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AP Human GeographyChapter 5 Practice Exam: Languages
(2018/v.1)
1. (AP)(MM) If four languages have similar words for numbers and
the names of fish, but different names for a certain disease, what
might be concluded about the time at which the disease first
diffused?
A) The disease spread among a population that later divided and
evolved into four different languages.
B) The population divided and evolved into the four different
languages, and then the disease spread.
C) The disease spread to two different populations that later
divided into two different languages.
D) The disease and language spread to four different regions at the
same time at the same rate.
E) There can be no conclusions drawn about the initial diffusion of
the disease based on language.
2. (AP) The Indo-European language family includes the major
languages of Europe and those dominant in all the following regions
EXCEPT
A) Russia
E) Central Asia
3. (AP) Which of the following areas has the greatest linguistic
fragmentation?
A) Korea
B) Scandinavia
C) Caucasus
D) Argentina
E) Quebec
4. (AP) The Gullah language is spoken in African- American
communities of the coastal southeastern United States, particularly
in South Carolina, Georgia, and northeastern Florida. It is a
combination of Elizabethan English and African dialects. One can
describe Gullah as a
A) creolized language
B) lingua franca
C) Sino-Tibetan dialect
D) language family
5. (AP) The present distribution of the Basques suggests
that as the Indo-Europeans advanced across the
landscape, this group retreated and sought refuge in the
A) Alps
B) Pyrenees
C) Apennines
D) Shetlands
E) Carpathians
6. (AP) Cities in India have a competitive advantage over cities in
China as locations for international consumer services, such as
call centers and bill processing. This advantage has its origins in
which of the following?
A) Low levels of primary-level education in China
B) The Indian government’s status as a neutral state in global
political affairs
C) The English language legacy of British colonialism in
India
D) Large amounts of mineral resources found in China used to
manufacture goods for export
E) Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia in the 1800s and
1900s
7. (AP) The urban linguistic landscape shown in the photograph
above is most likely found in a region where which of the following
languages is spoken?
A) Chinese
B) how languages diffuse.
E) all of the above.
9. The contemporary (present) distribution of languages around the
globe is primarily a result of
A) migration and isolation
C) military conquest
D) language convergence
E) cultural assimilation
10. What explains the fact that the languages of Madagascar, an
island off the coast of East Africa, are from the Austronesian
language family and not from any African language family?
A) migration
E) political choice
11. The geographic study of the distribution of languages provides
a good example of
A) the interplay between globalization and local diversity.
B) the diffusion of folk culture in different areas of the
world.
C) the role and spread of religion across much of the world.
D) the diffusion of free markets across much of the world.
E) political conflicts that arise due to ethnic tensions.
12. The current estimate of the number of languages spoken across
the planet is approximately
A) less than 100.
E) over 7,000.
13. Nearly 2/3 of the world’s languages are spoken in which two
regions?
A) Europe and the Americas
B) Asia and Oceania
C) Asia and Africa
E) Africa and Europe
14. When people who speak a given language migrate to different
locations and no longer have spatial interaction, their languages
will eventually become so different they will no longer be mutually
intelligible. This process is known as
A) language homogenization
B) language convolution
C) language convergence
D) language divergence
E) language standardization
15. What typically happens when people who speak a given language
migrate to two or more different location and become isolated from
each other?
A) Both groups will continue to speak the same language even after
long periods of time.
B) One or both groups will develop a literary tradition (written
language).
C) Isolation will result in the two groups speaking different
dialects and eventually distinct, mutually unintelligible
languages.
D) One group will lose its linguistic abilities over time
E) One or both groups will lose their language by being assimilated
into neighboring cultural groups.
16. The large number of individual languages documented in Africa
has resulted primarily from
A) introduction of many different languages by the colonial
powers.
B) colonial administration of native lands.
C) thousands of years of isolation between tribal groups.
D) frequent migration by the different tribal groups.
E) repeated invasions by outsiders.
17. From the list below, choose the country with the most languages
spoken.
