| Language |
Definition |
| CREOLE | a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated |
| DIALECT | a regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation |
| INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES | germanic, romance, balto-slavic, and indo-iranian languages are all part of the same indo-european language family and they all have commmon roots |
| ISOGLOSS | a boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate |
| LANGUAGE | a system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning |
| 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 relatibely few differences in grammar and vocabulary |
| LANGUAGE SUBFAMILY | a smaller group of languages within the language family that are related to one another through a common ancestor long before recorded history |
| LINGUA FRANCA | a language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages |
| LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY | the occurance of numerous languages that are spoken around the world |
| MONOLINGUAL/MULTILINGUAL | capable of communication in one (mono) language and (multi) capable of communication in more than one language, but not necessarily at the same level of proficiency
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| OFFICIAL LANGUAGE | an official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories |
| PIDGIN | a simplified, limited language combining features from many languages and used among persons who share no common language amongst themselves |
| TOPONYMY | the scientific study of place-names (toponyms), their origins, meanings, use and typology |
| TRADE LANGUAGE | also a pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of trade
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