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A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth [1] 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 ...
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigenous language and an official language of Bolivia. Also, national languages are not necessarily ...
As a result, many relationships between languages and language families have not been determined and some of those relationships that have been proposed are on somewhat shaky ground. The list of language families, isolates, and unclassified languages below is a rather conservative one based on Campbell (1997).
Most words of Native American/First Nations language origin are the common names for indigenous flora and fauna, or describe items of Native American or First Nations life and culture. Some few are names applied in honor of Native Americans or First Nations peoples or due to a vague similarity to the original object of the word.
As stated by Polinsky and Kagan: "The definition of a heritage speaker in general and for specific languages continues to be debated. The debate is of particular significance in such languages as Tamil, Chinese, Arabic, and languages of India and the Philippines, where speakers of multiple languages or dialects are seen as heritage speakers of a single standard language taught for geographic ...
A creole language is a stable natural language developed from a mixture of different languages. Unlike a pidgin, a simplified form that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups, a creole language is a complete language, used in a community and acquired by children as their native language.
A pidgin [1] [2] [3] / ˈ p ɪ dʒ ɪ n /, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages.
Current distribution of human language families. Human languages ranked by their number of native speakers are as follows. All such rankings should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum. [1]