Chapter Five Flashcards
Language
A system of communication through speech, movement, sounds, or symbols that a group of people understands to have the same meaning.
Centripetal Force
A force that tends to unify people.
Centrifugal Force
A force that tends to pull people apart.
Institutional Language
A language used in education, work, mass media, and government.
Developing Language
A language in daily use by people of all ages, from children to elderly individuals.
Vigorous Language
A language in daily use by people of all ages, but it lacks a literary tradition.
Threatened Language
A language used for face-to-face communication, but is losing users.
Dying Language
A language still used by older people, but is not being transmitted to children.
Literary Tradition
A language that is written as well as spoken.
Language Family
A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.
Language Branch
A collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago; differences are not as extensive or as old as between language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.
Language Group
A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display many similarities in grammar and vocabulary.
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.
Lingua Franca
A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.
Logograms
Symbols that represent words or meaningful parts of words.
Official Language
Language used by the government to enact legislation, publish documents, and conduct other public business. In some cases, the official language is the only one that is used in public schools.
Working Language
Designated by an international organization or corporation as its primary means of communication for daily correspondence and conversation.
Franglais
The mix of French and English.
Spanglish
The mix of Spanish and English.
Pidgin Language
A form of language that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages.
Dialect
A regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Subdialect
A subdivision of a dialect.
Received Pronunciation
The dialect of English commonly used by politicians broadcasters and actors in the UK.
Isogloss
A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.
African American Vernacular English
A dialect used by some African Americans.
Creole, or creolized language
A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.
Mutual Intelligibility
Refers to the ability of people speaking in two ways to readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort.
Endangered Language
A language that children are no longer learning, and its remaining speakers use it less frequently.
Isolated Language
Language that is unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family.
