The Number Of Languages Spoken In The World Is Increasing? Or Decreasing?

1.iii Population and Culture

Learning Objectives

Explain the demographic transition process. Sympathize the concept of carrying chapters as it relates to the planet's man population.
Outline the relationship betwixt urbanization and family size. Evidence how rural-to-urban shift relates to industrialization and the modify in rural populations.
Translate a population pyramid and decide if the population is increasing or declining and if the pace of growth is intensifying or slowing.
Distinguish between the concepts of culture and ethnicity as these terms are used in this textbook.
Sympathize the difficulty in determining the number of languages and religions existing on Earth. Proper noun the main language families and the world'southward major religions.

Demographic Transition

Census is the study of how human populations change over fourth dimension and space. It is a branch of homo geography related to population geography, which is the examination of the spatial distribution of human populations. Geographers written report how populations grow and migrate, how people are distributed effectually the globe, and how these distributions modify over time.

For about of human history, relatively few people lived on Earth, and globe population grew slowly. Only about five hundred million people lived on the entire planet in 1650 (that's less than half India's population in 2000). Things changed dramatically during Europe's Industrial Revolution in the belatedly 1700s and into the 1800s, when declining death rates due to improved nutrition and sanitation allowed more than people to survive to machismo and reproduce. The population of Europe grew rapidly. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, birth rates in adult countries declined, as children had go an economic liability rather than an economic asset to families. Fewer families worked in agriculture, more than families lived in urban areas, and women delayed the age of marriage to pursue education, resulting in a decline in family unit size and a slowing of population growth. In some countries (eastward.g., Russia and Japan), population is really in decline, and the boilerplate age in developed countries has been rising for decades. The process but described is chosen the demographic transition.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the earth'south population was about 1.6 billion. One hundred years subsequently, in that location were roughly six billion people in the world, and as of 2022, the number was approaching seven billion. This rapid growth occurred as the demographic transition spread from developed countries to the rest of the world. During the twentieth century, death rates due to disease and malnutrition decreased in nearly every corner of the world. In developing countries with agricultural societies, however, nascence rates remained high. Depression death rates and high nativity rates resulted in rapid population growth. Meanwhile, nascency rates—and family size—take likewise been declining in near developing countries as people get out agricultural professions and movement to urban areas. This means that population growth rates—while still college in the developing world than in the adult earth—are declining. Although the exact figures are unknown, demographers expect the world'south population to stabilize by 2100 and and then decline somewhat.

In 2010, the earth'southward population was growing past about eighty 1000000 per twelvemonth, a growth rate found well-nigh exclusively in developing countries, as populations are stable or in decline in places such as Europe and Northward America. World population increment is pronounced on the continent of Asia: China and India are the most populous countries in the world, each with more than a billion people, and Pakistan is an emerging population giant with a high rate of population growth. The continent of Africa has the highest fertility rates in the world, with countries such as Nigeria—Africa's most populous and the world's eighth almost populous country—growing rapidly each year. The most hitting paradox within population studies is that while there has been marked reject in fertility (a failing family size) in developing countries, the world'southward population will grow essentially by 2030 because of the compounding upshot of the big number of people already in the world—that is, even though population growth rates are in refuse in many countries, the population is however growing. A small-scale growth rate on a big base of operations population nevertheless results in the birth of many millions of people.

Earth's human population is growing at the charge per unit of virtually one.4 percent per year. If the current growth rate continues, the human population will double in about 50 years to more than twelve billion. The electric current population increase remains at about 80 million per year. A modify in the growth rate will alter the doubling time. Between 2010 and 2050, world population growth volition be generated exclusively in developing countries.

The iii largest population clusters in the world are the regions of eastern China, south Asia, and Europe. Southeast Asia besides has large population clusters. Additional large population centers exist in diverse countries with high urbanization. An case is the urbanized region between Boston and Washington, DC, which includes New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and neighboring metropolitan areas, resulting in a region oft called a megalopolis. The coastal land of Nigeria in West Africa or the island of Coffee in Indonesia are good examples of large population clusters centered in the tropics.

