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| 5532692964 | agricultural theorydiff | explains how Proto-Indo-European languages diffused into Europe. said it occured through the diffusion of agriculture | 0 | |
| 5532703632 | conquest theory | One major theory of how Proto-Indo-European diffused into Europe which holds that the early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tongues | 1 | |
| 5532712830 | creole | A pidgin language that evolves to the point at which it becomes the primary language of the people who speak it | 2 | |
| 5532718307 | dialect | A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. | 3 | |
| 5532721378 | generic toponym | the descriptive part of many place names, often repeated throughout a culture area, ie. ville, burg, river. Can distinguish one culture region from another and show diffusion patterns | 4 | |
| 5532725140 | ideograms | The system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case with letters in English. | 5 | |
| 5532729414 | isoglosses | Geographical boundary lines where different linguistic features meet. | 6 | |
| 5532730931 | isolated language | A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family. | 7 | |
| 5532735675 | language branch/subfamily | A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that these derived from the same family. | 8 | |
| 5532741287 | language convergence | The collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages; the opposite of language divergence | 9 | |
| 5532743550 | language divergence | The opposite of language convergence; a process suggested by German linguist August Schleicher whereby new languages are formed when a language breaks into dialects due to a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of the language and continued isolation eventually causes the division of the language into discrete new languages | 10 | |
| 5532747566 | language families | a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history | 11 | |
| 5532762868 | 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. | 12 | |
| 5532768355 | language relacement | language shift, sometimes refereed to as language transfer or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking a new language | 13 | |
| 5532787495 | Lingua franca | A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages. | 14 | |
| 5532792371 | Linguistic refuge areas | an area protected by isolation or inhospitable environmental conditions in which a language or dialect has survived | 15 | |
| 5532796436 | monoglot | knowing only one language | 16 | |
| 5532803246 | monolingual states | Countries in which only one language is spoken (there are very few) | 17 | |
| 5532808587 | multilingual states | Countries in which more than one language is spoken | 18 | |
| 5532810861 | official language | The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents. | 19 | |
| 5532813714 | 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. | 20 | |
| 5532822964 | polyglot | a speaker of many languages | 21 | |
| 5532828349 | renfrew hypothesis | Hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin Renfrew wherein he proposed that three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to three language families: Europe's Indo-European languages (from Anatolia (present-day Turkey)); North African and Arabian languages (from the western arc of the Fertile Crescent); and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (from the eastern arc of the Fertile Crescent) | 22 | |
| 5532833649 | reverse reconstruction | process of tracing a language's diffusion. The process begins with the most recent places of the language's existence and moves backward through time, comparing geographic places and groups of people using the same or similar words | 23 | |
| 5532837608 | shatterbelts | a zone containing many cultures and languages | 24 | |
| 5532845023 | standard language | The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications. | 25 | |
| 5532849105 | toponym | Place names given to certain features on the land such as settlements, terrain features, and streams. | 26 | |
| 5532852027 | 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. | 27 |
