A literary tradition is
the written form of a language.
A form of a language spoken in a local area is
dialect.
A group of languages that share a common origin but have since evolved into individual languages is a
language branch.
A group of languages that share a common ancestor before recorded history is a
language family.
The second-largest language family is
Sino-Tibetan.
When languages are depicted as leaves on trees, the roots of the trees below the surface represent
possible prehistoric superfamilies.
When languages are depicted as leaves on trees, the trunks of the trees represent
language families.
Germanic invaders of England included which tribe?
Angles, Saxons,Jutes
Both the Angles and the Normans contributed to the development of the English language, because they
invaded England
English is the most important language in North America primarily because of
the diffusion of English colonies
The first speakers of the language that evolved into English were tribes that lived in present-day
Denmark
English is part of which language group?
West germanic
English is part of which language branch?
Germanic
English is part of which language family?
Indo-European
Which group of the Germanic family is extinct?
East Germanic
The Icelandic language has changed less than any other Germanic language because of
Isolation
When people who speak a given language migrate to a different location and become isolated from other members of their tribe
isolation usually results in the differentiation of one language into two.
Which of the following is not a Romance language?
Bulgarian
The language spoken by soldiers stationed throughout the Roman Empire was known as
Vulgar Latin
The most widely spoken language in Brazil is
Portuguese
A creolized language is
A mix of indigenous and colonial languages
The most widely spoken IndoEuropean language is
English
The four most frequently spoken branches of Indo-European include
Balto-Slavic/Indo-Iranian/Romance/Germanic
The two most important languages in South America are
Portuguese and Spanish.
The Flemings and Walloons live in what country?
Belgium
The Flemings and Walloons speak languages belonging to different
Language Branches
Official languages in Switzerland include
Italian/Romansh/French/German
Urdu is the most important language of
Pakistan
Russian is part of what language branch?
Balto-Slavic
Celtic languages
Were threatened by extinction in England, are still spoken in France, have been revived in some parts of the British Isles, and have an extensive body of literature.
Marija Gimbutas' theory points to the first speakers of the Indo-European language as the ancient
Kurgans
The Kurgans
were horse and cattle herders from the grassland steppes of present day Russia and Kazakhstan.
Basque is spoken primarily in
the Pyrenees Mountains.
According to Colin Rehfrew's Anatolian hearth theory, Indo-European languages diffused across Europe
with the diffusion of agriculture.
The two largest language families in the world are
Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European.
The language family encompassing the languages of the People's Republic of China is
Sino-Tibetan
The language spoken by the greatest number of native speakers in the world is
Mandarin
Chinese is written in the form of
ideograms
Hebrew is an example of
A revived language
An Indo-European language is spoken in this European country
Bulgaria
The second most widely spoken language family in Europe is
Uralic
The large number of individual languages documented in Africa has resulted primarily from
Thousands of years of isolation between tribal groups
The most important language family in Sub-Saharan Africa is
Niger- Congo
African languages are distinguished by the fact that
linguists continue to add newly discovered languages to the African list
A lingua franca is
a language that is mutually understood by people who have different native languages.
Dialects developed within England primarily because
different Germanic invaders settled in different regions.
British and American English differ in
alphabet
Immigrants to which American colonies had the most diverse backgrounds?
Middle Atlantic
An isogloss is
a boundary between language regions.
Franglais is
the use of English in the French Language
Icelandic has probably changed less over time than any other Germanic language.
True
Indo-European divided into different branches because of isolation of different speakers.
True
The most frequently spoken Afro-Asiatic language is
Arabic