Social dynamics and geography will determine where the new additions to the homo family unit will alive. Providing nutrient, energy, and materials for these boosted humans volition tax many countries of the world, and poverty, malnutrition, and disease are expected to increment in regions with poor sanitation, express clean water, and lack of economic resources. In 2010, more than two billion people (ane-third of the planet's population) lived in abject poverty and earned less than the equivalent of two US dollars per solar day. The carrying capacity of the planet is not and cannot be known. How many humans can the globe sustain in an indefinite manner? At that place is the possibility that we have already reached the threshold of its carrying capacity.

Figure ane.22 Population Growth from Yr 1 to Year 2010 AD

Human population will continue to grow until it either crashes due to the depletion of resources or stabilizes at a sustainable carrying capacity. Population growth exacts a toll on the earth as more than people apply more than ecology resource. The areas nigh immediately affected by increased populations include forests (a fuel resource and a source of edifice material), fresh water supplies, and agricultural soils. These systems get overtaxed, and their depletion has serious consequences. Type C climates, which are moderate and temperate, are usually the most productive and are already vulnerable to serious deforestation, water pollution, and soil erosion. Maintaining acceptable food supplies will be critical to supporting a sustainable carrying chapters. The ability to transport nutrient supplies quickly and safely is a major component of the ability to manage the conservation of resource. Deforestation by humans using wood for cooking fuel is already a serious concern in the arid and dry type B climates.

Figure 1.23

The 3 main human population clusters on the planet are eastern Asia, southern asia, and Europe. Almost of these regions with high population densities are in type C climates.

Urbanization and Family Size

As countries motility from an agricultural to an industrial economic system, there is a major shift in population from rural to urban settings. The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century ushered in major technological developments and changes in labor practices, which encouraged migration from the farm to the city. Because of increased mechanization, fewer farm workers are needed to produce larger agricultural yields. At the aforementioned time, factories in urban areas have a great demand for industrial workers. This shift continued into the information historic period of the late twentieth century and continues in many parts of the developing world in the electric current century.

Figure 1.24 Rural-to-Urban Shift

1.3R

A basic principle of population growth that addresses this rural-to-urban shift states that as countries industrialize and urbanize, family size typically decreases and incomes traditionally increase. Though this may not exist truthful in all cases, it is a general principle that is consequent across cultural lines. Agronomical regions generally have a larger boilerplate family size than that of their city counterparts. Fertility rate is the boilerplate number of children a woman in a particular state has in her lifetime, whether or not they all live to machismo. If a fertility rate for a given country is less than ii.1—the replacement level—the population of that country is in decline, unless there is significant immigration. A fertility rate greater than 2.one indicates that the state's population is increasing. Some children will never attain reproductive age nor take children of their own, so the replacement rate has to be slightly greater than 2. The concept of fertility rate is slightly different from the term family unit size, which indicates the number of living children raised by a parent or parents in the same household. In this textbook, family size is used to illustrate the concept of population growth and turn down.

Population Demands

A country's demographic statistics tin be illustrated graphically by a population pyramid. A population pyramid is essentially 2 bar graphs that depict male person and female age cohorts either in absolute size or as a percentage of the total population. Male person cohorts are typically shown on the left side of the pyramid, and females are on the right side.

The shape of a country'due south population pyramid tells a story about the history of its population growth. For instance, a high-growth-charge per unit country has a pyramid that is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, showing that every year more children take been built-in than the year before. As family size decreases and women in a society have fewer children, the shape of the pyramid changes. A population pyramid for a postindustrialized country that has negative growth would exist narrower at the bottom than in the middle, indicating that there are fewer children than middle-aged people. 4 bones shapes indicate the full general trends in population growth:

Rapidly expanding
Expanding
Stationary
Contracting

These shapes as well illustrate the percentage of a population nether the historic period of 15 or over the age of sixty-v, which are standard indicators of population growth. Many postindustrial countries have a negative population growth rate. Their population pyramids are narrow at the bottom, indicating an urbanized population with small family sizes.

