Chapter 6: Language
Variations in vocabulary, pronunciation, and rhythm in a spoken language are called _____________.
Dialects
Which languages are not mutually intelligible?
German and Dutch
The Indo-European language family prevails on the map of Europe. Which country in Europe has a language which is not in the Indo-European family?
Hungary
What term best describes the geographical boundary of one particular linguistic feature?
Isogloss
Monolingual countries, in which only one language is spoken, are few in number. Name three monolingual countries.
Japan, Poland, and Lesotho
In which country would one most likely find speakers whose native language belongs to the Uralic language family?
Kazakhstan
Bantu migrations marginalized this once widespread African language family which now is found only in dry regions of southwestern Africa.
Khoisan family
Historically, the world's major languages have spread by what methods?
Migration, trade, conquest, and expanding populations
A highly simplified language developed between linguistically heterogeneous groups for the purposes of basic intergroup communication is known as ____________.
Pidgin
The greatest concentration of streets memorializing Martin Luther King is found in ______________________.
The south, especially Georgia
Most linguists agree that ________ languages exist in the world.
5,000
The linguistic map of Nigeria reflects extreme fragmentation with nearly ______ languages spoken.
500
About _____ of internet content is in English.
55%
What percentage of the world's languages are expected to die out in the next century?
90%
A dialect is best classified as _________________.
A cultural trait
The province of Quebec is unique from other provinces in Canada because _________________________.
A majority of inhabitants who speak French as a first language
In technically advanced societies there is a likely to be a ________________.
A standard language
Arabic, which spread westward with the diffusion of Islam, is part of which language family?
Afro-Asiatic
What do the languages of English, Spanish, and Hindi have in common?
All three are in the Indo-European language family
The predominant languages spoken on Madagascar are not of an African language family, but belong to ______________.
Austronesian family
The French government has _________________________________ to protect French language and culture.
Banned foreign words in advertising and on radio and television, established the Academie Francaise to standardize the language and passed a law levying fines on those using foreign term
The country of Papua New Guinea boasts one of the world's highest rates of linguistic diversity, with more than 800 documented indigenous languages. This linguistic diversity has been preserved largely because of the country's rugged geography, which includes mountains and islands that have tended to keep different speech communities isolated from one another. In the context of Papua New Guinea's geography of languages, mountains and islands represent _____________________.
Barriers to diffusion
Which European country has a rather sharp division between Flemish speakers in the North and Walloon speakers in the South?
Belgium
The Proto-Indo-European language homeland lies somewhere south of the ___________.
Black Sea
Brittany in western France shows the persistence of Breton in the ______________ subfamily.
Celtic
Subsequent migrations and empire building caused the decline and marginalization of this subfamily which had brought Indo-European languages to Europe 3,000 years ago.
Celtic
In what country is one most likely to encounter speakers whose native tongue belongs to the Saharan family?
Chad
When African colonies became independent countries, one of the first acts of many of the new governments was to _________________________.
Change the names of places that had been named after colonial figures
Latin "octo" became Italian "otto", Spanish "ocho", and French "huit". This is an example of a ________, which is a word that has the same linguistic derivation as another word.
Cognate
The naming of sports stadiums and other facilities for corporations is an example of ________________.
Commodification
English is to lingua franca as ____________ is to pidgin language.
Creole
Convergence processes yielding a synthesis of several languages produce a pidgin language. When this language becomes the first language of a population it is referred to as a ___________.
Creole language
Example of a monolingual state/country is _____________.
Denmark
The Italian language varies significantly between Milan, Rome, Naples, and Palermo. These varieties are examples of ___________.
Dialects
The language of the United Kingdom is broken down phonetically into Scottish, Irish, Cockney, and other ____.
Dialects
People in London, Melbourne, Vancouver, and Mumbai all speak _____________.
Different dialects
Nigeria chose _________ as its offical language upon independence.
English
The global lingua franca is __________.
English
The language most widely used as a second language by hundreds of millions of people in India, Africa, and elsewhere is ____________.
English
The most widely used Indo-European language is _____________.
English
Which region has the fewest languages that are under threat of extinction?
Europe
The language tree diagram of language divergence has some branches with dead ends. These represent __________.
Extinct languages
Belgium is a ____________________ speaking country.
Flemish (germanic) and French (romance)
Standard Italian is the version of the language spoken in ______________.
Florence and Tuscany
The English language belongs to which branch of the Indo-European language family?
Germanic
Languages that belong to the Indo-European language family are _____________________.
Hindi, Bengali, Farsi, and Dutch
The English language ______________________________________________.
In the next couple of decades, the number of secondary and tertiary speakers will out-number the number of primary speakers, it is the language of the internet, generally considered the language of science, and even in other countries, much advertising exists in English
The most widely distributed language family is ________________.
