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Cards In This Set
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Analogy
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Changes to the language with a desire for uniformity
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Natural Gender
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In English, where all gender is determined by the meaning of the word: in living things, by the sex of the individual, and in all other words there is no gender.
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Idiom
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A form of expression peculiar to one language (that, when translated literally, does not make sense- "under the weather," "over the hill," etc.).
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Lingua franca
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A shared language
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Grammatical Gender
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Where every noun has both a meaning and a gender
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Borrowing
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A characteristsic of the English language to assimilate words from other languages into its own language.
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Upon what does the importance of a language depend?
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Who has the power
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About how many people speak English as a native language?
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380 million
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Which language of the world has the largest number of speakers?
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English
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What are the six largest European languages after English?
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Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, French, and Italian
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Why is English so widely used as a second language?
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Number of speakers and use for international communication
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Which languages are likely to grow most rapidly in the foreseeable future? Why?
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German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. German because it figures prominently as a language of commerce in Eastern Europe. Russian because the independent states of the former Soviet Union are likely to continue efforts to make Russian the common language throughout that vast region. Spanish and Portuguese because of the rapidly increasing populations of Latin America. English because of its use throughout the world as a second language.
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Faux amis
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Those words that have different meanings in two different languages
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What are the official languages of the United Nations?
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English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian
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For a speaker of another language learning English, what are three assets of the language?
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1) English presents a somewhat familiar appearance to anyone who speaks either a Germanic or a Romance language.
2) Inflectional Simplicity 3) Natural gender: all gender of English nouns are neuter except in living things, where the gender is determined by the sex of the individual. |
