| Term | Definition | Example |
| Language Extinction | Language is no longer in use | Mohawk Dutch (North America) |
| Pidgin | language+another language= Pidgin! | Pidgin IM service, AOL and others all together |
| Dialects | Languages differ from place to place | Spanish in Spain and Mexico |
| Language Family | Collection of languages that all came from one original language | Germanic |
| Creole | Main Pidgin language of a group of people | Manglish: An English based creole spoken in Malaysia |
| Official Languages | government business occurs in this | Ukraine: Ukrainian |
| Sino-Tibetan Family | Language area (Southeast Asia and China) | Chinese, Burmese, Tibetan, Japanese, Korean |
| Esperanto | international language | ? |
| Language Groups | Recent language family | Germanic |
| Acculturation | Adaptation of traits by one group under another | Chinese person living in Chinatown and ignoring the rest of the country not being acculturated |
| Polyglot | multilingual state | US |
| Cultural Extinction | death of a culture | war, disease, acculturation |
| Indo-European Family | Germanic & Romance languages (50% of world) | English |
| Language | way people communicate using words or signs | English |
| Literacy | ability to read and write | ? |
| Romance Languages | languages derived from Latin | Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian |
| Toponyms | Place name given to certain features on land | agronym (the name of a field or pasture) |
| Lingua Franca | 2 complex languages put together to make an easier one | English |
| Isoglosses | Different linguistic features meet | Benrath Line |
