Show:
Asian Language Families
Indo-European
General Questions
Language Groups/Branches
Language Families
100
What are some major languages in China?
Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, and Min, among others.
100
What is the most widely spoken language from the Indo-European family?
English
100
What language family is Arabic a part of?
Afro-Asiatic
100
What is the language group that Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian are from?
The Romance group
100
Define language family.
A language family is a collection of languages with a common ancestral language that existed before recorded history.
200
Where is the Sino-Tibetan family most commonly found?
East and Southeast Asia
200
What language branch of Indo-European is separated into east and west and what are they?
Indo-Iranian: the two branches are Indic (western) and Iranian (eastern)
200
Define and give two examples of pidgin languages.
A pidgin language is a language created when people combine two or more languages. Some examples are Spanglish and Franglish.
200
In what area of the world do many languages lack a written tradition and why?
Sub-Saharan Africa because they have no need for a written language. In folk culture, much of their information is recorded orally.
200
Language families were around before what?
Recorded history
300
Why are the Japanese and Korean languages so unique?
Both countries were very isolated up until a couple hundred years ago. One is an island and the other is a peninsula, so there wasn't much opportunity for other languages to influence them.
300
How did the Soviet Union help diffuse Russian to Eastern European countries?
The leaders of the Soviet Union took over those countries and forced them to learn a common language, Russian, in order to promote unity.
300
Explain the difference between a language and a literary tradition.
A language is communicating through speech and literary tradition is a written system of communication.
300
What is the difference between a language group and a language branch?
A language branch is a collection of languages that is not as old as a language family and has less differences. A language group is the languages in the language branch that share vocabulary and grammar.
300
Explain why Swahili, part of the Niger-Congo language family, is spoken so widely as a second language in Africa.
It is a lingua franca in Africa and people know it because it is necessary for business and communication amongst the many different tribal languages.
400
Why is an Austronesian language spoken in Madagascar?
People from Malaysia migrated by boat to Madagascar, an isolated island, and brought their language of Austronesian origins to the country.
400
Why did the Germanic branch split into the North and West Germanic branches?
It split because of religious differences when Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church to create his own religion. The West Germanics were mostly Catholics and the North Germanics were mainly Lutheran.
400
How do creolized languages form?
When regions are colonized by large countries, the language of the invading country is often forced on the native population. The indigenous people adopt the language but make their own by combining their original language with the new one. It is a very distinct accent.
400
Why are some Altaic languages becoming more widely used than in previous years?
Many countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union are getting rid of Russian, the enforced language in the Soviet Union, and returning to their original languages, most of which are Altaic.
400
Why is Arabic one of the fastest-growing languages in the world?
It is concentrated in an area that experiencing a population explosion right now. In addition, many Muslims know this language because it is the language of their holy book, the Quran.
500
Analyze why Mandarin is easier to learn than many other languages.
They use ideograms to represent ideas and each symbol builds off of others- a tree looks like a tree, three trees represents a forest, and so on.
500
Explain why people are pushing for Serbo-Croatian to be recognized as two different languages.
In the past, Serbia had control over the Croatians. Now they are separate countries and they would like their languages to be separate to help rid Croatia of the influence of the Serbs.
500
How are lingua francas different from official languages?
Official languages are languages that most people in the country speak and lingua francas are more commonly used for business and trade.
500
Explain why Vulgar Latin influenced the Romance language branch more than classic Latin.
The Roman soldiers spoke Vulgar Latin and they were the ones that spread the language that morphed into today's Romance languages. They would teach the natives the language in the countries that they conquered.
500
Why do several religious languages originate from the Afro-Asiatic language family?
At the time when the holy books (the Bible, the Quran, the Torah) were written, civilization was concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. The authors of these books wrote in their native languages. In addition, the hearth of many religions is in the Middle East so it would make sense that they were written there.