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8/9/2019 About Languages
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©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies language unlimited!
languageunlimited!
8/9/2019 About Languages
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©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies language unlimited!
Have you ever
wondered…how children learn
to speak?
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Have you ever
asked…why there are so
many differentlanguages in theworld?
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Do you know…
where English
came from?
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Have you noticed…
some languages have
many more speakersthan others?
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Have you wondered…
how many languages
it is possible to learn?
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What do you think?
“Languages belong to everyone;
so most people feel they have aright to have an opinion about it”
What is your opinion?Maybe it will change as you findout more…
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Do you agree with
these opinions?
2.The bigger the
language the betterit is
1. Sign language isnot a real language
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Do you agree with
these opinions?3. Some languages
are more beautifulthan others
4. Grammar tells ushow to writecorrectly
8/9/2019 About Languages
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So many questions!
There are many different
questions about language.Here are some answers…can you match them up?
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1. What is the most
polite language?
A. KoreanB. Turkish
C. Chinese
Answer:
There are 7 levels of politeness which are used
to show respect to theaddressee.
A. Korean
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2. What is the oldest
writing system still inuse?
A. KoreanB. Turkish
C. Chinese
This dates from around1200 BC and although it
has changed since then itis still used by millions of people.
Answer: C. Chinese
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3. What seems to be the
loudest language?
A. KoreanB. Turkish
C. Chinese
This was measured in astudy in 1970 which set
out to measure speakersover various distances.
Answer: B. Turkish
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4. What is said to be the
most frequently spokenword on the planet?
A. TheB. OK
C. ilunga
Answer:
First coined as a joke inBoston newspapers andmeaning oll korrekt (aconscious misspelling of "allcorrect") it is now commonlyused and understoodworldwide.
B. OK
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5. What is said to be the
most frequently word inEnglish?
A. TheB. OK
C. ilunga
This is number one in thetop 10 most frequent
words in British English-as measured in theBritish National Corpus.
Answer: A. The
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6. What is considered to
be the hardest word totranslate?
A. The?B. OK?
C. ilunga?
A person who is ready toforgive any abuse for the
first time,to tolerate it a second time,but never a third.
Answer: C. ilunga
*‘ilunga’ comes from the language Tshiluba spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo
*
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What would have
happened if you hadn’tlearnt to speak as a child?
Evidence from discoveriesof ‘wild children’ suggestthat if you hadn’t learntyour first language by theage of 13 you probablywouldn’t be able to learnafter that.
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How many languages is it
possible for one personto learn?
If you have the timeany number!The most multilingualperson still living isZiad Fazah who speaks58 languages.
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Ziad Fazah speaks all
these languages:Albanian German Amharic Arabic Armenian Azeri Bengali Burmese Bulgarian Cambodian Cantonese
Mandarin Wu Sinhalese Singapore English Korean Danish Dzongkha Spanish Finnish French Fijian Greek Hebrew Hindi Dutch Hungarian Indonesian English Icelandic Italian Japanese Swahili Lao Malay Malagasy Mongolian Nepali Norwegian
Papiamento Persian Polish Portuguese Pashto Kyrgyz Romanian Russian Serbo-Croatian Swedish Tajik Thai Czech Tibetan Turkish Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese
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What makes a word
beautiful?No word is inherently
more beautiful thananother.In polls it is often the
sound, meaning or theconnotation of a wordthat makes it beautiful.
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What makes a word
beautiful?For example:
mother (English)Rhabarbermarmelade(rhubarb jam in German)
sommarvind(summer breezein Swedish)
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Does size matter?
There are over 6,000
languages in the world, somewith lots of speakers and somewith very few speakers, some are
in remote places and somestretch across the whole world.
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1. What is the BIGGEST
language in the world(most speakers)
A. English?B. Burumakok?
C. MandarinChinese?
Answer:
This is generallyagreed to top the list
of most speakers withsome 880 million firstlanguage speakers
C. Mandarin
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2. What is one of thesmallest language in theworld (fewest speakers)
A. English?B. Burumakok?
C. MandarinChinese?
Answer:
Burumakok, in WestPapua New Guinea, is
spoken by fewer than300 people
B. Burumankok
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3. Which is the richest
language
A. English?B. Burumakok?
C. MandarinChinese?
Answer:
English is spoken as afirst language by the
wealthiest economies
A. English
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4. Which language has
the most sounds?
A. English?B. !Xũ?
C. Kâte
Answer:
!Xũ is an African languagewhich has 141 phonemes
(a unit of sound thatdistinguishes meanings of words) including a largenumber of clicks
B. !Xũ
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5. Which language is the
most widespread?
A. English?B. !Xũ?
C. Kâte
Answer:
28% of the world’s landarea is occupied by
countries having Englishas their official language
A. English
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6. Which language has the
highest percentage of second language speakers
A. English?B. !Xũ?
C. Kâte
Answer:
93% of speakers of thislanguage spoken in New
Guinea are secondlanguage speakers
C. Kâte
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©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies language unlimited!
Fact or fiction?
Many popular ‘facts’ aboutlanguage are not necessarily true
and many are still in dispute.
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Here are some ‘facts’
about language, can youspot which are true?
Answer true or falseHint, some may be both!
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Languages can
be dangerous!
False
True: Esperanto is an inventedlanguage that was banned in
several countries by authoritarianregimes e.g. Nazi Germany,Soviet Union, China.
TrueTrue
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Languages can be
bought and sold
False
True: in Vanuatu (South Pacificisland) a community sold their
language to their neighboursand couldn’t use it any more!
TrueTrue
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Languages never
change
False
False: languages change all thetime borrowing from each other,
making up new words (as newthings are invented), losingothers as they go out of fashion!
True False
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Languages can
die
False
True: about 417 languages areunder threat of extinction which
means that they don’t havechildren among their speakers.
TrueTrue
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Languages can
kill
False
True: big languages can kill smallerones by being the language of education or by their speakers being
more economically powerful.English, Spanish, Portuguese arethe biggest killers!
TrueTrue
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You can’t just
make up a newlanguageFalse
False: new languages have been created,the most successful of these being Esperanto(an international language created in 1887).
Klingon was made up for a TV programme.Do you know which one?
True False
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Languages have
relatives
False
True and false: most languages are relatedto other languages. There are 30 differentlanguage families — English belongs to theIndo-European family.
Basque (spoken in Spain) can’t be traced toany family — it is known as an isolate.
True FalseTrue
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Animals can’t
learn to speak
False
True and false: chimps have been taughtsome language (especially sign language) butthey don’t have the ability to pronouncehuman language.
Birds can mimic human sounds e.g. parrotsand lyrebirds, but they don’t understand whatthey are saying.
TrueTrue False
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Languages can
solve crimes
False
True: criminals have been identifiedfrom their writing or speech. Forexample, the uncle of a murdered
teenager was identified as her killer bytext messages he sent from her phone(pretending to be her).
TrueTrue
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English is the
easiest languageto learnFalse
True and false: it is a matter of opinion only. English has been
variously voted both easiest andhardest to learn.
True FalseTrue
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Eskimos have up
to 400 words forsnowFalse
False: this is known as the Great EskimoVocabulary Hoax which grew from asuggestion that there were four or more words
for snow and the number kept getting bigger!There are probably no more than 15 words infact and English has nearly that many!
True False
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Not all languages
have separate wordsfor ‘he’ and ‘she’
False
True: Finnish ‘hän’ covers heand she and most African
languages don’t make thedistinction.
TrueTrue
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And there is much,
much moreAs you can see languages are abig and interesting subject tostudy.And it is not just about learningnew languages. It’s about findingthe answers to many morequestions about language.
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