A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently. Variety is a wider concept than style of prose or style of language.

Some writers in sociolinguistics use the term lect, apparently a back-formation from specific terms such as dialect and idiolect.

Examples of varieties are:

• dialects, i.e., varieties spoken by geographically defined speech communities
  • idiom is a term neutral to the dialect–language distinction and is used to refer to the studied communicative system (that could be called either a dialect or a language) when its status with respect to this distinction is irrelevant (thus it is a synonym to language in the more general sense);
• sociolects, i.e., varieties spoken by socially defined speech communities
• standard language, standardized for education and public performance
• idiolects, i.e., a variety particular to a certain person
• registers (or diatypes), i.e. the specialised vocabulary and/or grammar of certain activities or professions
• ethnolects, for an ethnic group
• ecolects, an idiolect adopted by a household

Varieties such as dialects, idiolects, and sociolects can be distinguished not only by their vocabulary, but also by differences in grammar, phonology and prosody. For instance the tonal word accents of Scandinavian languages has differing realizations in many dialects. As another example, foreign words in different sociolects vary in their degree of adaptation to the basic phonology of the language.

Certain professional registers such as legalese show a variation in grammar from the standard language. For instance English journalists or lawyers often use grammatical moods such as subjunctive mood or conditional mood, which are no longer used frequently by other speakers. Many registers are simply a specialised set of terms (see technical terminology, jargon).

It is a matter of definition whether slang and argot are to be considered included in the concept of variety or of style. Colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions are usually understood as limited to variation of lexicon, and hence of style.

See also

• Language localization
• List of language subsystems

External links

• Which Language Variety?, a web tool that estimates if a word or phrase is typical for a certain language variety (such as British English or American English)

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