Chapter 5 Language Vocabulary
By: Ellie and Christina
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.
If the Native Americans (the indigenous people) mixed their language with the colonizer's language (the pilgrims), they would have created a creolized language. Since they did not mix, a creole was not formed.
Dialect
A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Or you could say...
"Ya'll know 'bout dem regional differences?"
This is an example of a Southern dialect of English.
Extinct Language
A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.
The Gothic language went extinct when many people began to speak Latin. The elderly speaker of Gothic stopped teaching it to their descendants, and the language became extinct.
Pictured above is the Gothic alphabet.
Isogloss
A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.
Above is a dialect map of the United States. Each boundary on the map is an isogloss, because it seperates the regions in which a different dialect is used.
Isolated Language
A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.
Basque is an example of an isolated language. It has survived since before the beginning of the Indo-European languages. About 660,000 people speak it in the Pyrenees Mountains. It has not been influenced by other languages because of it's isolation in the mountains. The isolation has helped the language survive.
Pictured above is a sign written in Basque.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.
hello -English
hola- Spanish
bonjour -French
你好- Chinese
こんにちは -Japanese
привет -Russian
These are examples of different languages. Each symbol represents a different sound that a group of people understand.
Language Family
A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor that existed long before recorded history.
Pictured above is the "family tree" for languages. The "trunks" of the trees located above the black line are the language families. The English language is in the Indo-European language family. This means that English is related to every other language under that language family.
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.
Use the picture located under Language Families for reference. The languages in each language branch are more closely related than the languages in the language families. English is located under the Germanic Branch.
Lingua Franca
A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.
An example of a lingua franca would be English. It is the language for international communication. Another example would be the Language of the franks. It was used by Arab Traders to communicate with Europeans, whom they called Franks. Many people think that learning a Lingua Franca will help them work in a global economy and participate in global culture.
Crazy English at HUSE
In this video, it shows how many people want to speak perfect English to have a better life.
Pidgin Language
A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages.
In a pidgin there are rules and grammar from a lingua franca and some elements of their own languages. It has no native speakers because it is spoken in addition to ones native language. An example would be West African Pidgin English. It is used extensively between several ethnic groups along the West African Coast.