written form of a language

literary tradition

dialect

form of a language spoken in a local area

a group of languages that share a common origin but have since evolved into individual languages

language branch

language family

group of languages that share a common ancestor before recorded history

2nd largest language family

Sino-Tibetan

roots of language trees below the surface represent

possible prehistoric super families

the trunks of trees depict

language families

Germanic invaders of England

Saxons, Jutes, and Angles

Angles and Normans contributed to the development of the English language because

they invaded England

Why is English the most important language of North America?

the diffusion of English colonies

The first speakers of the language that evolved into English were tribes that lived in present-day

Denmark.

English is part of the __________________ language group.

West-Germanic

English is part of the ____________________ language branch.

Germanic

Which group of the Germanic family is extinct?

East-Germanic

Why has the Icelandic language changed very little?

Isolation from other places

English is part of which language family?

Indo-European

when people migrate and become isolated from other members of their group

the results of Isolation causes a language to become two languages

Romance languages

Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, and Spanish

the language spoken throughout the Roman Empire by soldiers

Vulgar Latin

widely spoken language in Brazil

Portuguese

mix of indigenous and colonial languages

creolized language

most widely spoken Indo-European language is

English

four most frequently spoken branches of Indo-European

Germanic, Romance, Indo-Iranian, and Balto-Slavic

2 most important languages of South America

Portuguese and Spanish

Flemings and Walloons live in

Belgium.

Flemings and Walloons speak languages that belong to different

language branches.

official languages of Switzerland

Romansh, French, Italian, and German

Russian/language branch

Balto-Slavic

most important language of Pakistan

Urdu

Celtic languages

revived in parts of the British Isles, spoken in France, threatened by extinction in England, and extensive body

of literature.

Marija Gimbutas theory points to the first speakers of Indo-European as the

Kurgans

The Kurgans

from present day Russia and Kazakhstan

Basque is spoken primarily in

the Pyrenees Mountains.

according to Colin Rehfrew’s

Indo-European language diffused across Europe with the diffusion of agriculture. This is the Anatolian hearth

theory.

Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European

world’s largest language families

language family encompassing the Peoples Republic of China

Sino-Tibetan

Mandarin

language spoken by the greatest number of native speakers in the world

Chinese is written in the form of

ideograms

Hebrew

example of a revived language

Bulgaria

Indo-European language is spoken here

Uralic

2nd most widely spoken language family in Europe

individual languages in Africa resulted primarily from

thousands of years of isolation between tribal groups

most important language family in Sub-Saharan Africa is

Niger-Congo

distinction of African languages

linguist continue to add newly discovered languages to the African list

mutually understood language by people who have different native languages

lingua franca

development of different dialects in England

different Germanic invaders settled in different regions

differences in British and American English

pronunciation, prevalent dialects, vocabulary, and spelling

Which immigrants to the American colonies had the most diverse backgrounds?

Middle Atlantic

boundary between language regions

isogloss

use of English in the French language

franglais