WARM UP about LANGUAGES

You can use the questions below as a WARM UP ACTIVITY to check your students' knowledge about languages. 

Answer the following questions:

1. How many languages are there in the world?

1. Between 200 and 300
2. Between 2000 and 3000
3. Between 6000 and 7000

2. How many indigenous languages are there in Europe?

1. Between 5 and 10
2. Between 50 and 100
3. Between 200 and 300

3. In which two continents are most of the world’s languages spoken?

4. What percentage of the world’s population is bilingual or plurilingual?

1. About 20%
2. About 40%
3. More than 50%

5. How often do Europeans come across foreign languages?

1. Once in a blue moon
2. Every now and then
3. Very often

6. How many words do many languages have?

1. A few hundred
2. A few thousand
3. 50,000

7. Do languages affect each other? Why?

8. In its first year a baby utters a wide range of vocal sounds; how many words does he/she possess at five?

1. Several hundred
2. Several thousand
3. Several million

9. How many languages are spoken in London alone?

1. between 30 and 50
2. about 300
3. about 3000

10. What is a “mother tongue”?

11. What are the benefits of bilingualism?

12. Most …………………. languages belong to the Indo-European family.

13. Most …………………. languages belong to the three broad groups: Germanic, Romance and Slavic.

14. Can you name three Germanic languages?

15. Can you name three Romance languages?

16. Can you name three Slavic languages?

17. Can you name three alphabets?

KEY

1.There are between 6000 and 7000 languages in the world - spoken by 7 billion people divided into 189 independent states.

2.There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe - roughly 3% of the world’s total.

3. Most of the world’s languages are spoken in Asia and Africa.

4. At least half of the world’s population is bilingual or plurilingual, i.e. they speak two or more languages.

5. In their daily lives Europeans increasingly come across foreign languages.

6. Many languages have 50,000 words or more, but individual speakers normally know and use only a fraction of the total vocabulary: in everyday conversation people use the same few hundred words.

7. Languages are constantly in contact with each other and affect each other in many ways: English borrowed words and expressions from many other languages in the past and European languages are now borrowing many words from English.

8. In its first year a baby utters a wide range of vocal sounds; at around one year the first understandable words are uttered; at around three years complex sentences are formed; at five years a child possesses several thousand words.

9. Due to the influx of migrants and refugees, Europe has become largely multilingual. In London alone some 300 languages are spoken (Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, Berber, Hindi, Punjabi, etc.).

10. The mother tongue is usually the language one knows best and uses most. But there can be “perfect bilinguals” who speak two languages equally well. Normally, however, bilinguals display no perfect balance between their two languages.

11. Bilingualism brings with it many benefits: it makes the learning of additional languages easier, enhances the thinking process and fosters contacts with other people and their cultures.

Bilingualism and plurilingualism entail economic advantages, too: jobs are more easily available to those who speak several languages, and multilingual companies have a better competitive edge than monolingual ones.

12. Languages are related to each other like the members of a family. Most European languages belong to the large Indo-European family.

13. Most European languages belong to three broad groups: Germanic, Romance and Slavic.

14. The Germanic family of languages includes Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Dutch, English and Yiddish, among others.

15. The Romance languages include Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, among others.

16. The Slavic languages include Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and others.

17. Most European languages use the Latin alphabet. Some Slavic languages use the Cyrillic alphabet. Greek, Armenian, Georgian and Yiddish have their own alphabet.