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Listen to an Academic Talk Test #065
Listen to an Academic Talk
1. What is the lecture mainly about?
A) The history of the Basque people
B) Methods for learning new languages
C) A specific category of languages
D) The Indo-European language family
2. According to the lecturer, what defines a language isolate?
A) It is spoken by very few people
B) It has a very simple grammar
C) It has no known linguistic relatives
D) It has not changed for centuries
3. What does the lecturer imply about most languages?
A) They are related to at least one other language
B) They are difficult for linguists to study
C) They are spoken by large populations
D) They originated in the same part of the world
4. Why does the lecturer mention the Basque language?
A) To provide a well-known example of a language isolate
B) To argue that it is the world's oldest language
C) To describe its influence on Spanish and French
D) To explain how new language families are formed
Lecturer: Most languages belong to large families, like the Indo-European family that includes English, Spanish, and Hindi. But some languages are unique. We call them language isolates. A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other living language. They are effectively language families with only one member. The most famous example in Europe is Basque, which is spoken in a region between Spain and France. Despite being surrounded by Indo-European languages for thousands of years, Basque shares no common ancestor with them. Its vocabulary and grammar are completely different. Studying isolates like Basque is challenging for historical linguists because we can't use the comparative method to reconstruct their history. This makes their origins a profound mystery and highlights the incredible diversity of human language.
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