community language

community language

See also: Community language

English

Noun

community language (plural community languages)

1. (sociology, linguistics) An unofficial language spoken by a minority of people.

   Commonly spoken community languages in Australia include Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Greek, Italian, indigenous languages, and so on.

2. (sociology, linguistics) An unofficial language spoken as a local lingua franca among people of diverse ethno-linguistic backgrounds.
   • 1985 UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa. 1985. African community languages and their use in literacy and education : a regional survey. Dakar : UNESCO.

     Such languages, which serve the purposes of general communication over fairly wide areas within countries, are what are referred to as the community languages of Africa.

Translations

language spoken by a minority of people

Chinese: Mandarin: 社團語言, 社团语言 (shètuán yǔyán), 社區語言, 社区语言 (shèqū yǔyán), 團體語言, 团体语言 (tuántǐ yǔyán) Finnish: vähemmistökieli (fi)

Russian: язы́к общи́ны m (jazýk obščíny) Spanish: please add this translation if you can

unofficial language spoken as a local lingua franca — see lingua franca