- 1. What phonetic process in Romance languages describes the evolution of velar stops before a front vowel?
A) Palatalization
B) Assimilation
C) Gemination
D) Lenition
- 2. Which voiced labial consonants in Vulgar Latin developed a fricative [β] as an intervocalic allophone?
A) /b/ and /w/
B) /p/ and /m/
C) /k/ and /g/
D) /t/ and /d/
- 3. In which Romance languages did the fricative [β] later develop into a /v/?
A) Spanish, Galician, Catalan
B) Occitan, Romanian, Catalan
C) Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian
D) Sardinian, Sicilian, Italian
- 4. What is the name of the isogloss that divides Western Romance dialects from others regarding lenition?
A) Vulgar Line
B) La Spezia–Rimini Line
C) Roman Line
D) Celtic Line
- 5. What happened to single voiceless plosives in Western Romance languages due to lenition?
A) They became voiced: -p-, -t-, -c- > -b-, -d-, -g-
B) They became fricatives: -p-, -t-, -c- > -f-, -θ-, -x-
C) They disappeared entirely
D) They became voiceless: -b-, -d-, -g- > -p-, -t-, -c-
- 6. Which voiced plosives tended to disappear in Romance languages?
A) /p/ and /t/
B) /b/ and /w/
C) /k/ and /g/
D) /d/ and /ɡ/
- 7. What happened to the plain sibilant -s- [s] between vowels in many Romance languages?
A) It was devoiced to [s]
B) It became a fricative [ʃ]
C) It disappeared
D) It was voiced to [z]
- 8. In which modern language did intervocalic [z] later devoice back to [s]?
A) French
B) Spanish
C) Italian
D) Portuguese
- 9. What happened to double plosives in most Romance languages?
A) They became fricatives
B) They disappeared entirely
C) They remained double
D) They became single: -pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg- > -p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g-
- 10. In which Romance languages do long consonants like /bb/, /dd/, /ɡɡ/ have distinctive lexical value?
A) Occitan, Neapolitan, Romanesco
B) Spanish, Galician, Catalan
C) French, Portuguese, Romanian
D) Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, and other varieties of central and southern Italy
- 11. Which Romance language reintroduced /h/ due to adstrate influence?
A) Italian
B) Romanian
C) Spanish
D) French
- 12. What is the term for the 'aspirated h' in French, which is now silent?
A) h sonore
B) h fortis
C) h aspiré
D) h mute
- 13. In which Romance languages do the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ weaken to fricatives [ʃ] and [ʒ] between vowels?
A) Eastern Romance languages
B) Northern Italy
C) Much of central and southern Italy
D) Western Romance languages
- 14. In which dialects do double consonants exist only after stressed /ə/ and are not etymological?
A) Catalan
B) Romanesco
C) Occitan
D) Piedmontese
- 15. In standard Catalan and Occitan, what is the geminate sound written as ll?
A) /nː/
B) /lː/
C) /mː/
D) /rː/
- 16. Which consonants are long at the start of a word in some Italian dialects?
A) /b/, /ts/, and /dz/
B) /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/
C) /f/, /v/, and /ʃ/
D) /p/, /t/, and /k/
- 17. What is the result of the lenition of single voiceless plosives in some languages?
A) They became fricatives or approximants, [β̞], [ð̞], [ɣ˕]
B) They became voiced plosives
C) They became nasals
D) They disappeared entirely
- 18. Which consonant length is still phonemically distinctive in some Italian languages?
A) Voiced consonants like /b/, /d/, /g/
B) Fricatives like /f/, /v/, /s/
C) Long consonants like /bb/, /dd/, /ɡɡ/
D) Short consonants like /p/, /t/, /k/
- 19. In which Romance languages did the double sibilant -ss- remain phonetically and phonemically single?
A) Many languages, except some Italian languages like Italian, Sardinian, and Sicilian
B) French, Spanish, Portuguese
C) Neapolitan, Romanesco, Piedmontese
D) Romanian, Catalan, Occitan
- 20. What is the result of the lenition of voiced plosives /d/ and /ɡ/ in Romance languages?