A) China
B) Brazil
C) India
D) Pakistan
E) Canada
18. The language spoken by the greatest number of native speakers
(= first/primary language) in the world is
A) Mandarin.
B) English.
C) Hindi.
D) Cantonese.
E) Spanish.
19. The two most important languages in South America are
A) Dutch and English.
B) English and Spanish.
C) French and Spanish.
D) Portuguese and Spanish.
E) Creole and Portuguese.
20. Which of the following sequences represents the genetic
classification of languages from the largest to the smallest
divisions?
A) family-language-branch-group-dialect-accent
B) family-group-branch-language-accent-dialect
C) dialect-accent-language-group-branch-family
D) family-branch-language-group-accent-dialect
E) family-branch-group-language-dialect-accent
21. The main difference between languages in the same family,
branch, or group is how
A) recently in time the languages were once the same.
B) closely the speakers of each language live to one other.
C) they correspond to the diffusion of free markets across much of
the world.
D) similar the cultures of the speakers of each language are.
E) they all emerged at the same point in history, according to the
Bible.
22. A language family is a
A) collection of languages related through a common ancestor before
recorded history
B) collection of similar dialects
C) standard language
E) a group of languages which share the same orthography
Questions 23-27 refer to the map above.
23. The dark shaded area on the map above indicates the geographic
distribution of which language family?
A) Altaic
B) Uralic
C) Sino-Tibetan
D) Afro-Asiatic
E) Indo-European
24. Which letter on the map indicates a likely hearth of Proto
Indo-European, the ancestor or “mother” language of all later
Indo-European languages?
A) A
B) C
C) E
D) F
E) H
25. Which letter from the map above is NOT correctly matched with
its language branch?
A) A: Indo-Iranian
B) B: Romance
C) C: Cyrillic
D) D: Germanic
E) All are correctly matched.
26. Which letter from the map above is NOT correctly matched with
its language family?
A) F: Afro-Asiatic
B) G: Dravidian
C) H: Sino-Tibetan
D) X: Uralic
E) All are correctly matched.
27. Which language branch (indicated by the arrows on the map
above) were the first Indo-European languages brought into Europe
but were pushed to the far northwestern corner of Europe by later
migrations?
A) Romance
B) Germanic
C) Celtic
D) Turkic
E) Basque
28. The two largest language families in the world, _______________
comprise languages spoken by 2/3 of the world’s people.
A) Dravidian and Uralic.
B) Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European.
C) Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan.
D) Niger-Congo and Sino-Tibetan.
E) Altaic and Nilo-Saharan.
29. A language that is unrelated to any other and the only member
of a language family is a(n)
A) standard language.
B) revived language.
C) vulgar language.
D) isolated language.
E) endangered language.
30. Which of the following languages is an isolated language (i.e.
a language which is its own language family because it is unrelated
to any other known language).
A) Japanese
B) Greek
C) Georgian
E) All of the above
31. (MM) Although the people living in Milan, Rome, Naples, and
Palermo can all understand each other, their vocabulary, spelling,
and pronunciation do vary. These varieties of Italian spoken in
local areas are examples of
A) pidgins.
D) dialects.
E) idioms.
32. Differences between American and British English include all of
the following EXCEPT
A) different pronunciation of words.
B) different spelling of words.
C) different vocabulary for some objects.
D) different grammar/syntax (word order)
E) different dialects
33. Which of the following pairs of languages are NOT mutually
intelligible?
A) Urdu and Hindi
B) Czech and Slovakian
D) German and Dutch
E) Danish and Norwegian
34. What name have linguists given to the proposed mother language
of all later Indo-European languages?
A) Conversational Alternative Kurgan Emigration (CAKE)
B) Trans Asian Reconstructed Talk (TART)
C) Central Russian Overland Isolated Sino Saharan Asiatic Naughty
Talk (CROISSANT)
D) Expressive Conversational Literary Asian Isogloss Revival
(ECLAIR)
E) Proto Indo-European (PIE)
35. The technique used by linguists to reconstruct extinct
languages such as Proto Indo European by tracking sound shifts in
later languages backwards to re-create the languages that preceded
them is called
A) language divergence
B) language convergence
C) root tracing
D) deep reconstruction
36. Approximately what percentage of the world speaks Indo-European
languages?
