Discussion:
Answer the following questions:
Which language families have the largest number of speakers? Which have the smallest?
Study the map of the distribution of languages. Which language family is most widely distributed across the earth? Which others are prominent in any way?
Which are the main branches of the Indo-European language family, and which has with the largest number of speakers?
What do our text and PPs say about the Origin and Diffusion of English?
English words come from many different places. Over time, which cultures/groups contributed to the English language?
What are the Regional Dialects in the United States?
How does American English deviate from British English?
Which Canadian Province have a majority of French speakers?
Which country relocated its capital to Abuja, a region where no major language predominates, in order to reduce regional tensions?
Your text discusses Belgium, where language can be a political, cultural, or economic ‘barrier'. What can you say about this discussion?
What does your text tell you about the ways in which a cultural group retains its distinctive identity? Which cultural factors might be essential to a cultural group's identity?
What is an isolated language? Do you have any examples? What is an endangered language? Any examples?
Which language is currently the most common ‘online' language? And which is expected to become the most common language of people online?
What is the best definition of ‘lingua franca'?
What is a Universalizing religion? How would you best describe it? Which major religions are considered ‘universalizing'? What are the breakdowns of percentages of world adherents to ‘Universalizing Religions' and ‘Ethnic Religions'?
What is an Ethnic Religion? Can you provide examples? To whom do they appeal?
Which is the largest branch of Islam? What percentage of the world's religious are considered Sunni Muslim? Which major branch is smallest? What is the difference between these two branches?
What are the major tenets/beliefs of Protestantism?
What are the major branches of Buddhism? Where do they predominate? What are the predominant emphases in the beliefs in each branch?
The hearths of the largest universalizing religions are in which part(s) of the world?
How was Islam diffused beyond its hearth in the early days?
We looked at the example of Jerusalem as a Holy Space and a Contested Place. For example, the four quarters of the Old City, and its importance to 3 major mono-theistic religions. There are examples in many religions about holy places or holy spaces. What about Buddism's holy places? Or Hinduism's holy or sacred places or spaces?
From which country do the largest number of followers of Hinduism come?
Under which type of religion is Judaism categorized? What are world statistics and geographical locations of adherents of Judaism? is described as which of the following types of religion, and the vast majority of adherents to the faith are located in which two countries?
What are the five tenets of Islam?
How does Race differ from Ethnicity, according to your text? How do you best distinguish between race and ethnicity?
In the US, are there any major ethnicity clusters or regions that we might point to? Mexican-Americans; Cajuns; Cuban Americans; Scandinavians...?
How does Brazil break down its population in terms of racial or ethnic categories?
The majority of Asian Americans reside in which part of the US?
What direction(s) did the Great Migration of the African Americans inside the US? From where to where and why?
The US Supreme Court case on ‘separate but equal' essentially did what?
What country did Josip Broz Tito envision to have a national identity that included the following five ethnicities: Croat, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Serb, and Slovene?
Define ‘state', ‘nation', ‘city-state', ‘nation-state', ‘sovereignty', a ‘unitary state', a ‘perforated state'?
What is a ‘multi-national' state and a ‘multi-ethnic' state? Can you provide examples?
What are some places discussed in your text and PP that test the definition of sovereignty? Can you provide basic overviews of the various examples: i.e. Crimea, Senkaku Islands, Western Sahara...?
What is the Law of the Sea? What are the distances involved?
What happened at the Versailles Conference with regards to Europe and space?
Can you provide examples and overviews of the ‘break up' of the Czechoslovakia and the USSR?
Are there still places that are considered ‘colonies' of sorts? Where are they? Any places that are relevant in the news these past few weeks?
Who claims the world's Polar Regions? Why?
What are some physical boundaries? And what are some cultural ones? What's the problem being a landlocked country?
What are some ‘shapes' of countries? What are some of the potential problems with each?
What is "gerrymandering" and where did it originate? Have you heard it in the news lately? What's going on?
Which is the most important economic alliance in Europe?