Communalect
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Especially in Pacific linguistics: the lect (linguistic variety) spoken by a particular speech community.
"The purpose of a six-week field trip in Ontario, Canada, and New York State was to employ the "test the informant" method, utilizing magnetic recording machinery, in determining the intelligibility relationships among seven Iroquois communalects: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora, and Cherokee; […]"
Example
More examples"The purpose of a six-week field trip in Ontario, Canada, and New York State was to employ the "test the informant" method, utilizing magnetic recording machinery, in determining the intelligibility relationships among seven Iroquois communalects: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora, and Cherokee; […]"
Etymology
Probably from communa(l) + -lect (suffix denoting a language variety).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.