Category Worls And Its People

There may be up to 6000 different languages spoken in the world today – no-one is quite sure how many. Of these, 90 per cent are spoken by very few people and are in danger of becoming extinct. More than a third of the world’s population speak one of five languages – Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish and Russian. People first developed languages to communicate with one another. Languages spread and changed as people moved to new lands, often as a result of invasion and conquest.

Languages fall into a number of different families. Most European languages and many of those of southwest Asia and India belong to a single group, known as the Indo-European language family. More than 80 languages in all, they developed from a single original language, probably spoken by farming peoples who lived in Eastern Europe about 6000 years ago. As these people spread out over a wider area, their language gradually changed as communities lost contact with each other.

The four most common first languages are: Chinese – more than 1 billion speakers; English – 450 million speakers; Hindi – 400 million speakers; and Spanish – 350 million speakers.

More than 800 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.

The main language of India is Hindi but there are hundreds of others. More than 20 million people in Gujarat and another state, Maharashtra, speak Gujarati. It is descended from the ancient Indo-European language.

The most common Chinese language is Mandarin, which is spoken by 70 per cent of the population. Mandarin was the language of the government officials who were appointed in China until 1911. However, China has many different peoples who still speak their own languages.

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As languages became more established and civilizations developed, people needed to write things down. The earliest known writing was invented about 5500 years ago by the Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Later, they used a reed stylus with a wedge-shaped tip to write symbols in soft clay. This style of writing is known as cuneiform, from the Greek word for “wedge-shaped”.

Other ancient peoples developed picture writing which was slow to use because there were so many different symbols. The ancient Egyptians used a form of picture writing known as hieroglyphs and later added a simplified form called hieratic script which was quicker to use. The Maya, who built up a civilization in Central America between AD 300 and 900, carved picture symbols in stone.

Alphabets use single letters to represent the different sounds in a word. Writing with letters is far quicker than using hundreds of different symbols. The first people to use an alphabet were the Canaanites, who lived about 3000 years ago on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Their writing had only 18 letters. Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi and Phoenician alphabets all developed from it. The ancient Greeks took up the Phoenician alphabet but added vowels. The Romans developed their alphabet from a later Greek version. All Western European languages still use the Roman alphabet today. The Cyrillic alphabet also developed from the Greek alphabet. It is used in Russia and some Eastern European countries today.

The oldest Chinese writing we know about is on oracle bones. Priests scratched questions on animal bones and then held the bones in a fire so that they cracked. The places where the cracks crossed the pictograms were thought to give the answers from the gods. Modern Chinese writing has developed from the earliest pictograms, which illustrate how the characters have changed over the centuries.

The Chinese and Japanese still write with symbols called characters. The characters are painted with deft strokes, using a brush and ink. Chinese characters are descended from an ancient form of picture writing. They symbolize whole words or parts of words.

There are many different alphabets in use today. The Roman alphabet is probably the most widely used. The Arabic alphabet, which has 28 letters, is written from right to left. The Devangari alphabet, used for northern Indian languages, has 46 letters.

All the words mean “book”. Hindi, Greek, Russian and Arabic all have their own alphabets which are quite different from the Roman version. Other languages use the Roman alphabet but have accents over letters to show that they are pronounced in a special way.

The realization that words could be put together using a set of letters or symbols was a remarkable achievement which has allowed people to record history and to write down poetry, stories and plays.

Many languages have changed and developed because of outside influences. English as we know it today, for example, has many words adapted from other cultures. It has some Latin words from the days when England was part of the Roman Empire. It has a large number of words derived from French, the language of England’s ruling classes following the Norman invasion of 1066.

Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and Romanian languages all have many similar words. This is because they are descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, of which Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and Romania were once part.

People who are deaf have to understand a language without being able to hear it. Many of them do this by reading the shapes of words on the speaker’s lips. This is known as lip-reading. Another way is to use the special sign language for the deaf. Sign language differs from one country to another, but the names of the countries are “signed” in the same way.

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The earliest humans evolved, it is thought, in Africa. After thousands of years, they began to move to other parts of the world. By about 30,000 years ago, they had spread to every continent of the world except Antarctica.

As people settled in different parts of the world, different ethnic groups emerged. These are large communities of people who have physical characteristics, languages, religions and other traits in common. People developed languages so that they could communicate with each other. Different cultures, including art and religion, soon followed.

People have moved around throughout history, because of the opportunities offered by the discovery of new lands, or for better economic prospects. War or natural disasters such as flooding or drought have also led to mass-migrations of people. When groups of people settle in a new country, they often bring their own religions and cultures with them. Some nations, such as the United States, are now considered multicultural.

In a very few parts of the world, people still live as they have done for thousands of years, although nearly all are affected in some way by the modern world. Natives still hunt and fish in the Amazon rainforest just as their ancestors did. Their lifestyle is threatened by destruction of the forests.

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A government is any system in which an authority is exercised over the people. There are several different types of government. A liberal democracy is a style of government where there is more than one political party and the people vote for the party of their choice. A totalitarian government is a one-party state in which the state has total power. An autocracy is a form of government where power is in the hands of one person, or of the army.

