A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently. Variety is a wider concept than style of prose or style of language. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ... Theoretical linguistics studies diverse questions: how certain languages managed to communicate, what properties all languages have in common, what knowledge a person must have to be able to use a language, and language acquisition. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... {{ Categories: | | ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek and in greek letters σημαντικός or in latin letters semantikós, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Lexical semantics is a field in computer science and linguistics which deals mainly with word meaning. ... Prototype Theory is a model of graded categorization in Cognitive Science, where all members of a category do not have equal status. ... Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... Applied linguistics is concerned with using linguistic theory to address real-world problems. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ... Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and logical modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. ... Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the past), by any group of people. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. ... A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies linguistics. ... Unsolved problems in : Note: Use the unsolved tag: {{unsolved|F|X}}, where F is any field in the sciences: and X is a concise explanation with or without links. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Some writers in sociolinguistics use the term lect, apparently a back-formation from specific terms such as dialect and idiolect. Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... In etymology, the process of back-formation is the creation of a neologism by reinterpreting an earlier word as a compound and removing the spuriously supposed affixes. ...

Examples of varieties are:

• dialects, i.e. varieties spoken by geographically defined speech communities
  • idiom is a term neutral to the dialect–language distinction and is used to refer to the studied communicative system (that could be called either a dialect or a language) when its status with respect to this distinction is irrelevant (thus it is a synonym to language in the more general sense);
• sociolects, i.e. varieties spoken by socially defined speech communities
• standard language, standardized for education and public performance
• idiolects, i.e. a variety particular to a certain person
• registers (or diatypes), i.e. the specialised vocabulary and/or grammar of certain activities or professions
• ethnolects, for an ethnic group
• ecolects, an idiolect adopted by a household

Varieties such as dialects, idiolects, and sociolects can be distinguished not only by their vocabulary, but also by differences in grammar, phonology and prosody. For instance the tonal word accents of Scandinavian languages has differing realizations in many dialects. As another example, foreign words in different sociolects vary in their degree of adaptation to the basic phonology of the language. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... Speech community is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a more or less discrete group of people who use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves. ... An idiom is an expression (i. ... In linguistics, a sociolect is the language spoken by a social group, social class or subculture. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... An idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. ... In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. ... Diatype is a term first used by the linguist Michael Gregory to describe a type of language variation which is determined by its social purpose. ... A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... Ethnolect is a variant of a language spoken by a certain ethnic/cultural subgroup and distinguishing them as a mark of social identity. ... An ecolect is a language dialect unique to a household (from the Greek eco (oikos) for house, as in economy or ecology, and lect for language). ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... Prosody may mean several things: Prosody consists of distinctive variations of stress, tone, and timing in spoken language. ... The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages (including English, German, and Dutch) and the East Germanic languages (now extinct). ...

Certain professional registers such as legalese show a variation in grammar from the standard language. For instance English journalists or lawyers often use grammatical moods such as subjunctive mood or conditional mood, which are no longer used frequently by other speakers. Many registers are simply a specialised set of terms (see technical terminology, jargon). Legalese is the term given to the special technical terminology of any given language (usually English) in a legal document. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... Technical terminology is the specialised vocabulary of a profession or of some other activity to which a group of people dedicate significant parts of their lives (for instance, hobbies or a particular segment of industry). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

It is a matter of definition whether slang and argot are to be considered included in the concept of variety or of style. Colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions are usually understood as limited to variation of lexicon, and hence of style. Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... Argot is primarily slang used by various groups, including but not limited to thieves and other criminals, to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. ... A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech or writing. ... An idiom is an expression (i. ... Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

See also

• List of language subsystems