A1          SEMINAR 1 – Answer Key

                                   Language


Task 2 (in millions)

1. CHINESE (MANDARIN) — 885

2. SPANISH — 332

3. ENGLISH — 322

4. Bengali – 189

5. Hindi – 182

6. Portuguese – 170

7. Russian – 170

8. Japanese – 125

9. German (standard) –  98

10. Chinese (Wu) – 77

73. Czech – 12


Task 3

a) (They planted the tree.) Creole – a language based on two or more languages (Spanish, French,
English) that serves as the native language of its speakers, especially in the Caribbean, southern
US, and South America.

b) Bad English (Correct - I can’t even tell you how bad a mood I’m in. Or – I can’t even tell you
in how bad a mood I am.)

c) Correct

d) Bad English (It was written in the newspapers that the cinema was closed.)

e) Correct

f) (One man comes; six men come.) Pidgin – simplified speech used for communication between people
with different languages; Pidgin English – an English based on pidgin, especially in parts of the
Orient.


Task 5

APPARENT         - not clear or certain (For now, he is the apparent winner of the contest.)

                - obvious (The solution to the problem was apparent to all.)

CONSULT           - ask for advice

- give advice

DUST                    - remove fine particles,  remove dust (as in cleaning furniture)

- add fine particles, to apply dust (as in fingerprinting)

OVERLOOK        - to pay attention to, to inspect, to be in charge of

-  to ignore, to miss

QUITE                                   - rather, completely

- not completely (quite empty means totally empty, while quite full means not completely full)

VITAL                    - lively

- deadly (?) of very serious importance


Task 6

DRIVE   see

CUT       hit

WRITE  see

THROW see

LET        hit

SPLIT    hit

How many inflections do the majority of verbs have?  (4 - play, plays, played, playing)

How many inflections does the verb TO BE have? (8 – am, are, be, been, being, is, was, were)


Task 7

According to any textbook, the present tense of the verb drive is drive. Every secondary school
pupil knows that. Yet if we say, "I used to drive to work but now I don't", we are clearly using
the present tense drive in the past tense sense. Equally if we say, "I will drive you to work
tomorrow", we are using it in a future sense. And if we say, "I would drive if I could afford to",
we are using it in a conditional sense. In fact, almost the only form of sentence in which we
cannot use the present tense form for drive is, yes, the present sense. When we need to indicate an
action going on right now, we must use the participial form driving. We don't say, "I drive the car
now", but rather, "I'm driving the car now". Not to put too fine a point on it, the labels are
largely meaningless.


Task 8

1 about 6800 languages   2 4000 are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people  3 about half are endangered



Task 10


a) full stop

b) abbreviation

c) inverted commas

d) comma

e) italics

 f) stroke

g) bracket

h) small letter

i) hyphen

j) asterisk

k) capital letter

l) colon

m) question mark

n) apostrophe



Task 11


1. He speaks English well enough to get by in an English speaking country.

2. Have you ever been to the U.S.A?

3. Let’s discuss this issue over lunch. (no preposition)

4. If you don’t understand a  word, look it up in the dictionary.

5. I’d like to introduce Mr Maiden to you.

6. We met at a conference two years ago.

7. She translates from Czech into English.

8. I need to take a course to brush up my German.

9. Excuse me, would you by any chance be Mr Atkinson?

10. I study Spanish and Portuguese at Masaryk University.


CROSSWORD


1. Dialect

2. Tongue

3. Sarcasm

4. Proverb

5. Synonym

6. cliché

7. Pronunciation

8. Antonym

9. Slang

10. Vocabulary

11. Accent

12. Jargon

13. Sentence

14. Idioms