linguistic community

"The main takeaway is that, once you as a linguistic community have an efficient vocabulary, that starting point restricts the next possible efficient vocabulary that you could have when you introduce a new term," says Twomey, the first author.

These spheres contain a multitude of smaller circles in a spectrum of vivid colors, each representing a linguistic community and engraved with the name of that language in its own script.

“This was not the case 30 years ago. Our living space has shrunk to our own linguistic community.”

According to Conor Walsh, a product manager at Duolingo, the company sees itself as having a role to play in the preservation of endangered languages, offering a ready-made digital platform for motivated members of a linguistic community, like MacAonghais, to take the lead.

Harnarayan Singh didn’t have a hard time selling fellow Punjabi Canadians on ice hockey – especially not when the country’s third-largest linguistic community boasts its own rich field hockey tradition.