Uto-Aztecan languages

High school (ages 12+)
People & Society

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/uto-aztecan-languages

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What are Uto-Aztecan languages?They are a family of about 30 languages spoken by millions of people across North America, from the Great Basin in the United States to Central Mexico.
2. Where did the Uto-Aztecan languages originate?They likely started in the southwestern United States about 5,000 years ago and then spread across the continent.

Linguistic Phylogeny: The study of the historical relationships between languages, tracing their descent from common ancestral languages.
Language Isolate: A language that has no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other known language.
Lexical Borrowing: The process by which words from one language are adopted into another language.
Language Revitalization: Efforts to increase the number of speakers of a language that is endangered or has few speakers.