A) They became nasals
B) They became voiceless plosives
C) They tended to disappear
D) They became fricatives
- 21. Which Romance languages did not merge reflexes of /b/ and /w/ into a single phoneme?
A) Romanian, Catalan, Occitan
B) Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian
C) Sardinian, Sicilian, Italian
D) Spanish, Galician, some Catalan and Occitan dialects
- 22. What happened to the sound /h/ in most Romance languages?
A) It became a voiced fricative
B) It remained unchanged
C) It became a voiceless fricative
D) It was lost but later reintroduced in some languages
- 23. Which Romance languages have regained secondary geminate consonants?
A) Spanish, Galician, Catalan
B) Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian
C) French, Portuguese, Romanian
D) Piedmontese, standard Catalan, and Occitan
- 24. Which branch of the Indo-European family do the Romance languages belong to?
A) The Slavic branch
B) The Celtic branch
C) The Germanic branch
D) The Italic branch
- 25. Which subfamily includes languages like Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French?
A) Eastern Romance
B) Italo-Western
C) North African Romance
D) Southern Romance
- 26. Which classification scheme is often used for Romance languages?
A) A network model
B) A linear model
C) A tree model
D) A circular model
- 27. Which Romance language is not considered part of the Italo-Western group?
A) Italian
B) French
C) Spanish
D) Old Corsican
- 28. What did Charlemagne impose as an artificial written vernacular for Western Europe?
A) Classical Latin
B) Medieval Latin
C) Vulgar Latin
D) Proto-Franco-Provençal
- 29. By which century had the Romance lects split apart enough to be considered separate languages?
A) By the 5th century
B) By the 12th century
C) By the 10th century
D) By the 8th century
- 30. What was the normal writing language used between the 5th and 10th centuries AD?
A) Classical Latin
B) Medieval Latin
C) Proto-Franco-Provençal
D) Vulgar Latin
- 31. Which is the earliest known text in a Romance vernacular?
A) The Indovinello Veronese
B) The Reichenau Glossary
C) The Vulgate of Jerome
D) The Oaths of Strasbourg
- 32. What major influence did the western dialects of Latin come under during the empire's decline?
A) Heavy Germanic influence
B) Slavic influence
C) Celtic influence
D) Greek influence
- 33. What is the typical sentence structure of Romance languages?
A) OVS
B) SVO
C) VSO
D) SOV
- 34. What percentage of all Romance language speakers live outside Europe today?
A) About two-thirds
B) About one-quarter
C) About one-third
D) About half
- 35. What type of influence did pre-Roman languages have on Romance languages?
A) Superstratum influence
B) No influence
C) Adstratum influence
D) Substratum influence
- 36. Which of the following languages is not considered a Romance language?
A) German
B) Italian
C) French
D) Spanish
- 37. Which of the following is not a primary grouping of Romance languages?
A) Gallo-Italic
B) Rhaeto-Romance
C) Occitano-Romance
D) Ibero-Romance
- 38. Which Romance language is spoken by the majority in the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia?
A) Spanish
B) French
C) Portuguese
D) English
- 39. Which Romance language is spoken by the majority in the Caribbean island of Aruba?
A) French
B) Portuguese
C) Dutch
D) Spanish
- 40. Which Romance language poet is known for using the vernacular in Italy?
A) William Shakespeare
B) Geoffrey Chaucer
C) Giovanni Boccaccio
D) Dante Alighieri
- 41. Which country expedited the transition from Latin to the vernacular by force of law?
A) Spain
B) Portugal
C) Italy
D) France
- 42. What was the original meaning of the Portuguese word 'fresta'?
A) Skylight
B) Window
C) Slit
D) Door
- 43. Which word in Portuguese is used for 'to dine' due to semantic changes in the 19th century?
A) Defenestrar
B) Frestra
C) Jantar
D) Cear
- 44. Which Italian pronoun is a cognate of other Romance words for 'she' but is rarely used?
A) Essa
B) Ella
C) Lei
D) Lui
- 45. From which Latin word does the Spanish 'ventana' originate?
