Geography Ch. 5 Test Review

From most distant to closest relatives, languages can be classified into

• families, groups, and branches.

• families, branches, and groups.

• branches, families, and groups.

• groups, branches, and families.

• branches, groups, and families.

The geographic study of the distribution of languages provides a good example of

• political conflicts that arise due to ethnic tensions.

• the role and spread of religion across much of the world.

• the interplay between globalization and local diversity.

• the diffusion of folk culture in different areas of the world.

Tens of thousands of years ago, languages may have been joined together as

• branches.

• families.

• superfamilies.

• lingua franca.

• groups

The two largest language families in the world are

• Altaic and Nilo-Saharan.

• Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European.

• Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic.

• Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan.

• Balto-Slavic and Sino-Tibetan.

The main difference between languages in the same family, branch, or group is how

• closely the speakers of each language live to each other

• similar the cultures of the speakers of each language are.

• recently in time the languages were once the same.

• All of the above

The word language family MOST NEARLY means:

• a language that is written as well as spoken

• a collection of languages related to each other though a common ancestor long before recorded history

• a regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation

• a form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages

• a boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate

The word language branch MOST NEARLY means:

• a collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as the language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

• a combination of Spanish and English spoken by Hispanic Americans

• a combination of Deutsch and English

• a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary

• a language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family

The word official language MOST NEARLY means:

• a regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation

• a combination of Deutsch and English

• a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary

• the language adopted for use by a government for the conduct of business and publication of documents

• _a collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as the language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

The word literary tradition MOST NEARLY means:

• a form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages

• a language that is written as well as spoken

• a combination of francais and anglais

• a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary

• a language that results from the mixing of a colonizers language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated

Most languages with a literary tradition use one of the following principal writing systems:

• Latin, Chinese, English, Greek

• Latin, Arabic, Chinese, Indo-European

• Greek, Latin, Chinese, Germanic

• Cyrillic, Latin, Chinese, Arabic

• Cyrillic, Latin, Chinese, Altaic