Chapter 5 Vocabulary

1. literary tradition - language that is written as well as spoken. Example: English is a literary tradition.
2. official language - in multilingual countries that language selected, often by the educated and politically powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion; usually the language of the courts and government. Example: The official language of India is Hindi.
3. Proto-Indoeuropean - hypothesized ancestral Indo-European language that is the hearth of the ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages. Example: Russian is derived from the Proto-Indoeuropean language family.
4. Dialect - local or regional characteristics of a language. While accent refers to the pronunciation differences of a standard language, a dialect, in addition to pronunciation variation, has distinctive grammar and vocabulary. Example: The word “y’all” is used in the south, almost specifically to that group of people.
5. Nostratic - hypothesized ancestral language of Proto-Indo-European, as well as other ancestral language families. Example: The language from which the Proto-Indo-European languages derived.
6. standard language - variant of a language that a country’s intellectual or politically elite seek to promote as the norm (e.g., King’s English). Example: Standard language would say “I have never been there before” while non-standard language would say “I ain’t never been there before”.
7. sound shift - slight change in a word across related languages from the present backward toward its origin. Example: The word “besser” in Deutsch became “better” in English due to a sound shift.
8. Isogloss - geographical boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs. Example: The North-Midland Isogloss that has the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in regions north of the line (including Western New York, Cleveland, Ohio, lower Michigan, northern Illinois and eastern Wisconsin).
9. backward reconstruction - the tracking of sound shifts and hardening of consonants backward toward the original language. Backward reconstruction looks for common words, verb tenses, or language structures to link languages. Example: This was used to construct the Proto-Indoeuropean language family.
10. language branch- collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family. Example: The Germanic language branch is a branch of the Proto-Indoeuropean language group.
11. deep reconstruction - technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to re-create the language that preceded it. Deep reconstruction relies on common sounds or even syllables to link languages. Example: Old English was recreated using deep reconstruction.
12. language group - collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocab. Example: West Germanic is a language group within the language branch of Germanic.
13. Renfrew Hypothesis - hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin Renfrew wherein he proposed that three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to 3 lang. families:Europe's indo-European lang. North African and Arabian languages and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Example: Based on this hypothesis, the Fertile Crescent gave rise to Indo-European and Northern African and Arabic languages.
14. language family - group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin. Example: English is part of the Proto-Indo-European language family.
15. Greenburg Hypothesis – a new language family was propsed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 that attempted to combine indigenous languages of the Americas into one language family called Amerind. This hypothesis has not enjoyed wide acceptance among linguists. Example: This hypothesis would combine every language spoken by Native Americans that was not Eskimo-Aleut or Na-Dene.
16. Esperanto: a constructed international language developed in the late 1880s and promoted after World War I to be a universal second language (lingua franca) to foster peace. Although thousands still speak this language, it is not widespread (mostly resembles an Indo-European language, and therefore, not a global tongue). Example: There is no indefinite article in Esperanto, so it is unlike English, but still similar to other Indo-European languages.
17. creole language - a language that began as a pidgin language but was later adopted as the mother tongue of a region and/or people. Example: Portuguese Creole is a creolized language in the Cape Verde Islands.
18. language convergence - collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages. Example: The language spoken in the Balkans has similarities to Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and Bulgarian.
19. Pidgin - when parts of two or more languages are combined in simplified structure and vocabulary. Example: West African Pidgin English is spoken throughout many ethnic groups on the West coast of Africa.
20. language divergence - when a language breaks into dialects due to a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language, and continued isolation causes new languages to be formed. Example: The French that is spoken in France differs from the French spoken in Canada.
21. ideograms - system of writing used in china and other east asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a sound, as is the case for English. Example: In English, a finger pointing to the right would mean “Go to the right” or “Go in this direction”.
22. extinct languages - language without any native speakers (it does not mean that the language is necessarily COMPLETELY dead, but that no one speaks it in their everyday lives. Example: Latin is an extinct language.
23. lingua Franca - a term deriving from "Frankish language" and applying to a tongue spoken in ancient Mediterranean ports that consisted of a mixture of Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and even some Arabic. Today it refers to a "common language" a language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce. Example: English is a lingua Franca.
24. isolated languages – languages that are not connected to the major language families that have developed without influence from outside languages. Example: Icelandic is an isolated language.
25. multilingual/polyglot state: country in which two or more languages are spoken. Example: Canada is a polyglot state because people there speak both English and French.
26. revived languages – once extinct languages that have been reconstructed and are now spoken, often relating to cultural revivals by a given group. Example: Hebrew and Gaelic are revived languages.
27. Monolingual - speaking only one language. Example: Most Americans only speak English, making them monolingual.
28. monoglot/monoligual state - country in which only one language is primarily spoken (e.g., Portugal, Japan, Venezuela, Poland, …). Example: France is officially monolingual, but has other lingual influences.
29. Preliterate societies: cultures without any written language (most of the more than 6,000 world language are unwritten). Example: The Creole language of Honduras is preliterate.
30. Toponym. Example: Virginia Beach is a toponym for the city near Norfolk and Chesapeake in Hampton Roads.
31. Franglais – a combination of French and English used in popular culture in French speaking countries. Example: Je suis tired means I am tired in Franglais instead of saying Je suis fatigue.
32. Spanglish – a combination of Spanish and English used in popular culture in Spanish speaking and English speaking countries. Example: "Te veo ahorita, me voy de shopping en el mall" instead of using full Spanish or full English.

Comprehension Questions:

1. Discuss why Americans are among the least multilingual people in the world. What does this say about America’s place in the world and our perception of the rest of the world?
English is spoken worldwide, especially as a lingua franca. For this reason, many Americans are able to communicate with people in different countries, reducing the necessity to speak the native language. This means that America, and other English-speaking countries, are influential in the world. However, this also means that we perceive our country as superior, that we would not take the time to learn other important and widely spoken languages of the world.
2. Provide examples of at least 3 Spanglish terms. Given the changes in US Population, how would you expect our language to change over time?
Lochando means having lunch; yogur means yogurt; frizando means to make freezing. These three terms are used intermittently with English in cities and areas with a large concentration of Spanish speaking residents. Because Mexican immigration, as well as immigration from other Spanish speaking countries, is rising, one can expect that Spanglish will become more popular and used. It may become necessary for US citizens to know basic Spanish as well as English to communicate with immigrants.