ethnolinguistic means of or pertaining to ethnolinguistics. It carries an Arena rating of 1124, earned across 26 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, ethnolinguistic ranks #1,478 of 17,052 for Most Ponderous Words, #6,356 of 17,052 for Most Exacting Words, #9,433 of 17,052 for Most Incisive Words, #11,463 of 17,052 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “ethnolinguistic” is a great word
Relating to the constitutive bond between a spoken tongue and the communal identity of its people. From the combining form ethno- (from Greek ethnos, "nation, people") + linguistic (from Latin lingua, "tongue, language"). First recorded in English 1945–50. Unlike "sociolinguistic," which maps language onto the grid of class, gender, and social networks, or the broader "cultural," which encompasses all arts and customs, ethnolinguistic delineates the specific terrain where speech and ethnic selfhood are inseparable. It is the preservation of a fading dialect as an act of defiance, the ancestral proverb that cannot be translated without loss, the secret vocabulary of a diaspora that maps a lost geography—language not merely as communication, but as the last, portable territory of the self.
Etymology
From ethno- + linguistic.
adj
- Of or pertaining to ethnolinguistics.e.g.“The principle of ethnolinguistic democracy does not require that all languages be declared equally important and equally privileged in all functions...”
- Associated with a particular ethnicity and a particular variety of language.e.g.“Baker (1972) identified four varieties of Mauritian creole associated with different ethnolinguistic groups.”
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