A) 10%
B) 25%
C) 50%
D) 75%
E) 90%
37. The Indo-European language family includes languages dominant
in all the following regions EXCEPT
A) Europe
E) Iran
38. What do the languages of English, Spanish, and Hindi have in
common?
A) They are all part of a major religious system.
B) They are all spoken in the same countries.
C) All three derive from the Afro-Asiatic language family.
D) All three are spoken where they are due to colonialism.
E) All three are in the Indo-European language family.
39. Why is Indo-European by far the most widely dispersed of all
language families?
A) It includes languages that diffused globally through European
imperialism.
B) It includes English, which has become the world’s lingua franca
of business, science, advertising, tourism, and the internet.
C) It includes Mandarin, which is the language spoken by more
people than other language.
D) It includes the oldest languages in Africa which then diffused
through the earliest homo sapiens migrations around 50,000 years
ago.
E) Both A and B
40. (MM) The four most frequently spoken branches of Indo-European
include all of the following EXCEPT:
A) Romance.
B) Balto-Slavic.
C) Celtic.
D) Indo-Iranian.
E) Germanic
41. The most widely used and diffused Indo-European language in the
world today is:
A) English
B) German
C) Spanish
D) French
E) Basque
42. Romance branch languages have achieved worldwide importance
because
A) colonial and imperial activity distributed these languages to
far reaching territories.
B) they are more frequently taught in middle schools today.
C) they closely approximate English in grammar and
vocabulary.
D) they are the languages of governments.
E) they alternate being the global lingua franca.
43. Scandinavian languages such as Norwegian and Swedish all derive
from which Indo-European language branch?
A) Indo-Iranian
B) Balto-Slavic
C) Romance
D) Germanic
E) Armenian
44. All of the following are Latin-based Romance languages
EXCEPT
A) English.
B) Spanish.
C) Romanian
D) Italian.
E) Portuguese.
A) Indo-Iranian
B) Altaic
C) Romance
D) Balto-Slavic
E) Germanic
46. Every European country is dominated by Indo-European speakers
except
A) Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
B) Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.
C) Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
D) Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
E) Finland, Hungary, and Estonia.
47. (MM) English is part of which language family (Hint: Only one
of the following choices is a language family!)?
A) Germanic
B) Romance
E) North Germanic
48. (MM) English is part of which branch of the Indo-European
language family?
A) Romance
C) Indo-European
D) Austronesian
E) Germanic
49. Which of the following statements about the history of English
is FALSE?
A) English is classified as a Germanic language because its base
was the languages of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, Germanic people
who invaded the British Isles around 450 CE.
B) English absorbed some words from Old Norse, the language spoken
by the Vikings, who occupied Britain for about 100 years in the 9th
century CE.
C) English became a Germanic/Romance hybrid language because the
Norman French ruled Britain for 300 years after the Battle of
Hastings in 1066 CE.
D) English absorbed many words from British colonies.
E) English has been recently surpassed as the world’s most widely
spoken lingua franca by Mandarin Chinese.
50. The first speakers of the language that evolved into English
were tribes that lived in present-day
A) France.
C) Switzerland.
D) Italy.
E) Denmark.
51. Early English was influenced by all of the following groups
except
A) the Basques.
B) the Vikings.
D) the Norman French.
E) Christian missionaries
52. Which of the following languages is the basis of about two
thirds English vocabulary (words)?
A) Spanish
B) French
C) Yiddish
53. Which statement about the English language is correct?
A) Worldwide, there are three times as many native speakers of
English as second language speakers.
B) It is a member of the Latin language branch.
C) It has been heavily influenced by the French language.
D) It has only two separate dialects: British and American.
E) It is the official language of the United States.
