Language key terms
accent | A way of pronouncing words that indicates the place of origin or social background of the speaker. |
Agriculture Theory | theory of the diffusion of the Proto-Indo-European language into Europe through the innovation of agriculture (being more efficient than hunting and gathering). Its hearth is around modern day Anatolia (in Turkey; Renfrew Hypothesis - Colin Renfrew) |
artifact | an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest |
bilingualism | the ability to communicate in two languages |
British Received Pronunciation (BRP) | The dialect of England associated with upper class Britons living in the London area and now considered standard in the UK. |
Conquest Theory | theory of the diffusion of the Proto-Indo-European language into Europe through the speakers’ overpowering of earlier inhabitants through warfare and technology (e.g., fighting on horseback). Its hearth is around modern day Ukraine (Kurgan Hypothesis - Marija Gimbutas) |
Convergence (of languages) | collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages |
creole/creolization | A language that results from the mixing of the colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated. |
cultural transmission | the process by which one generation passes culture to the next |
deep reconstruction | technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to re-create the language that preceded it |
Denglish | A term used for the diffusion of English words into German |
dialect | A regional variation of a language in vocabulary and pronunciation. |
diffusion (of languages) | movement of languages through migration (for hearths see the original locations of the major language families) |
divergence (of languages) | when a language breaks into dialects due to a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language, and continued isolation causes new languages to be formed |
ebonics | dialect spoken by some African Americans |
Esperanto | a constructed international language developed in the late 1880s and promoted after World War I to be a universal second language (lingua franca) to foster peace; Although thousands still speak this language, it is not widespread (mostly resembles an Indo-European language, and therefore, not a global tongue) |
extinct language | A language once used by people in daily activites but is no longer used. |
Franglais | A term used by French for English words that have entered the French language. |
Hispanicization | process whereby the number of Hispanics is increasing in the U.S.; currently the largest minority group in the U.S. |
ideogram | System of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a sound, as is the case for English. |
isogloss | A boundary that seperates regions in which different language uses predominate |
isolated language | Language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any family |
language | A system of communication through the use of speech, collection of sounds and understood by a group of people to have the same meaning. |
language branch | A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family. |
language family | A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history. |
language group | A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary. |
language replacement (extinction) | obliteration of an entire culture through war, disease, assimilation, or any combination of the three |
lingua franca | A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages. |
linguistic fragmentation | a condition in which many languages are spoken, each by a relatively small number of people |
linguistic geography | the study of speech areas and their local variations by mapping word choices, pronunciations, or grammatical constructions |
literary tradition | a language that is written as well as spoken |
mentifact | shared ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture, especially pertaining to religion or language |
modern linguistic mosaic - literacy, technology, political organization | three areas of innovation have shaped the location and nature of language in the modern world … literacy, technology (e.g., Gutenberg’s printing press), and political organization (e.g., nation-states that set up linguistic laws) |
monolingual state | country in which only one language is primarily spoken (e.g., Portugal, Japan, Venezuela, Poland, …) |
multilingualism | the ability to communicate in more than two languages |
Nostratic | hypothesized ancestral language of Proto-Indo-European, as well as other ancestral language families |
official language | A language adopted for use by the government for conduct of business and publication of documents. |
pidgin language | A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocab of a Lingua Franca, used for communications among speakers of different languages. |
pre-literate societies | cultures without any written language (most of the more than 6,000 world language are unwritten) |
Proto-Indo-European | hypothesized ancestral Indo-European language that is the hearth of the ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages |
revived language | a language that dissolved (extinct) and was subsequently resurrected |
sociofact | structures and organizations of a culture which influence social behavior, including families, governments, education systems, sport organizations |
sound shift | slight change in a word across related languages from the present backward toward its origin |
Spanglish | A combination of english and spanish. |
standard language | A form of a language used for official government business, education and mass communications. |
sub-family | group of languages with more commonality than a language family (indicates they have branched off more recently in history) |
toponymy | the study of place names |
Vulgar Latin | A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents |