World Geography

Culture

*Culture is the total of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors shared by and passed on by the members of a specific group

-How people should behave if they want to fit in with the group, involves the following:

• Language
• Education
• Relationships to Family
• Religion
• Political & Social Organization

-Society is a group of people that shares a geographic region, a sense of identity and a culture

-Ethnic Group- refers to a specific group that shares a language, customs, and common heritage

• A separate group of people within the region they live

*Culture Constantly Change

-Innovation- using existing technology and creating something new to meet a need

• Can be purposeful or accidental

-Diffusion- the spread of ideas, inventions, or patterns of behavior

• When people have contact with other people ideas are shared and become a new aspect of society

>>Cultural hearth- a site of innovations-where basic ideas are spread from

-Acculturation- when a society changes because it accepts an innovation

• Sometimes societies don't accept innovations

>>Individuals need to decide whether or not it's useful

^Can be positive or negative depending on how the change came about-if forced, it can be negative

*Language

-Language reflects all aspects of culture

• Helps establish cutural identity

>>Builds a sense of unity but can also cause division

-Language Families

• Between 3000-6500 languages are spoken across the world today

>>They are all categorized by placing them with other similar languages in language families

^Dialect- versions of a language

-Reflects changes in speech patterns related to class, region or other cultural changes

-Language Diffusion

• New languages can be created when several groups in a region speak different language (ex. Creole)
• Migration causes language to spread when people settle in new locations (ex. colonists from Europe brought their languages from the Old World to the New World)