A series of capitalised suffixes (introduced in the Linguasphere
Register) is used here, to distinguish identical names or to shorten
some compound names. This includes the distinction of languages and dialects
by their directional location or by an aspect their usage.
The suffixes are as follows.
Directional suffixes: -N. north(ern); -E. east(ern); -S.
south(ern);
-W. west(ern); -C. central; plus combinations, e.g. -NW. northwest; -CW.
west central, etc.
Other suffixes:
-A. "proper" (name);
-F. formal or standard;
-G. generalized;
-H. historical, or "old";
-L. liturgical / pre-modern literary;
-M middle in historical sense;
-U. urban;
-V. vehicular, or "lingua franca"
The suffix -A is used in the sense of "proper"
(“proprement dit” in French), in cases where a linguistic name is repeated
in successive non-identical layers, e.g. Slovensko-A. (Slovenian
"proper" or Common Slovenian) as one of the components of Slovensko
(Wider Slovenian) in Slavic languages.
Taxonomy
All idioms are classified (under influence of the Linguasphere
Register) in terms of three successive layers of immediate
relationship: outer language (ol), inner language
(il) and dialect (dt).
Where the countable noun "language(s)" is used,
it refers potentially to the successive layers of outer language and inner
language.
Where those forms are particularly close, and more or less
inter-intelligible, they are treated as component inner languages within the
same outer language. The optional layer of dialect is used for relatively
minor variations within an inner language, usually dependent on geographical
location.
The only scale of terms available in English to cover a
range of immediate linguistic relationships is in the dichotomy of
"language" versus "dialect", unlike the trichotomy
available, for example, in French, German or Russian:
. Therefore a distinction between "outer language" and
"inner language" in English is created here, although it cannot be stressed enough
that these are relative terms and cannot be treated as absolutes.
The English terms "idiom" or "variety",
on the other hand, are used where necessary to describe any form of speech:
outer language, inner language or dialect. It thus corresponds to the general
use of the term "group", on a wider scale, to describe any of layers
of close relationship.
As applied in the Register, the term "dialect"
(see below) refers here especially to the distinctive pronunciation of a
particular language as spoken (or written) in a particular locality or region,
or within a particular social group, with normally some characteristic items
of vocabulary or morphology. More radical differences of language, on the
other hand, which have sometimes fallen under the extended use of the term
"dialect", such as divergences among many traditional, localised
varieties of the Romance languages, can now be treated more appropriately as
"inner languages".
In the same way, it is now possible to draw clearer
attention to the different categories of "inner" language which
frequently exist side by side within "outer" languages characterised
by a strong written as well as spoken tradition, as is the case with many
official national languages in the world. The new trichotomy of layers of
communication also makes it easier to deal consistently with cases in which
the recognition of one or more languages in a continuum depends on political
circumstances, such as the abandoned "unity" of Galego-Portuguese in
Spain and Portugal. In this case, as far as the ALW (and the Linguasphere
Register) is concerned, one is dealing with an outer language composed of
inner languages (each with its dialects).
For every language we used Autonym (according to
"Reference name“ in the Linguasphere Register), or indigenous or
own name, the name for a language and/or speech community as used in that
language.
The following typographical conventions are used for
autonyms. The autonyms of Outer languages have an upper-case initial
and are in bold; the autonyms of inner languages have a lower-case
initial and are in bold too. Finally, the autonyms for dialects also
have a lower-case initial, and are in italics.
For compound names of languages a normal hyphen is replaced
with an additive hyphen (+) whenever the link is between two separate parts
(like in Galego+ Portugues).