54. Most English-speaking countries around the world speak British
English because
A) American English is not considered to be a form of proper
English.
B) American English is considered vulgar by most educated
people.
C) most people do not like Americans, so they refuse to copy
them.
D) British colonized many areas around the world.
E) all of the above.
55. The geographical boundary between different uses of a language,
such as the line on the above map separating the use of “cinnamon
bun” and “cinnamon roll” is called
A) a linguistic break.
B) a linguistic contour
C) a dialect intrusion.
B) has few, if any, grammar rules.
C) is a simplified language based on two separate languages.
D) is not the first language of any person (i.e. has no native
speakers).
E) all of the above
57. When a pidgin language becomes more grammatically complex and
is spoken as the first language of a population it is then referred
to as a
A) dialect
A) an extinct language.
C) an isolated language family.
D) a possible prehistoric superfamily.
E) a revived formerly extinct language.
59. Haitian Creole represents a creolized language of
A) Spanish and Indigenous languages.
B) English and Indigenous languages.
C) Dutch and Indigenous languages.
D) French and Dutch.
A) an English word that has entered the French language.
B) a language understood by people who have different native
languages.
C) an extinct language that has been revived.
D) an official language in a region of the world different from
where the language originated.
E) a language used by French colonial administrations.
61. Spain, Morocco, and Pakistan share commonalities in cultural
landscape features such as architecture, vocabulary, and
place-names due to the influence of what language and
culture?
A) French
B) British
C) Spanish
D) Arabic
E) Roman
62. Which list correctly identifies the language scripts shown
below from top to bottom?
· a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
· а б в г д е ё ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш
· ظ ض ذ خ ث ت شر ق ص ف ع س نم ل ك يط ح ز وه
· 的 一 是 不 了 人 我 在 有 他 这 为 之 大 来
· क ख ग ज छ च ड द च ग़ ळ ऍ ॡ ए ऐ ओ औ ऊ
A) English, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Devanagari
B) Cyrillic, Latin, Devanagari, Chinese, Arabic
C) Latin, Greek, Devanagari, Japanese, Arabic
D) Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Devanagari
E) Anglo-Saxon, Cyrillic, Arabic, Korean, Devanagari
63. The photograph above was likely taken near the border between
which two countries?
A) India and Pakistan
B) India and China
C) Russia and Azerbaijan
D) Russia and China
E) China and Pakistan
A) Mandarin Chinese
B) Russian
C) English
D) Spanish
E) Hindi
65. Two billion people live in country where ________ is the
official language
A) Mandarin
B) French
C) Spanish
D) Swahili
E) English
66. What language is known as the lingua franca of Eastern
Africa?
A) Hindi
B) English
C) French
D) Swahili
E) Zulu
67. Which statement about the diffusion of the English and Chinese
languages is true?
A) English has diffused worldwide, while Chinese is spoken mostly
in China.
B) English is spoken in only the United Kingdom and the United
States, while Chinese is spoken all over East Asia.
C) English and Chinese are both spoken worldwide as lingua franca
languages.
D) The number of English speakers is declining, while the number of
Chinese speakers is steadily increasing.
E) All of the above.
68. Which statement best describes the use of English on the
Internet?
A) English is becoming ever more dominant as the most common
language used on the Internet.
B) The number of English-speaking Internet users continues to be
above 50%.
C) Different Internets exist for most other widely spoken
languages, like Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.
D) English has become less dominant but is still the leading
Internet language.
69. Which of the following statements about English is FALSE?
A) The number of people who speak English as a second language
outnumber those who speak it as their primary language (first,
native language).
B) It is the dominant (most speakers) primary (first, native
language) language across the globe.
C) There are more websites and more internet content in English
than in any other language.
D) It is the most widely used language of science, business,
tourism, advertising, and entertainment.
70. English has recently achieved unprecedented acceptance globally
due to
A) the refusal to use English in colonial and imperial
expansion.
B) the diffusion of command economies across much of the
world.
