AP Human Geography Chapters 4-7
Taboo
restrictions on behavior imposed by social custom
Polythesim
the belief in multiple gods
British Recieved Pronunciation (BRP)
the recognized standard form of British speech
Language Family
A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed before recorded history.
Language Branch
A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousands of years ago. Exist within language families.
Language Group
A collection of languages within branches that share a common origin in the relatively recent past.
Solsitice
A day of religious significance in some ethnic religions because of its relationship to nature, the sun, and the moon.
Ebonics
A distinct dialect in the English language. A way that many blacks in America have preserved their linguistic heritage. Is a combination of ebony and phonics.
Denomination
A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations.
Lingua Franca
A language of international communication.
Isolated Language
A language unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family. They arise from the lack of interaction with speakers of other languages.
Branch
A large and fundamental division within a religion.
Racist
A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism.
Dialect
A regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Sect
A relatively small group that has broken away from an established denomination.
Hierarchical Religon
A religion that has a well defined geographic structure that organizes territory into local administrative units.
Autonomous Religion
A religious group which is self sufficient, meaning their interaction with other religious communities is confined to little more than loose cooperation and shared ideas. Islam and Protestant denominations can be good examples.
Pilgrimage
A religious journey, typically to the holy site of a religion.
Cosomology
A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.
Pidgin Language
A simplified form of a lingua franca.
Multi-Ethnic State
A state in which many ethnicities all contribute cultural features to the formation of a single nationality.
Language
A system of communication through speech.
Literary Tradition
A system of written communication.
Blockbusting
A tactic used by real estate agents in the United States by which they would scare white families into selling their homes for low prices by convincing them that black families were moving into the neighborhood and would cause house values to decline. The agents would then sell the home at a higher price to a black family, looking to move out of lower income areas.
Nation-State
A territory which corresponds to a particular ethnicity, or people group.
Isogloss
A word usage boundary drawn on the geographic landscape.
Centripetal Force
An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for the state.
Ethnic Religion
Appeals primarily to one group of people living in one place. Will not seek converts
Universalizing Religion
Attempt to be a global religion, appealing to all people. Will seek converts.
Spanglish
Created by the English language diffusing into the Spanish language.
Popular Culture
Found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics
Ghetto
Historically, the part of a European city where Jewish people were forced to live.
Ethnicity
Identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth.
Extinct Language
Languages that are no longer spoken or read in daily activities by anyone in the world.
Missionary
People who carried the message of Jesus Christ along the Roman Empire's protected sea routes and excellent road networks. Today, the member of any religion whose purpose is to gain converts to their religion.
Nationalism
Promotes a sense of national consciousness that exalts one nation above all others.
Sharecropper
Someone who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.
Vulgar Latin
Spoken by the people of the Roman provinces during the age of the Roman Empire. Not proper Latin.
Multinational State
States which contain two ethnic groups with traditions of self determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities.
Triangular Slave Trade
Term used to describe the slave exchange from West Africa to North America during the colonial period of North America.
Balkanized
Term widely used to describe a small geographic area that could not successfully be organized into one or more stable states because it was inhabited by many ethnicities with complex and long-standing antagonisms toward each other.
Diocese
The basic unit of area administered by the Roman Catholic Church. It is overseen by a bishop.
Monothesim
The belief in one god.
Animism
The belief that inanimate objects (stones, plants, etc) contain spirits and a conscious life. Can be found primarily in African and Native American religions.
Racsim
The belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial difference produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Franglais
The combination of the French and English language.
Self-Determination
The concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.
Official Language
The designated and recognized language of a country. Would be used in government and government documents.
Race
The identity of a person with a group of people who share a biological ancestor.
Nationality
The identity with a group of people who share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular country.
Fundamentalism
The literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion.
Apartheid
The physical separation of different racial groups into different geographic areas. Most prominently practiced in the country of South Africa.
Ethnic Cleansing
The process by which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogenous region. The purpose is to rid the entire area of different ethnic groups.
Balkanization
The process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.
Standard Language
The recognized form of the proper dialect of a language. This dialect is the most widely recognized and well established as most acceptable for government, business, education, and mass communication.
Caste
The social structure or class system and distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu has been assigned, according to religious law. This determines every aspect of a person's life (work, marriage, table partners, etc).
Pagan
The word for the follower of a polytheistic religion in ancient times.
Folk Culture
Traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogeneous froups living in isolated rural settings
Ideograms
Written languages that represent ideas or concepts rather than specific pronunciations.
Creolized Language
a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated
Custom
a repeptitive act of a group, performed to the extent that it becomes characteristics of that group
Habit
a repetitive act of an induvidual