| A | B |
|---|
| Creole/Creolized language | A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated. |
| Denglish | A combination of German and English. |
| Dialect | A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. |
| Ebonics | A 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. |
| Ideograms | The system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound, as in the case with letters in English. |
| Indo-European languages | Language family of which its languages are spoken by half of the world's population which includes Germanic, Romance, and Slavic subfamilies. |
| 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/subfamily | 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. |
| Linguistic diversity | Where a variety of languages are spoken within a particular area. |
| Literary tradition | A language that is written as well as spoken. |
| Logogram | A symbol that represents a word rather than a sound. |
| Monolingual | Describes states where only one language is spoken. |
| Multilingual | Describes states where more than one language is 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 France; used for communications among speakers of two different languages. |
| Received Pronunciation (RP) | The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in London and now considered standard in the United Kingdom. |
| Spanglish | A 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. |
| Trade language | Also referred to as a lingua franca. |
| 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. |
