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prettygoodwordisogloss (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:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
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:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
