Chapter 6: Language Flashcards
What modern language spread globally as a result of religion?
Arabic
The principal concentration of french-speaking North America is?
Quebec
Which statement about the diffusion of the English and Chinese languages is true?
A) English has diffused worldwide, while Chinese is spoken mostly in China.
B) English is spoken in only the United Kingdom and the United States, while Chinese is
spoken all over East Asia.
C) English and Chinese are both spoken worldwide as lingua franca languages.
D) The number of English speakers is declining, while the number of Chinese speakers is
steadily increasing.
E) All of the above
A) English has diffused worldwide, while Chinese is spoken mostly in China.
Nearly half of the people in the world speak a language in this family
Indo-European
List all of the Latin-based romance languages
Italian, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese
A collection of languages within a language branch that share a recent common origin and have relatively few differences in grammar and vocab is a?
language group
Which statement about the English language is correct?
A) Worldwide, there are three times as many native speakers of English as second language speakers.
B) It is a member of the Latin language branch.
C) It has been largely influenced by the French language.
D) It has only two separate dialects: British and American.
E) It is the official language of the United States.
C) It has been largely influenced by the French language.
Culture that uses ideographic method of writing
China
Monolingual countries
Japan, Uruguay, Iceland, Denmark, Portugal, Poland, Lesotho
Multilingual countries
Belgium, Canada, Singapore, India, Luxembourg, Peru
isogloss
a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs
dialect
regional/ethnic variant of a language
Dialects differ in
vocabulary, cadence, spelling, pronunciation, pace of speech, syntax
American English has adopted extensive vocabulary from
Spanish, French, Yiddish, Native American
When groups of speakers of a single language are isolated from each other, each group may develop
new grammar rules, different pronunciations of words, unique vocabulary.
A common language that is used among speakers of different languages for the
purposes of trade and commerce
lingua franca
Country with sharp division between Flemish speakers in the north and Wallonian speakers in the south
Belgium
official language
in multilingual countries, the language selected often by the educated and politically powerful elite to promote internal cohesion; language of courts and government
Problems with multilingual states include
increased costs for printing government signs and literature in multiple
languages, antagonism between speakers of the different languages, confusion, as some place names are identified differently in the different languages
-conflicts between linguistic communities because of increasing language group identity
definition of extinct language
a language that has no native speakers
example of revived languages
Hebrew
pidgin language
when parts of two or more languages are combined in a simplified language and structure:
- limited vocabulary
- few, if any, grammar rules
- not the first language of any person
creole language
a language that began as a pidgin language but was later adopted as the mother tongue of a group of people
differences between American English and British English
different pronunciation, spelling of words, vocabulary, auxiliary verbs, collective nouns
early English was influenced by
Viking, Angles, French, Saxons
after the Soviet Union collapsed, Leningrad was renamed to
St. Petersburg
Two theories of Proto-Indo-European language
conquest theory and agricultural theory
Conquest theory
early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread from east to west on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tongues
Agricultural theory
Proto-Indo-European spread with the diffusion of agriculture. The gradual migration of the agricultural frontier into the European frontier and resulting interaction between farmers and non farming peoples