A) Ventus
B) Ianus
C) Ianua
D) Fenestra
- 46. What is the meaning of the Latin root 'ianua'?
A) Room
B) Door
C) House
D) Window
- 47. Which word is a cognate of 'cenare' in Italian?
A) Defenestrar
B) Frestra
C) Cear
D) Jantar
- 48. What does the Portuguese word 'fresta' currently mean?
A) Window
B) Slit
C) Skylight
D) Door
- 49. Which Romance language has 'bentana' as a word for 'window'?
A) Mirandese
B) Asturian
C) Galician
D) Catalan
- 50. Which Latin word is the ancestor of the Portuguese word 'janela'?
A) Ianua
B) *Ianuella
C) Ventus
D) Fenestra
- 51. Which word is a later borrowing from Latin in Spanish and Portuguese?
A) Cear
B) Defenestrar
C) Jantar
D) Frestra
- 52. Which creole is spoken as a majority native language in Saint Lucia?
A) Antillean
B) Mauritian
C) Haitian
D) Seychellois
- 53. Which creole is one of Haiti's two official languages?
A) Mauritian
B) Antillean
C) Seychellois
D) Haitian
- 54. Which creole is the national language of Cape Verde?
A) Guinea-Bissau Creole
B) Cape Verdean
C) Forro
D) Angolar
- 55. Who developed the concept of a naturalistic international language based on Latin in 1903?
A) Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof
B) Giuseppe Peano
C) Ido
D) Volapük
- 56. What was the title of Giuseppe Peano's language project?
A) Latino sine flexione
B) Interlingua
C) Lingua Franca Nova
D) Idiom Neutral
- 57. Which constructed language is the most famous and successful among the Neo-Romance languages?
A) Interlingua
B) Interlingue-Occidental
C) Idiom Neutral
D) Lingua Franca Nova
- 58. Which final consonant was dropped in Vulgar Latin?
A) -n
B) -t
C) -m
D) -s
- 59. What is the result of the loss of final /s/ in northern Italy?
A) The diphthongs were simplified
B) The consonants were retained
C) The vowels were lengthened
D) The consonants became nasalized
- 60. In which language did the Proto-Romance loss of phonemic length produce a system with nine different quality distinctions in monophthongs?
A) Old French
B) Proto-Romance
C) Classical Latin
D) Modern Italian
- 61. What is the result of the Latin word 'caelum' in French?
A) cielo
B) ciel
C) cielo
D) céu
- 62. Which Latin diphthong merged with /eː/ in the word 'praeda'?
A) ui
B) oe
C) ae
D) au
- 63. In which Italian city is metaphony known to raise stressed /ɛ e ɔ o/ to /e i o u/ before final /i/ or /u/?
A) Milan
B) Servigliano
C) Rome
D) Naples
- 64. Which Romance language has metaphony triggered by final /u/ but not by final /o/?
A) French
B) Portuguese
C) Astur-Leonese
D) Italian
- 65. What is the result of the Latin word 'foedus' in Spanish?
A) fieno
B) heno
C) peine
D) feo
- 66. Which Latin word's transformation in French reflects an early merger with ō /oː/ rather than Classical cauda?
A) poenam
B) cōda
C) cauda
D) foedus
- 67. In which dialect is /ɛ ɔ/ diphthongized to /je wo/ before final /i/ or /u/?
A) Calvallo
B) Milan
C) Rome
D) Naples
- 68. What is the reflex of the Latin word 'aurum' in Romanian?
A) aur
B) caud
C) poena
D) foed
- 69. What is the French development of /ɔː oː/ in open syllables?
A) /we ew/ > /œ œ/
B) /aː uː/
C) /y ø/
D) /eː iː/
- 70. What is the four-vowel system in Tuscan (including standard Italian) in final unstressed syllables?
A) /a e i o/
B) /a e o u/
C) /a e i u/
D) /e i o u/
- 71. What happened to /u/ in final unstressed syllables in Spanish?
A) Merged into /i/
B) Merged into /a/
C) Merged into /o/
D) Merged into /e/
- 72. In primitive Old French, what happened to the two remaining vowels in final unstressed syllables?
