What does "interlanguage" mean?

A language generated by a student of a foreign language that incorporates aspects of their native language and the target language.

What is a synonym for "interlanguage"?

Common synonyms include: koine, lingua franca, jargon, lingua franca, talkee talkee.

Pronounced //ɪnˈtɜɹˈlæŋɡwɪd͡ʒ//.

//ɪnˈtɜɹˈlæŋɡwɪd͡ʒ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A language generated by a student of a foreign language that incorporates aspects of their native language and the target language.
"Trasyanka and Surzhyk are interlanguages: a Belarusian–Russian and a Ukrainian–Russian mixed language."
2
a common language used by speakers of different languages wordnet
3
A lingua franca, a common language used by speakers of different languages
"Latin used to be the European interlanguage. Currently English widely serves this purpose."
4
A pidgin or creole

"If you like Lojban, maybe read the research paper "Lojban as a Machine Translation Interlanguage in the Pacific.""

From inter- + language. In the language acquisition sense introduced by Larry Selinker in 1972.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.