Language families are both interesting and complex. One can study language families through the comparative method, a way of systematically comparing a series of languages in order to prove a historical relationship between them. This method can start with one word and branch into a tree, that links several languages together as seen on page 366. Historical relationships can be shown through trees and diagrams as well. I found this to be the most comprehensive way to learn about families and language history.
The Indo European family is organized by comparing similar vocabulary of the languages and thus possible conclusions about the geographical origins and life styles of these people can be drawn. The book then dives into languages ranging from albanian to Armenian to tocharian and drawing conclusions of where these languages started the the roots they were founded on. Several other language families are found to be in or around the territory where Indo European languages are most prominent, and the book does a good job explaining these languages and forming the relationships between them. Ultimately the book goes on and on describing languages and their history and their families and organization. One could argue that this section of the book is boring. I took some time to learn more about language families outside of the book. Below are some entries in Wikipedia, they clearly expain this topic.
A language family is a group of languages related because they are descended from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term comes from the Tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree or in a subsequent modification to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. All the apparently biological terms are used only in the metaphoric sense. No real biology is included in any way in the metaphor.
Membership of languages in the same language family is established by comparative linguistics. Daughter languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship; the former term is more current in modern times, but the latter is equally as traditional.[2] The evidence of linguistic relationship is observable shared characteristics that are not attributed to borrowing. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language (or reflexes of such features) that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing (convergence). Membership in a branch or group within a language family is established by shared innovations; that is, common features of those languages that are not attested in the common ancestor of the entire family. For example, what makes Germanic languages "Germanic" is that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in Proto-Indo-European. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, a descendant of Proto-Indo-European that was the source of all Germanic languages.
more about language families can be seen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family
What I ultimately learned from this reading was how languages that seem so different and abstract in one way or another relate. I never understood why Latin was such an important language to some people, its not spoken, its only written. I actually viewed it as a waste of time, but after reading about these languages and their histories I now see why it is so important. Languages did not just magically form, they are based on one anther, hence the importance of Latin. As a reflective learner i think that i am pretty good. I am not teaching myself a language, however i do take time in this class to draw comparisons and conclusions from the readings to real life and other classes. And in that sense i believe that i am a good reflective learner.
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