--- title: The big language quiz — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The big language quiz», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: This is the last lesson of the language course: a big quiz that visits everything, from word classes and plurals to British and American words, Vik --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / The big language quiz # The big language quiz Lesson 40 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/0/) — This is the last lesson of the language course: a big quiz that visits everything, from word classes and plurals to British and American words, Vikings, Mandarin tones and Ukrainian cases. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/1/) — Think of it as a family quiz night: Grandad shouts the questions from the kitchen, everybody grabs a pencil, and every answer can be checked, letter by letter or rule by rule. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/2/) — Along the way you have seen that every language and every dialect is a full, working system: "arvo" in Sydney, "craic" in Dublin, "cwtch" in Cardiff, "Мамо!" in Kyiv and "mā" in Beijing all do their job perfectly. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/3/) — Languages keep changing, borrowing and playing, so the best language skill is curiosity: notice odd words, ask what they mean and enjoy how people talk. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/4/) — An adverb describes a verb, often telling how something happens: in "She ran quickly", "quickly" is an adverb. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/5/) — Some plurals don't add -s: goose becomes geese, mouse becomes mice, child becomes children, and sheep and moose stay the same. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/6/) — "Its" with no apostrophe means belonging to it ("The dog wagged its tail"); "it's" means it is or it has. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/7/) — Some verbs have irregular past tenses: bring becomes brought, catch becomes caught, and swim becomes swam. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/8/) — British biscuit, pavement and lift are American cookie, sidewalk and elevator. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/9/) — "They", "sky" and "egg" came from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, who settled in England from about 800 AD. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/10/) — "Arvo" means afternoon in Australia, "craic" means fun or a good time in Ireland, and "cwtch" means a hug or cuddle in Wales. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/11/) — A comma can save Grandma: "Let's eat, Grandma" talks to Grandma; "Let's eat Grandma" sounds like she is dinner. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/12/) — In Mandarin, "mā" (high, flat tone) means mother and "mǎ" (dipping tone) means horse; the tone makes them different words. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/13/) — Ukrainian has seven cases; the vocative is the case for calling someone, so you call your mum "Мамо!". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/40-the-big-language-quiz/14/) — "Emoji" is Japanese: "e" means picture and "moji" means character; the likeness to "emotion" is a coincidence. - ← previous: [Talking well: politeness, listening and saying sorry](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/39-talking-well-politeness-listening-and-saying-sorry/) - next →: [Alice's word games: puns, parodies and nonsense](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/41-alice-s-word-games-puns-parodies-and-nonsense/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)