Language glossary: 53 terms explained
Plain-English definitions of the words used about languages, their speakers and how they are mapped. Every term with a page of its own shows what it means on the map and uses real figures from Glottolog and the Glottography atlases.
39 of the 53 terms have a page of their own. The rest are defined here, with a link to the page that covers them where there is one.
Languages and families
- Accent vs dialectAn accent is a way of pronouncing a language.
- Constructed languageA constructed language is a language deliberately designed by a person or group instead of developing naturally in a community. Esperanto is the best-known example. Such languages are not on this map, which covers living spoken languages.
- Creole languageA creole language is a full language that grew out of a pidgin when children began learning it as their first language.
- DialectA dialect is a variety of a language with its own pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, usually tied to a region or social group.
- Dialect continuumA dialect continuum is a chain of related language varieties across an area in which neighbouring varieties understand each other, but differences build up with distance, so speakers at the far ends may not be understood at all.
- LanguageA language is a system of sounds, words and grammar that a community uses to communicate, signed or spoken.
- Language branchA language branch, or subfamily, is a smaller group inside a language family whose members share a more recent common ancestor.
- Language contactLanguage contact is what happens when speakers of different languages live close enough to influence one another. It can lead to borrowed words, shared sounds and grammar, bilingualism, and sometimes new languages such as pidgins and creoles, or the loss of one language.
- Language familyA language family is a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor, called a proto-language.
- Language isolateA language isolate is a language with no demonstrated genetic relationship to any other language, so it forms a family of one.
- Language vs dialectA dialect is a variety of a language tied to a place or social group, but there is no neutral rule for when a variety counts as a separate language.
- LoanwordA loanword is a word that one language has taken from another and at least partly assimilated, such as English "bazaar" from Persian.
- MacrolanguageA macrolanguage is an ISO 639-3 grouping of closely related language varieties that are often treated as one language, such as Arabic, Chinese and Norwegian.
- Mutual intelligibilityMutual intelligibility is the degree to which speakers of related language varieties can understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort.
- PidginA pidgin is a simplified contact language that develops between groups with no shared language, often for trade.
- Proto-languageA proto-language is the reconstructed common ancestor of a language family, the speech from which its member languages are thought to descend.
- SprachbundA sprachbund, or linguistic area, is a group of languages that share features because their speakers have lived close together and in contact, not because the languages come from one common ancestor.
Speakers and status
- BilingualismBilingualism is the use of two languages, either by one person or by a whole community.
- Endangered languageAn endangered language is one at risk of falling out of use, usually because its speakers are shifting to another language and children are no longer learning it.
- Extinct languageAn extinct language is one with no living native speakers.
- How many languages are theremap pageEstimates vary because the line between a language and a dialect is partly a judgement, and sources count differently.
- Indigenous languageAn Indigenous language is a language native to a region and spoken by its Indigenous peoples.
- L1 vs L2 speakersAn L1 speaker has the language as a first language, learned from early childhood.
- Language hotspotA language hotspot is a place with an unusually large number of different languages.
- Language revitalisationLanguage revitalisation is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language, or to revive one that has fallen out of use.
- Lingua francaA lingua franca is a language used regularly to communicate between people who do not share a native language.
- Minority languageA minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory.
- Most spoken languagesmap pageThe most spoken languages are ranked by their number of speakers, but rankings depend on whether only first-language speakers are counted and on which source is used.
- Mother tongueMother tongue usually means the language a person first learned as a child, but different countries and statistics use the term differently.
- MultilingualismMultilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by one speaker or by a group of speakers.
- National languageA national language is a language that is recognised as part of a country's identity or heritage, which may or may not be the language its government uses for official business.
- Native speakerA native speaker is someone who learned a language from early childhood as their first language, rather than learning it later at school or as an adult.
- Official languageAn official language is a language that a country's government gives special status, so it is used in laws, courts, schools and public services.
- Regional languageA regional language is a language tied to a particular part of a country rather than to the whole of it.
- UNESCO endangerment levelsUNESCO grades a language's vitality on six levels: safe, vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.
Writing and signing
- AbjadAn abjad is a writing system in which each symbol stands for a consonant and vowels are left out or only optionally marked. Arabic and Hebrew are the best-known examples.
- AbugidaAn abugida is a writing system in which each symbol stands for a consonant plus a default vowel, with other vowels shown by marks added to that symbol. Devanagari and Ethiopic are well-known examples.
- Agglutinative languageAn agglutinative language builds words by attaching a string of separate parts, each carrying one meaning, to a root. Turkish, Finnish and Swahili are commonly given as examples.
- AlphabetAn alphabet is a writing system in which separate symbols stand for individual consonant and vowel sounds. The Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts are alphabets. Strictly, a script is the set of symbols and an alphabet is one way of using them.
- Logographic writingLogographic writing uses symbols that each stand for a whole word or meaningful unit, not for a single sound. Chinese characters are the best-known example, though they also carry some information about sound.
- Script vs languageA script is the set of symbols used to write, and a language is the system of speech it records. One language can use several scripts, and one script can write many languages, so the two should not be confused.
- Sign languageA sign language is a language that uses the visual-manual modality, hand movements combined with facial expression and body posture, instead of spoken words.
- Tonal languageA tonal language uses pitch to tell words apart, so the same syllable spoken with a different tone can mean something different. Mandarin Chinese and Yoruba are commonly cited examples.
- Word order (SOV, SVO)Word order is the usual sequence of subject, verb and object in a sentence. English is SVO (subject, verb, object), while Japanese and Turkish are SOV. Some languages allow flexible order.
- Writing systemA writing system is a set of visible symbols and rules used to record a language. Scripts such as the Latin alphabet or Chinese characters are writing systems, and one language can be written in more than one.
The data
- CLDR territory dataCLDR territory data is the part of Unicode's Common Locale Data Repository that records which languages are spoken in each country or territory and roughly what share of the population uses each. Our country pages draw on it for the share of people speaking the top language.
- EthnologueEthnologue is an annual reference catalogue of the world's living languages, published by SIL Global.
- GlottocodeA Glottocode is the unique, persistent identifier that Glottolog gives to each language, dialect or family.
- GlottologGlottolog is a catalogue of the world's languages, dialects and language families, run by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ISO 639-3 codeAn ISO 639-3 code is a three-letter code that identifies one language, such as cym for Welsh.
- Language areaA language area is the region where a language has traditionally been spoken, as drawn in a published atlas.
- LanguoidA languoid is a general word for any language-like unit that a catalogue lists: a dialect, a language or a language family.
- Source atlasA source atlas is a published book or map collection from which a language's area was taken.