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