Figure 1.25 Population Pyramids

Angola had a fertility rate of 5.vi in 2022. Nippon had a fertility rate of 1.4 in 2022.

Data courtesy of United states Census Bureau International Programs.

Civilisation and Ethnicity

The term culture is often difficult to differentiate from the term ethnicity. In this textbook, ethnicity indicates traits people are born with, including genetic backgrounds, physical features, or birthplaces. People accept little selection in matters of ethnicity. The term culture indicates what people learn later on they are born, including language, religion, and customs or traditions. Individuals can change matters of civilization by individual choice after they are built-in. These two terms assistance us identify homo patterns and understand a land'southward driving forces.

The terms civilization and ethnicity might also exist confused in the issue of ethnic cleansing, which refers to the forced removal of a people from their homeland by a stronger force of a dissimilar people. Ethnic cleansing might truly indicate 2 singled-out indigenous groups: ane driving the other out of their homeland and taking information technology over. On the other hand, ethnic cleansing might also be technically cultural cleansing if both the aggressor and the group driven out are of the aforementioned ethnic stock but hold dissimilar cultural values, such as faith or language. The term ethnic cleansing has been used to depict either instance.

Figure ane.26 Major Language Families of the World

Languages of the Globe

Language is the communication way of human civilization, and it represents the complete variety of thought, literature, and the arts. All the billions of people on the planet speak at least 1 language. While Ethnologue, a publication pertaining to the earth's languages, estimates that at that place were 6,909 living languages in the world as of 2009, the verbal number may never exist adamant. Other data sets count languages differently, but nearly agree that there are more than 6,000. There are fifty-fifty communities in various parts of the world where people can communicate by whistling messages to each other or by using clicking sounds.

Of the more than half dozen,000 languages, almost a dozen are spoken by more than ane hundred one thousand thousand people each. These are the world'south main languages used in the most populous countries. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the world's languages are spoken by a relatively small number of people. In fact, many languages take no written grade and are spoken by failing numbers of people. Language experts estimate that up to half the world'south living languages could be lost by the cease of the 20-commencement century as a result of globalization. New languages form when populations live in isolation, and in the current era, as the world's populations are increasingly interacting with each other, languages are being abandoned and their speakers are switching to more than useful tongues.

There are ix dominant language families in the world. Each of the languages within a linguistic communication family shares a common ancestral language. An example of a language family is the Indo-European family, which has a number of branches of language groups that come from the same base: a language called Proto-Indo-European that was probably spoken about six thousand years ago. Every bit populations migrated away from the bequeathed homeland, their language evolved and separated into many new languages. The three largest language groups of the Indo-European family used in Europe are the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic groups. Other Indo-European languages include Hindi (spoken in Republic of india) and Persian (spoken in Iran).

Table 1.2 Languages of the Continents

Globe Area	Number of Languages	Per centum of All Languages
Africa	ii,110	30.5
Americas	993	14.four
Asia	2,322	33.6
Europe	234	3.iv
Pacific	one,250	18.1
Totals	6,909	100.0

Source: M. Paul Lewis, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. (Dallas: SIL International, 2009), accessed September 13, 2022, http://www.ethnologue.com.

Table 1.3 Thirteen Major Languages of the Globe

Linguistic communication	First Linguistic communication (Millions of Speakers)	2d Linguistic communication (Millions of Speakers)	Full Speakers (Millions)
Mandarin	845	180	i,025
Hindi/Urdu	242	224	466
Arabic (All)	206	246	452
English	340	110	450
Castilian	329	53	382
Russian	144	106	250
Bengali	181	69	250
Portuguese	178	42	220
Indonesian	23	140	163
German language	95	28	123
Japanese	122	1	123
French	65	55	120
Panjabi	109	6	115
Languages with more than one hundred million speakers (speakers given in millions)
These thirteen languages are spoken by more than than four billion people, or well-nigh 60 percent of the current world population in 2009.

