Appetizer Collage
Charlotte Wong and Gabriel Yonkoski
Language
a system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people that have the same meaning. The Hobbits speak mostly the human tongue and elvish.
Isolated language
a language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family. The language of Mordor is called Elvish, but it is not, as Mordor has long been separated by mountains and a army of orcs and nazguls and ring wraiths and Sauron's other minions
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. Germanic is a branch that includes English, German, and Dutch.
language family
A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history. Dravidian is a language family that includes Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada.
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. Russian and Polish are part of the same language group.
Lingua Franca
a language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages. English is spoken in most of the world and is the language of business.
Literary Tradition
a language that is written as well as spoken. Korean has a character based writing system
Official language
the language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents. Japanese is the official language of Japan.
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.