In a liberal democracy, there is an election in which the people vote for the candidate of their choice. In France or the United States, people vote directly for the president as well as for members of parliament (MPs). In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, people vote for MPs. The political party with the most MPs forms the government. Under a system known as “proportional representation”, each party draws up a list of candidates and the people vote for a party, not an MP. Parties gain a percentage of seats depending on the number of votes they have.

Some liberal democracies, for example, the UK, Spain and Japan, are also monarchies. While the monarch is head of state, the government is run by elected members of parliament. Countries that do not have monarchs, for example, the USA, France and Russia, are called republics. Their head of state is the president.

The USA is a federal republic of 50 states. Each state has its own elected government that makes decisions on matters such as education and certain laws, while the government is in charge of national and international affairs. The United States government, known as Congress, is divided into two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. All congressmen are directly elected by the people. The head of the US state is the president, who is elected independently and is not necessarily a member of the majority party in Congress.

The countries of Europe have their own governments, but some are members of the European Union (EU). They agree to work together more closely, aiming to create a peaceful and prosperous Europe. The EU is run by the Commission, a body that is accountable to the Council of Ministers.

THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations (UN) was formed to prevent war and to foster good relations between nations. Set up in October 1945, at the end of World War II, the UN today is a worldwide organization with 185 member countries. Every member has a seat on the General Assembly. A body of selected countries forms the UN Security Council, together with five permanent members, USA, UK, France, Russia and China. This takes decisions at times of crisis. The UN sends troops from different countries to keep the peace between warring groups.

Other international organizations include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Arab League and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). NATO was formed in 1949 to protect the West against possible attack from the then Soviet Union during the Cold War, a period of tension which lasted until 1989. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to promote co-operation between Arab countries. The OAU was founded in 1963. It provides a means for independent African countries to meet to discuss their political and economic problems.

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The world’s population has undergone a massive increase during the 20th century. In 1900 it stood at 1.6 billion. By the end of the century, it topped 6 billion, and is still increasing at a rate of 86 million people a year. According to the United Nations, world population will be at least 7.9 billion by 2020 and could reach 13 billion by 2050.

The world’s population is not evenly spread. Some regions, including Europe, eastern North America, India, China and Japan have a much higher density of people. Here there are many more industrial cities, or the land is intensively farmed.

Rapid population growth began in about 1800 with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Then most of the increase was in Europe and North America as better health care and food resources became available. In 1900 most of the world’s largest cities were in these continents.

In the past century, about 97 per cent of this growth has taken place in the poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Central and South America, sometimes referred to as “the South”. Here, people have traditionally had a lot of children because they fear that many will not survive to be adults. The average fertility rate in Sudan, for example, is 5.7 babies per family, compared to 1.8 in Canada. Better health care, even in poor countries, means that today fewer children die of hunger or disease and fewer women die in childbirth. As a result, the populations of countries in the South now have large proportions of young people. Half of India’s population, for example, is under 30 years old. These young people are having children of their own, so the birth rate remains high.

Countries like China, the most populous country in the world, have taken steps to arrest the growth of its massive population. The government has introduced a policy of one child per family.

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The word “city” is generally used to describe a large and important town. Every country has a capital city, where its government is based. Other large cities have grown up around industries and the services that go with them, such as ports, shops, transport and offices.

Cities first developed in the ancient world, in those places where farming had become so efficient that not everybody had to work on the land. Some people became craft-workers, priests or teachers instead. The cities brought together many people with skills and new ideas. The emergence of cities marked the beginning of civilization (from the Latin civis, meaning citizen, a city-dweller).

Some cities developed from market towns, local trading centres. People came from the countryside to sell their produce at the market. If that town was favourably positioned – for example, at a place where a river could be bridged or near a natural harbor – it grew as more and more people came to live and work there.

The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries provided a major boost for the expansion of cities. Large cities grew up around the new factories and ports, where jobs much better paid than in the countryside were on offer.

Cities have continued to grow up to the present day and some have become merged to become a super city or “megalopolis” where many millions of people live and work. The region of the eastern USA from Boston via New York and Philadelphia to Washington is an example of a megalopolis. Cities cover only 2 per cent of the world’s surface but use 75 Per cent of its resources. It is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2025.

The fastest-growing cities today are in the developing world. Many people from poor rural districts go to cities where they hope to find work and a better life. Home to 24 million people, Mexico City is one of the world’s largest cities. Cities with such large populations face serious overcrowding and high unemployment when work is short.

The world’s largest city is the supercity of Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan. Space for building is limited in this mountainous country, although some land has been “reclaimed” from the sea. Tokyo’s facilities, including its underground railway, hotels and swimming pools, for example, are often overcrowded.

The Italian city of Venice was built on islands in a shallow bay, called a lagoon, of the Adriatic Sea. The city has canals instead of streets, so you cannot take a car there. People travel in boats called gondolas or catch a water bus called a vaporetto. Venice was once an independent state with a ruler called a Doge. The Bridge of Sighs crossed from the Doge’s Palace to the prison.

New York in the United States of America is a city of skyscrapers. It was built on the island of Manhattan. Like other island cities such as Hong Kong, room to expand was limited, so the only alternative was to build upwards. New York is the largest city in the USA and the nation’s leading seaport one of the world’s leading financial centres is New York’s Wall Street.

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