Source: M. Paul Lewis, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the Globe, 16th ed. (Dallas: SIL International, 2009), accessed September 13, 2022, http://world wide web.ethnologue.com.

Table ane.4 Nine Major Language Families

Notation: There are more nine language families, only these are the dominant ones with over one hundred meg speakers each.
one. Indo-European languages
2. Sino-Tibetan languages
3. Niger-Congo languages
four. Afro-Asiatic languages
5. Austronesian languages
6. Dravidian languages
7. Altaic languages
8. Austro-Asiatic languages
ix. Japonic languages

Source: Chiliad. Paul Lewis, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. (Dallas: SIL International, 2009), accessed September xiii, 2022, http://www.ethnologue.com.

Linguistic communication Characteristics

The following terms are used to describe language characteristics.

accent. An emphasis is the pronunciation of words within a linguistic communication that is different from that used by a dissimilar group of the same language. For instance, people in Mississippi pronounce words differently from people in North Dakota, but the differences are less severe than dialects.
creole. Similar to pidgin, a creole language arises from contact between two other languages and has features of both. However, Creole is a pidgin that becomes a master language spoken by people at dwelling. Creole languages are oft developed in colonial settings as a dialect of the colonial language (usually French or English language). For example, in the former French colony of Haiti, a French-based creole language was developed that is spoken past people at home, while French is typically used for professional person purposes.
dead linguistic communication. A dead language is one that is no longer used for local communication. For example, Latin is no longer used by local people to communicate merely is nonetheless used by the Roman Cosmic Church in some of its services.
dialect. A dialect is a regional diversity of a language that uses unlike grammar or pronunciation. Examples include American English versus British English. Linguists advise that there are three master dialects of the English in the United States: a Southern dialect, a midland dialect, and a Northern dialect. Television and public media advice has brought a focus on more than uniform speech patterns that have diminished the differences betwixt these iii dialects.
isolated language. An isolated language is 1 non connected to any other language on Globe. For example, Basque is not connected to any other language and is only spoken in the region of the Pyrenees between Spain and France.
lingua franca. A lingua franca is a second linguistic communication used for commercial purposes with others outside a linguistic communication group but not used in personal lives. For case, Swahili is used by millions in Africa for doing business organization with people outside their own group but is non used to communicate inside local communities.
official language. The official language is the language that is on record by a country to exist used for all its official authorities purposes. For instance, in India the official language is Hindi, though in many places the lingua franca is English and several local languages may be spoken.
pidgin. A pidgin is a simplified, created language used to communicate betwixt ii or more groups that do not have a language in common. For instance, Residents of New Guinea mix English words with their ain language to create a new language that tin can span speakers of unlike local language groups. Though the words are in English, the grammer and sentence construction is mixed up according to local vocabulary. At that place are many English-based pidgin languages around the world.
slang. Slang is the local apply of breezy words or phrases that are not office of the official language. For case, a lot of musicians apply slang in their lyrics.

Religions of the World

Religious geography is the study of the distribution of religions and their human relationship to their place of origin. Religious geographers recognize three main types of religions: universal (or universalizing), ethnic (or cultural), and tribal (or traditional) religions. Universal religions include Christianity, Islam, and various forms of Buddhism. These religions attempt to gain worldwide credence and appeal to all types of people, and they actively look for new members, or converts. Ethnic religions appeal to a single indigenous grouping or culture. These religions do not actively seek out converts. Broader ethnic religions include Judaism, Shintoism, Hinduism, and Chinese religions that embrace Confucianism and Taoism. Finally, traditional religions involve the belief in some form of supernatural power that people can appeal to for help, including ancestor worship and the belief in spirits that live in diverse aspects of nature, such as trees, mountaintops, and streams (this is often called animism). Subsaharan Africa is home to many traditional religions.