C) its role as the common language of a global economy and
culture.
D) the rise of folk culture and the decline of popular
culture.
E) the diffusion of religion to industrialized nations.
71. Franglais refers to
B) a dialect of French.
C) the standard language of French.
D) the use of English in the French language.
E) a language used by French colonial administrations.
72. The French government has _________ to protect French language
and culture.
A) banned foreign words in advertising and on radio and
television
B) established the Académie Française to standardize the
language
C) passed a law levying fines on those using foreign terms
D) all of the above
73. ________ is the official language in 56 countries.
A) Mandarin
B) French
C) Spanish
D) Swahili
E) English
74. Which statement about official languages is true?
A) Official languages are always spoken by the majority of citizens
of a country.
B) Official languages are the language of the largest cultural
group of a country.
C) Each country can only have one official language.
D) Official languages are used by the government for use in its
daily business.
E) All of the above.
75. A language designated by a country for use in all public
documents is a
A) standard language
B) vigorous language
C) official language
D) literary language
E) lingua franca
76. (MM) After achieving independence, several former European
colonies (e.g. Nigeria, Columbia, Senegal, Mozambique, Suriname)
choose the language of their (hated) former European colonial power
as an official language of their countries. Why did they do
this?
A) Choosing one tribal language over others as the countries
official language may have sparked a language based conflict.
B) The European language had already become a lingua franca in
these countries.
C) The indigenous languages in these countries had largely gone
extinct due to forced assimilation to European culture.
D) The European governments made this a condition of granting
independence to these countries.
E) Both A and B.
77. Which West African country chose English as its official
language after achieving independence because it feared that
choosing any of its 500 tribal languages as its official language
might spark a language based conflict?
A) Liberia
B) Mali
C) Ghana
D) Nigeria
E) Cameroon
78. The commonality of Indo-European languages among official
languages across Africa is mostly a result of
A) ancient migrations of Indo-European speakers
B) cultural convergence
C) recent migrations of large numbers of Europeans to Africa
D) historic migrations of large numbers of Europeans to
Africa
E) colonial languages spreading among native leadership
79. The variant or dialect of a given language that the country’s
elite promotes or declares as the norm for government business,
education, and mass communication is called a(n)
A) standard language
B) vigorous language
C) official language
D) literary language
E) lingua franca
A) The King's English.
C) Received Pronunciation (RP).
D) Midlands English (MP).
E) Doolittle Pronunciation (DP).
81. (MM) All of the following are true of RP EXCEPT:
A) It is considered the standard or “proper” form of British
English.
B) It originated among elites in London, Oxford, and
Cambridge.
C) It is the form of British English spoken by most government
officials, broadcasters, and actors in Britain today.
D) Daniel Webster’s famous dictionary intentionally differentiated
(created differences) American English from BRP.
E) It is a more efficient form of British English for expressing
ideas.
82. Which development helped with the rise of standard forms of
languages beginning in the fifteenth century?
A) invention of the printing press
B) agricultural improvements
C) educational reforms
D) Celtic migrations
E) fall of the Roman Empire
83. Which of the following countries has NOT passed a national law
establishing one or more official languages?
A) Canada
C) Belgium
D) France
E) Romania
84. Official languages in Switzerland include all but which of the
following?
A) Italian
B) Flemish
C) Romansh
D) French
E) German
85. Globalization is __________ the world's linguistic diversity
(number of languages).
A) not affecting
E) adding subtypes to
86. Which regions have the most and fewest languages that are under
threat of extinction?
A) Most: Asia; Fewest: The Americas
B) Most: Africa; Fewest: Europe
C) Most: The Pacific; Fewest: Asia
D) Most: The Americas; Fewest: Europe
E) Most: Africa; Fewest: The Pacific
87. Which of the following is true about language
extinctions?
A) They happen suddenly and without warning.
B) They are usually the result of genocide.
C) There could be several thousand over the next century.
D) They are increasingly rare.
E) They are unrelated to cultural imperialism.
