Chapter 5 Test Flashcards
Define de jure
A language that is required by law to be used in the government
What are the 3 most widely spoken languages in the world?
Mandarin, Spanish, and English
What are the levels of organization of the world’s languages from biggest to smallest?
Language family, language branch, and language group
What is the world’s most widely used language family?
The Indo-European family
What group is English in?
The West Germanic group
What branch is the West Germanic group a part of?
The Germanic branch
Is English the de facto language or the de jure language in the united states?
It is the de facto language, meaning that it is the preferred language.
What language family is the Germanic branch a part of?
The Indo-European
English is spoken by about how many people?
Around a half a billion
How many countries have English as their official language?
67+
About what percentage of the world speaks a language from the Indo-European family?
Around 50%
What are the 4 main branches of the Indo-European family?
Germanic, Romance, Baltic-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian
What languages are part of the Germanic branch?
Dutch, German, and English
What languages are part of the Romance branch?
Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese
What language is part of the Baltic-Slavic branch?
Russian
What languages are part of the Indo-Iranian branch?
Hindu and Bengali
Where did English first originate?
The British Isles
What was the name of the first group of people that lived on the British Isles?
The Celts?
Around 450CE, the British Isles were invaded by what tribes?
3 different Germanic tribes: The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons
What other invaders besides Germans brought their languages to the British Isles?
The Vikings from Norway/ Scandinavia and the Normans from Northern France
Overall, what groups brought their languages to the British Isles to mix together to form English?
The Celts, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans
What language is Old English very similar to?
Frisian
Where is Frisian spoken?
In the region of the Netherlands called Friesland
How did English change significantly in the 17th century?
Because of British colonization, English was brought to the New World (murica) and other countries such as Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. English mixed with the languages of the native tribes to create a very different sounding language that closely resembles modern English
Why did English change as soon as immigrants arrived in the “New world”?
They needed new words to describe their environment and situation
What languages influenced British English into changing into American English?
British English, French, Dutch, Native American, Spanish, and West African
What is BRP or RP
British Received Pronunciation
Why was BRP formed?
As new “lower class” immigrants poured into London in search of jobs, the “upper class” created a new “proper” dialect/accent to distinguish themselves from the commoners
Why does Australian English sound so different from American English?
Because as British English was mixing with Native American languages in the U.S., British English was mixing with the languages of the Natives and Irish people in Australia
Why did Americans change their dialect and accent in the 17-18 hundreds?
To differentiate themselves from Britain, who they were having conflict with and wanted to separate from