Figure one.27 Major Religions of the Earth and Their Respective Per centum of the World Population

Although the earth's primary religions are listed here, many other religions are practiced effectually the earth, as well as many variations of the religions outlined here. The top four religions past population are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Because the official doctrine of Communism was nonreligious or atheist, in that location are actually many more than followers of Buddhism in Cathay than demographic listings betoken. The pct of the world'south population that follows Buddhism is probably much higher than the 6 percent often listed for this faith.

Christianity and Islam originated out of Judaism in the eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula. Both are monotheistic religions that look to the Jewish patriarch Abraham as a founding personage. Christianity, based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived in Palestine in the first century CE, spread rapidly through the Roman Empire. Islam is based on the teachings of Muhammad, a seventh-century religious and political figure who lived on the Arabian Peninsula. Islam spread rapidly beyond Due north Africa, due east across southern Asia, and due north to Europe in the centuries afterwards Muhammad's death.
Buddhism is a religion or way of life based on the teachings and life of Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in what is at present India/Nepal effectually the fifth century BCE. There are iii chief branches of Buddhism: southern or Theravada Buddhism, eastern or Mahayana Buddhism, and northern or Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism.
Hinduism, a religious tradition that originated on the Indian subcontinent, is one of the oldest major religions withal practiced in the world, and information technology may date back to as far as 2000 BCE or earlier. Unlike other earth religions, Hinduism has no unmarried founder and is a conglomerate of diverse beliefs and traditions. Hinduism has a big body of scripture, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, and ballsy tales such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Sikhism, a organized religion founded in the Punjab region of southern Asia, is a monotheistic religion centered on justice and religion. Loftier importance is placed on the principle of equality between all people. The writings of sometime gurus are the basis for the organized religion.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, whose traditions and ethics are embodied in the Jewish religious texts, the Tanakh, and the Talmud. According to Jewish tradition, Judaism began with the covenant between God and Abraham around 2000 BCE.
Shintoism is a major indigenous faith of Japan focused on the worship of kami, which are spirits of places, things, and processes.
Confucianism and Taoism are ethnic Chinese religions based on morality and the teachings of religious scholars such every bit Confucius.

Figure ane.28 Major Religions of the Earth

Key Takeaways

The homo population was approaching vii billion in 2022 and is increasing rapidly, mainly in developing regions of Asia and Africa. No one tin can hold on the globe's carrying capacity for our human population, but unless the growth rate changes, the human population will double in nearly l years.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans take been moving from rural areas to urban areas. Workers were needed in the factories and fewer workers were needed on the farms considering of improved technology. This trend is still happening in many rural areas of developing countries. Population pyramids are one method of illustrating demographic information for a country to show if the population is declining or increasing and at what rate.
Though often interchangeable in general terms, for the purpose of geography in this textbook, ethnicity is what y'all are built-in with and civilisation is what you learn afterward you lot are built-in.
There are about half dozen thousand languages in the world today, with virtually 13 of them spoken by over 1 hundred million people or more. Of the main language families, 9 include at to the lowest degree i percent or more of the human population.
In that location are thousands of religions or variants of them in the world. Religious geographers recognize three chief types of religions: universal, ethnic, and traditional. The four primary religions of the world are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Discussion and Written report Questions

What is the planet's current homo population?
What happens when overpopulation occurs? Exercise we know the world's carrying capacity?
Where are the earth'southward iii main high-density population regions?
Outline the four basic shapes of population pyramids. What do they bespeak?
What is the difference between culture and ethnicity?
What is ethnic cleansing? Where has ethnic cleansing occurred in the world during your lifetime?
Approximately how many languages are there in the globe? Which continent has the most?
What are the five most widely spoken languages in the world? Where would each be mainly spoken?
What are the 4 major earth religions past percentage of followers?
What is the departure between an ethnic, universal, or a traditional religion? Give an example of each.