What is a language group?

• A. A single language
• B. A collection of dialects within a single language with no differences
• C. A collection of languages within a language branch that share a recent common origin and have relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary
• D. An unrelated set of languages

Answer: (C)

A language group is a collection of languages within the same branch of a language family that share a relatively recent common origin and retain similarities in grammar and vocabulary. Because these languages all descended from a common ancestor, they look and sound familiar in many ways, even though they have diverged enough to be distinct languages. For example, the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian) are separate languages, but they all come from Latin and thus share many structural features and common vocabulary. This differs from a single language, which is just one code, and from dialects, which are regional varieties of that one language with smaller differences. It also isn’t an unrelated set of languages from different branches, which would lack that shared origin.