British Received Pronunciation (BRP)
the dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in the London area and now considered standard in the United Kingdom.
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, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation; also a form of a language spoken by members of a particular social class or profession.
Ebonics
dialect spoken by some African Americans.
extinct language
a language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.
Franglais
a term used by the French for English words that have entered the French language, a combination of francais and anglais. the French words for "French" and "English," respectively.
ideograms
the system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case with letters in English.
isogloss
a boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.
isolated language
a language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.
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 branch
a collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. differences are not as extensive or old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that these 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.
lingua franca
a language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages
literary tradition
a language that is written as well as spoken
official language
the language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.
pidgin language
a form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages.
Spanglish
combination of Spanish and English, spoken by Hispanic-Americans.
standard language
the form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications.
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.