Chapter 5 Flashcards
What is a language branch?
Division of language family, group of more closely related languages with a common ancestor (existed during recorded history)
Ex: Spanish and Portuguese (Romance Branch)
What are the two largest languages families?
Indo-European, Sino Tibetan
Where is the Sino-Tibetan Language spoke?
Mainly China, parts if S.E Asia
What is the most common sopken Chinese Language ?
What is the writing system for Chinese language?
Mandarin, Cantonese also important
Ideograms; symbols that represent concepts not phonetics
What is the major language of the Afro Asiatic family?
Why do a large percentage of the World’s muslim have a working knowledge of Arabic even if they live outside Southwest Asia! North Africa?
Arabic
Koran originally written Arabic
What other Afro-Asiatic language is religious significance on. a global scale?
Hebrew, language of the Torah (Judaism)
What is the most widely spoken Altaic language?
Turkish
What is the most important Niger Congo language?
Swahili
What is language family?
Group of languages that have a common ancestor, which existed before recorded history. Largest
and most complex group of related languages
Ex; Indo European
What dialects are defined as regional variations of language
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Spelling
Define isogloss
Define standard language
Language usage boundary
Eg: soda vs pop
official form of a language. Dialect and grammatical rules accepted as proper
Why did dialect differences in the eastern United States emerge
Varying origins of settlers. Isolation in the past
What effect has mass media had on many words
media has created a more uniform dialect in the United States
What is the standard language form of English
British Received Pronunciation
Explain how the Treaty of Tordesillas affect the distribution of languages in thr New World
Confined Portugal’s conquest in New World to Brazil
What are the two boundary in Europe that run through Belgium?
Southern Belgium are known as Walloons and speak French
Northern Belgium are known as Flemings and speak Flemish
What is a cultural conflict that lies between Northern and Southern Belgium?
Along a cultural fault line that divides Germanic and Latin Europe
How many distinct languages are spoken in Europe?
What happened as a result of this?
Too many! No language spoken by a majority of people, creates misunderstanding and conflict.
Isolated Languages
What is the only surviving language in Europe that predates Indo European?
Where are speakers of this language located?
What helps them preserve their language and culture?
Basque
Pyrenees Mts. between Spain and France
Isolation and protection of Mts.
What makes Hebrew unique among extinct languages?
What religion is Hebrew most important to?
Revived and now used in daily conversation in Israel
Judaism
What is Celtic?
Why are Celtic languages of interest to English speakers?
small branch of Indo-European language
Many English speakers have Celtic ancestors
How has the distribution of Celtic changed over 2,000 years?
Most Celtic speakers are gone
Define Lingua Franca:
Language of international communication: English (Global) Mandarin, Swahili, Russian (Regional)
Define Pidgin Language:
Simplified form of a language, or a combination of languages
Where did the Angles, Jutes and, and Saxons come from?
Denmark
Which French group invaded English?
Normans
What are the 5 Indo-European groups?
Latin (Romance) Proto Germanic Aryans (Indo-Iranian) Slavonic (Balto Slavic) Celtic
Name the subgroups in the Romance Branch?
Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish,& Portuguese
Name the subgroups in the Proto Germanic Branch?
German, Danish, Icelandic, & English
Name the subgroups in the slavonic branch?
Russian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian
Name the subgroups in the Aryans branch?
Hindu, Farsi, and Urdu
From what language did all Romance languages descend?
Latin
