American EnglishAmerican English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the U.S., as well as the common language used in government, education, and commerce in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and in all U.S. territories except Puerto Rico. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.
PhonemeBasic unit of phonology A phoneme (/ˈfoʊniːm/ FOH-neem) is a set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—the smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial–gestural equivalent in sign languages), and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes.
Variation (linguistics)Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation (e.g., more than one way of pronouncing the same phoneme or the same word), lexicon (e.g., multiple words with the same meaning), grammar (e.g., different syntactic constructions expressing the same grammatical function), and other features.British EnglishBritish English is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the United Kingdom taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English.
French languageFrench (français or langue française) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, French and its closest relatives—the langues d'oïl, historically spoken in northern France and southern Belgium—descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. It was influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the GermanicFrankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.
AnglicisationAnglicisation, or anglicization, is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language or culture; institutional, in which institutions are influenced by those of England or the United Kingdom; or linguistic, in which a non-English term or name is altered due to the cultural influence of the English language.
LatinLatin (lingua Latina or Latinum) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire.Accent (sociolinguistics)In sociolinguistics, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language that is distinctive to a country, area, social class, or individual. An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside (a regional or geographical accent), the socioeconomic status of its speakers, their ethnicity (an ethnolect), their caste or social class (a social accent), or influence from their first language (a foreign accent).SociolinguisticsSociolinguistics is the descriptive and scientific study of how language is shaped by and used differently within any given society. The field largely looks at how a language varies between distinct social groups and under the influence of assorted cultural norms, expectations, and contexts, including how that variation plays a role in language change.
LinguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of language. Specific areas of linguistic description and analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent manual gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning).First languageA first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than the individual's actual first language. Generally, to state a language as a mother tongue, one must have full native fluency in that language.Orthographic depthThe orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence. It depends on how easy it is to predict the pronunciation of a word based on its spelling: shallow orthographies are easy to pronounce based on the written word, and deep orthographies are difficult to pronounce based on how they are written.*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.