1. 1.What is a language family?

2. A group of languages that came from the same ancestor language and have words in common.

3. 2. How do we know which languages belong to the same language family?

4. They will have borrowed words, cognates, and similar language functions.

5. 3.Why are there language families?

6. Over time languages change and develop into new languages but they will keep basic, common characteristics from their original/ancestor language.

7. 4.What languages are closely related to French, and why?

8. Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, and Italian are closely related to French because they are all on the Romance Branch. They all evolved from Latin.

9. 5. Below are the words for water in some languages from two branches of Indo- European languages. Can you determine which of them is a Germanic language and which a Slavic language? Complete the chart that follows listing the languages in the appropriate column.

10. GuessAnswerGuessAnswer German -- wasser Russian -- voda English -- water Czech -- voda Danish -- Vand Polish -- woda

11. 6.English, French, German, and Spanish all belong to what language family?

12. English, French, German, and Spanish all belong to the Indo- European language family.

13. 7.Does Chinese belong to this same family? Why or why not?

14. No, Chinese belongs to the Sino- Tibetan family of languages.