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