CLICK HERE TO TRY MARTIN’S NEW & IMPROVED VOCABULARY PAGES: WWW.MARTINSAPHUG.COM
British received pronunciation – 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 distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation
Ebonics – Dialect spoken by some African-Americans. Economic
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 franfais and anglai.” the French words for “French” and “English,” respectively
Isogloss – A boundary that separates regions in which different
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 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
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
