Language Families
Which language family is spoken by the largest number of people worldwide?
Indo-European
What type of diffusion spreads language through migration?
Relocation diffusion
What do we call a regional variety of a language, characterized by distinct vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation?
A dialect
What do we call a language that no longer has any living speakers?
Extinct language
What do we call a person who speaks two languages fluently?
Bilingual
Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in which major language family?
Sino-Tibetan
Colonization spread European languages to the Americas through what process?
Hierarchical diffusion
What is the name of the geographic boundary that separates different language features?
An isogloss
Which European language, spoken in the Pyrenees region of northern Spain, is not related to any known language family?
Basque
What country has both English and French as official languages?
Canada
Hindi and Bengali belong to which branch of the Indo-European family?
Indo-Iranian
What is lingua franca?
A language used for trade and communication between speakers of different native languages.
What is the term for the standard dialect of English traditionally used in British broadcasting and education?
Received Pronunciation
What is a major cause of language extinction in the 21st century?
Globalization (or assimilation, colonization)
What is one benefit of being bilingual or multilingual?
Cognitive flexibility, better job opportunities, or cultural understanding
Basque is a language that does not belong to any known family. What is it called because of this?
Isolated language
What historical process led to the spread of Spanish and Portuguese to Latin America?
Colonization
What type of language forms when a colonizer’s language blends with indigenous languages?
A creole (or creolized language)
What do linguists call the process of bringing a "dead" language back into use?
Language revival
What term describes a region where two or more languages are regularly spoken by the population?
Multilingual society or region
What is the term for a prehistoric, unrecorded language that is the ancestor of all languages in a family?
Proto-language (or Proto-Indo-European)
The spread of Arabic across North Africa is mostly the result of which religious and historical process?
The spread of Islam (or Islamic expansion)
What do we call a simplified language that develops for communication between speakers of different native languages?
Pidgin language
What ancient language was successfully revived in the 1900s and is spoken in Israel today?
Hebrew
In what situation might a person code-switch, or switch between languages mid-conversation?
In bilingual conversations, to fit in socially, or to clarify meaning