A) Merged into /e/
B) Merged into /o/
C) Merged into /ə/
D) Merged into /a/
- 73. What is the Italian word for 'week' derived from 'septimā́nam'?
A) smana
B) setmana
C) settimana
D) semana
- 74. What is the French word for 'forge' derived from 'fábricam'?
A) farga
B) fragua
C) fábrica
D) forge
- 75. What is the French word for 'oath' derived from 'sacraméntum'?
A) sacrament
B) serment
C) sacramentum
D) sairement
- 76. What is the Italian word for 'self' derived from 'metipsissimus'?
A) medésimo
B) meïsme
C) medemo
D) meísmo
- 77. What was the result of 'disjējūnā́re' in Old French?
A) déjeune
B) desjune
C) disner
D) dîner
- 78. What is the French word for 'to help' derived from 'adjūtā́re'?
A) aiutare
B) aidà
C) ajuta
D) aider
- 79. What is the Portuguese word for 'to offer' derived from '*offerḗscere'?
A) offerīre
B) oferecer
C) ofrecer
D) offrir
- 80. What is the French word for 'Stephen' derived from 'Stéphanum'?
A) Estievne
B) Étienne
C) Stéphan
D) Esteban
- 81. What is the Spanish word for 'to arrange' derived from 'collocā́re'?
A) collocare
B) colgar
C) coucher
D) culca
- 82. What is the Portuguese word for 'goodness' derived from 'bonitā́tem'?
A) bondade
B) bontà
C) bonté
D) bonità
- 83. What is the French word for 'to lay sth on its side; put s.o. to bed' derived from 'collocā́re'?
A) coucher
B) colgar
C) collocare
D) culca
- 84. Which letter in the classical Latin alphabet was split into V (consonant) and U (vowel) in Romance languages?
A) V
B) W
C) Z
D) Y
- 85. Which letter is used in Catalan to represent Wikipedia, as opposed to Spanish?
A) Wikipedia
B) Viquipèdia
C) Viquipèdia
D) Wikipeida
- 86. In which Romance language does the letter 'J' represent the palatal approximant [j] in native words?
A) French
B) Romansh
C) Spanish
D) Portuguese
- 87. In which language does the letter 'X' represent the voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ]?
A) Italian
B) Portuguese
C) Spanish
D) Ligurian
- 88. Which letter represents the sound [j] before vowels in French and Spanish?
A) W
B) X
C) Y
D) Z
- 89. Which digraph is used in Italian and Romanian to represent /tʃ/ before A, O, or U?
A) DD
B) CI
C) GH
D) CH
- 90. Which digraph represents /dʒ/ in Walloon?
A) DZ
B) DD
C) DJ
D) DG
- 91. Which digraph is used in Italian to represent /ʎʎ/?
A) GN
B) GG
C) GH
D) GLI
- 92. Which digraph is used in Catalan for /ʃ/ between vowels?
A) TS
B) SH
C) IX
D) TX
- 93. Which digraph is used in Romansh for [ʃ] or [ʒ]?
A) TS
B) SCI
C) SCH
D) SS
- 94. Which digraph is used in Catalan for /tʃ/ at the beginning or end of a word?
A) TSCH
B) TZ
C) TX
D) TSH
- 95. Which digraph is used in Italian and Corsican to represent /dʒ/ before A, O, or U?
A) GG
B) GN
C) GH
D) GI
- 96. Which digraph is used in Portuguese and Occitan for /ɲ/?
A) NH
B) NY
C) NN
D) NJ
- 97. Which digraph is used in Romansh for [c] or [tɕ]?
A) TG
B) TS
C) TX
D) TZ
- 98. Which digraph is used in Catalan for /dz/?
A) TX
B) TSH
C) TZ
D) TS
- 99. Which letter represents the sound [ʒ] in most Romance languages?
A) G
B) Q
C) J
D) H
- 100. Which letter represents the sound [ʃ] in modern Catalan and Portuguese?
A) X
B) Z
C) Y
D) W
|