37 Talking about languages

A Some major world language families

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. [major group of languages in
Europe and parts of Asia] English is part of the Germanic group of languages within the Indo-
European family, along with, for example, Swedish and Dutch.
Other Indo-European language groups include Indo-Iranian, Romance and Slavic, and Semitic
languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.

in writing

family name examples

Sino-Tibetan Chinese, Burmese
Indo-Iranian Hindi, Farsi, Bengali
Romance Spanish, Romanian, French
Altaic Japanese, Korean, Turkish
yazl olarak
Austronesian Malay, Filipino, Maori
Slavic Polish, Russian, Bulgarian
Semitic Arabic, Hebrew
Dravidian Malayalam, Tamil
Austro-Asiatic Vietnamese, Khmer

B Specialist terms for talking about language

Syntax: the grammar and word order
Different languages express modality in different ways. [meanings such as possibility and
necessity] English does it with modal verbs like must, could and should.
Phonology: the sound system, i.e. pronunciation and intonation
All languages have phonemes, such as /b/ and /v/. [different sounds that distinguish meanings]
English has ten diphthongs. [sounds made by combining vowels, such as /e/ and /a/]
Lexicon: specialised term for vocabulary
English derives much of its vocabulary from Graeco-Latin words as well as Anglo-Saxon
words. [originally from Greek and Latin] [language of England from 5001000 AD]
Orthography: specialised term for writing systems and spelling
The English alphabet has 26 characters. [letters or symbols] Some writing systems, such as
Chinese, are not alphabetic but have pictograms or ideograms. [characters representing pictures]
[characters representing ideas/concepts]
Morphology: how words are formed
In English, there are three morphemes in unthinkable: un, think and able. [units of meaning]
C Other useful words for talking about language
Many words in English are polysemous. [they have a number of different meanings] The meaning
will usually be clear from its context. [the language or situation around it]
Words are often used in a metaphorical way a way that is not literal, e.g. to see the light
meaning to understand something rather than literally to see a light.
Language usage inevitably changes with time. [the way words are used] Some words become
obsolete while new words are coined. [fall out of use] [of words, created]
Any language has a number of different registers. [style of language used in a particular situation,
e.g. formal, informal] Jargon is used to describe a specific type of language that is used by a
particular group of people sharing a job or interest, e.g. military jargon, computer jargon.

80 English Vocabulary in Use Advanced