Africa Mother Tongues Discussion

/in /by

Constant Change – Mother Tongues

[Episode 3] Video Guide

on Kanopy Films

1. What two reasons are given for Africa having such a rich diversity of languages

a.

b.

2. How long ago

a. might Swahili have been spoken?

b. And what does the word mean?

3. How did Bantu languages spread?

4. Khoisan languags:

a. What are the Khoisan languages best known for?

b. How did the Zulu and Xhosa pick up Khoisan language?

5. Why does Oceania contain about 1/4 of the world’s language diversity?

6. Mandarin and Cantonese share many root words but what makes them be considered a different language by people outside of China?

7. Which language in Europe is an isolate from the other Indo-European languages?

8. French affected English through which part (class or caste) of society?

9. Why has “hip-hop” developed into such a strong dialect of “black” English?

10. What did linguists discover about Native American languages that they did not expect at first?Mother Tongues Video Guide.pdf