?
Latin people in provinces learned that was not standard literacy, but spoken form.
What is a creolized language?
A language that results from the mixing of a colonizers language and the indigenous language of the people being dominated.
What is an isogloss?
A word usage boundary