Topic summary
Linguistic area
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Sprachbund.
A sprachbund ( , from German: Sprachbund, lit. 'language union'; pl. sprachbünde or sprachbunds), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.