Indo-European
What family do most European languages belong to?
Indo-European
Which language family has the most speakers across the globe?
Indo-European
Which development helped with the rise of national languages beginning in the 14th century?
Invention of the printing press
Persian, Pashto, and Baluchi are all part of the ___________ branch of the language tree.
Iranian
A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs is called a(n) _____________.
Isogloss
The outer boundary of a linguistic feature on a map is called a(n) _________________.
Isogloss
Linguistic geographers map the area in which particular words are spoken, making their limits as ________________.
Isoglosses
A good example of a monolingual country would be ________.
Japan
The near secession of Quebec from Canada in 1995 was based on what cultural factor?
Language
Acculturation is a common cause of ________________.
Language extinction
Romanian, Spanish French, Italian, and Portuguese are all part of the same ______________.
Language family
A language that is the product of a process of convergence which allows speakers of two or more languages to communicate is a _______________.
Lingua franca
A simple trade language is called a _____________.
Lingua franca
The predominance of English as the preferred language spoken at many international business meetings and political summits could be cited to support the claim that English is a popular ________________.
Lingua franca
The use of the English language by all the commercial airline pilots worldwide for the purpose of air-traffic control safety would be an example of a ________________.
Lingua franca
Two mountain towns with unique languages develop a new simple language, understood by both groups, for trade purposes. What is this called?
Lingua franca
In the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, several thousand languages are spoken by fewer than two million people, a characteristic known as __________________.
Linguistic fragmentation
The language with the largest number of "speakers" is _______.
Mandarin Chinese
Which American language corresponds to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico?
Mayan
Countries in which more than one language is in use are called ___________.
Multilingual
Hawaii is an example of a state that is ______________________.
Officially bilingual
The greatest concentration of linguistic diversity on Earth is in __________.
Papua New Guinea
Which two countries alone and close to 2000 of the 6000 languages spoken in the world today?
Papua New Guinea and India
Leopoldville, Congo becomes Kinshasa and Salisbury, Zimbabwe becomes Harare. These are examples of _________.
Past-colonial toponyms
A hybrid the serves as a second language for everyone who uses it is called a ____________.
Pidgin
When two groups of people who speak different languages interact, they often make up a simplified language combination to communicate with each other. This is called a(n) ______________.
Pidgin
In Illinois, people who want a soft drink with their hamburger are likely to order a _____.
Pop
A reconstructed language from which a number of related, modern languages all derive is known as a(n) ________________.
Proto-language
The process of language divergence happened long ago between Spanish and Portuguese and in more recent centuries is happening in North America with the divergence of __________________.
Quebecois French
Which language family contains Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian?
Romance
Language sub-families include ____________________.
Romance languages
Examples of modern lingua franca languages are ______________.
Russian, English, and Swahili
Literacy rates vary by _____________________________.
Sex, location, education, and economic development
Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. What language branch is it a part of?
Sino-Tibetan
The two largest language families in the world, in terms of absolute numbers of speakers, are ______________________?
Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European
In what country are the most Basque speakers found?
Spain
What language is the dominant language (other than English) spoken by people over the age of 5 in their homes in the U.S.?
Spanish
While speakers of the English language from the largest share of the Internet users, both the Chinese language and the _____________ language have more speakers globally.
Spanish
The concept that specifically refers to a group of people who all speak a common language or dialect is known as a ______________.
Speech community
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Leningrad was renamed ______________.
St. Petersburg
What language is known as the lingua franca of Eastern Africa?
Swahili
In 2010, which states had several cities where 60% or more of the people five years and older spoke a language other than English?
Texas and New Mexico
Official languages such as Spanish and Quechuan in Peru or English and Pilipino in the Philippines reflect _______________.
The country's history
In an attempt to deal with linguistic as well as cultural diversity, many former African colonies have taken as their official language ________________________________.
The language of the former colonial power
Clusters of French toponyms in Louisiana, Dutch toponyms in Michigan, and Welsh toponyms in Pennsylvania reflect _____________.
The shifts of names associated with migration
The two theories of the Proto-Indo-European language dispersal are the conquest theory and _________________.
The spread of agriculture
What is true about language extinctions?
There could be several thousand over the next century
What is true about language isolates like Basque and Ainu?
They have no demonstratable connection to other known existing world language, they often exist in geographically isolated areas, but not exclusively, many language isolates are in danger of extinction due to declining numbers of native speakers. Korean, no connection to any other Sino-Tibetan language, most widely spoken language isolate.
The systematic study of the origin and meaning of place names is called ____________.
Toponym
When European settlers established relations with Native Americans, a new language was created to ease translation for both groups. What is the language called?
Trade language
Dialects are distinguished by differences in _______________.
Vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, and accents
