This document provides an overview of key topics from Chapter Four of LIT 303 including: 1) The Indo-European language tree and asking students to name one language from each sub-branch. 2) A brief history of writing, including its origins and the development of the alphabet. 3) Defining the difference between alphabetic, pictographic, and ideographic writing systems. 4) An introduction to the Indo-European language family and clarifying that it refers to a language group rather than an ethnicity.

1. LIT 303
Chapter Four: The Backgrounds of English

2. On your own…
• Using the tree on pages 56-57 in Chapter Four, know the name of at
least one language in each of the main sub-branches of the Indo-
European tree: Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Balto-Slavic, and
Indo-Armenian.

3. What to take from Chapter Three on History
of Writing
• When and where did writing begin?
• When and where did the alphabet develop (from Ugaritic Canaanite
to the Latin alphabet)?
• What is the difference between an alphabet and a pictographic or
ideographic system?
• Be able to identify key places of the origin and spread of the alphabet
on a map of the Mediterranean world.

4. Moving from writing to language
• Writing is the system of symbols used for language
• Language is the system of communication

5. Term: Philologist
Philo logos
(Philo Sophos: philosopher)

6. Language families, first civilizations

11. Indo-European as Primary or Secondary
Language

13. You speak Indo-European if you speak…
• …English
• …Farsi
• …French
• …Kurdish
• …Spanish
• …or any of the other 440 living Indo-European languages

14. What is Indo-European?
What is it NOT:
Not an ethnicity
Not genetic
Not a race

15. What is Indo-European?
• An ancient culture
• A language group

16. Who were the Indo-Europeans?
Fourth or third millennium BCE