isogloss

Jun. 11th, 2021 07:48 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
isogloss (AI-suh-glos) - n., the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature; a line on a map representing such a boundary.


Linguistic features such as a pronunciation, a word meaning, or a usage. Dialects are essentially defined by bundles isoglosses. Borrowed from German in 1992, where it was coined from ancient Greek roots ísos, equal + glôssa, language/tongue -- so the areas where people speak the same ... more or less. Most iso- words, the line marks the points where the measure is equal, rather than divides regions of equalness, so some linguists have proposed calling this a heterogloss, but that doesn't seem to have taken off. Here's a map showing the isogloss between Low German pronunciation of ik and Central German pronunciation of ich for the first person pronoun:

It's ik to the north and ich to the south
Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.

Date: 2021-06-12 03:04 am (UTC)
mount_oregano: portrait by Badassity (Default)
From: [personal profile] mount_oregano
Like the borderline between "soda" and "pop"!

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