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19 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
dialect
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Local or regional charateristics of a language
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Indo-European languages
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A language group that is spoken by about half the world's peoples and includes English, the most widely used language in this group.
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isogloss
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A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs
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language
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a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, gestures, marks, or especially articulate vocal sounds
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language family
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A group of language subfamilies that identifies languages that are similar and come from the same origin
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language subfamily
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A group of language groups that more clearly defines the resemblance between two languages
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language group
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The smallest class of languages that consists of sets of individual languages and their similarities to other languages in the same group.
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linguistic diversification
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The ability to speak different languages and the languages that are prominent in a country
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preliterate society
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A society that cannot write out the language that they use and can only speak it in order to communicate
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standard language
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The variant of a language that a country's political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in school, government, the media, and other aspects of life
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creole
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Ethnic term first applied in the Caribbean region to the native-born descendants of the Spanish conquerors and their local consorts
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creolization
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In a linguistic context, the process describing the convergence of two or more languages, forming a serperate, new language
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Esperanto
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A made-up Latin-based language, which its European proponents in the early twentieth century hoped would become a global language
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lingua franca
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A term deriving from "Frankish language" and appling to a toung spoken in ancient Mediterranean ports that consisted of a mixture of Italian, French, Greek, Spanisdh, and even some Arabic. today, it refers to a "common language" a second language that can be spoken and understood by many people.
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monolingual states
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Countries in which only one language is spoken and used to communicate
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multilingual states
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Countries in which more that one language is spoken and used to communicate, even though there is a primary language.
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official language
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In multilingual countries the language selected, often by the educated and politically powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion, and usually the language of the courts and the government
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pidgin
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A lingua franca that has been simplified and modified through contant with other languages.
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toponymy
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The study of the origins and meaning of place-names.
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