88. Which of the following are reasons that many of the world’
languages are under threat of extinction?
A) Mass media and pop culture strengthen dominant language like
English and Spanish at the expense of local languages.
B) European colonizers often forbid local people from speaking
their own languages as a way of weakening or destroying their
cultures.
C) Young people in periphery countries (LDCs) are moving to big
cities in search of economic opportunity, leaving no one behind in
their small villages to learn and keep alive indigenous
languages.
D) Women in periphery countries (LDCs) who marry husbands who speak
another language are expected to pass the husband’s language rather
than her own language on to their children
E) All of the above.
89. The extinction of many languages once spoken in Peru is a
result of
A) chain migration
B) relocation diffusion
D) contagious diffusion
E) popular culture revival
90. Which of the following statements, regarding the number of
languages, is true?
A) There are fewer languages spoken today than there were 1000
years ago.
B) Due to creolization, there are more languages spoken today than
at any time before.
C) Languages increasingly use divergent orthographies.
D) Due to widespread illiteracy, most people today speak dying
languages.
E) Due to interest in reviving dead languages, new languages are
spoken every year.
91. Which of the following languages is considered extinct (i.e. no
longer used in everyday life on a daily basis)?
A) Latin
B) Gothic
C) Manx
D) Cornish
E) All of the above
92. Which of the following is a rare example of a revived language
(i.e. a language once endangered or nearly extinct that has been
brought back to life)?
A) Swahili.
B) Hebrew.
C) Latin.
D) Greek.
E) Gothic
C) exist today only in remote regions of Eastern Europe
D) have been revived in some parts of the British Isles
E) have been revived throughout many parts of Europe
94. Which of the following factors have contributed to the
protection and revival of formerly endangered languages such as
Hebrew, Welsh, or Irish?
A) official language status
B) language schools
C) mass media (e.g. radio programs, TV programs, websites in the
endangered language)
D) geographical isolation
95. What is lost when a language is lost?
A) a culture’s unique way of perceiving and describing their
environment (e.g. 27 Eskimo words for “white”)
B) an essential part of a group’s distinctive cultural identity
(e.g. Appalachian Talk speakers pride in their distinct
vocabulary)
C) the unique history and stories of a culture group
D) the values, religion, and belief systems of a culture
group
E) all of the above
96. Monolingual states (countries in which only one language is
spoken almost exclusively) are few in number. Which of the
following is NOT one of these countries?
A) China
B) Poland
D) Lesotho
E) Argentina
97. The use of more than one language, either by an individual
speaker or by a community of speakers is
A) language standardization
B) language divergence
98. Which of the following is true of multilingualism?
A) It can encourage multiculturalism, cultural diversity (music,
food, art), and unique cultural landscapes (landscape
distinctiveness).
B) It can increase economic opportunities both for individuals and
countries (e.g. India benefits from having a large English speaking
population.)
C) It can be a source of division and conflict in a country or
region.
D) It generally increases costs for governments that have to
provide public service, signs, and documents in multiple
language.
E) All of the above.
99. Which multilingual European country has largely avoided
language based conflict by devolving (giving) power to local
regions?
A) Belgium
B) Italy
C) Spain
D) Switzerland
E) Ukraine
100. Which of the following European countries has a language based
conflict between Flemish speaking people in the north and French
speaking Walloons in the south exacerbated (made worse) by wealth
inequality between the two groups?
A) the Netherlands
B) Belgium
C) Denmark
D) Andorra
E) France
“(AP)” = From released AP exams. (Most likely to be on exam.)
“(MM)”=Most Missed (+25% of students missed this question)
Countries with most languages (One of these will be on exam): 1.
Papua New Guinea (841) 2. Indonesia (710) 3. Nigeria (526) 4. India
(455) 5. USA (334)
Other isolated languages: Khoisan (click language) Basque and
Korean.
Arabic is NOT an Indo-European language. It is in the Afro-Asiatic
language family.
Other monolingual states: Japan, Iceland, Cuba