Author Question: What is an isolated language? What will be an ideal response?[br][br][b][color=black]Question ... (Read 26 times)

chandani · **on:** Jul 14, 2018

What is an isolated language?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

What is a language and how does a language family differ from a language branch and language group?

What will be an ideal response?

catron30 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 14, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Answer: An isolated language is a language unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family. The best example in Europe is Basque, apparently the only language currently spoken in Europe that survives from the period before the arrival of Indo-European speakers. Basque may have once been spoken over a wider area but was abandoned where its speakers came in contact with Indo-European languages.

Another example of an isolated language is Japanese which is unrelated to other language families. Today, Japanese is written primarily with Chinese characters.

Answer to Question 2

Answer: Language: A language is a system of communication through speech. It is a collection of sounds that a group of people understands to have the same meaning. Not all languages have a written tradition, but many languages have a literary tradition, or a system of written communication. Approximately 85 languages are spoken by at least 10 million people, and 304 languages by between 1 million and 10 million people. There are over 6,000 languages in the world today, which can be classified into families, branches, and groups. It is estimated that only around 100 of these languages are used by more than 5 million people.

A language Family: A language family is a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.

A language branch: A language branch is a collection of languages within a family related through
a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago. Differences between language branches are not as extensive or as old as between language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

A language group: A Language group is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.