Word.ws English Dictionary

communalect

Syllables: com·mun·a·lect/kəˈmjuːnəˌlɛkt/US/kəˈmjunəˌlɛkt/

communalect noun: especially in Pacific linguistics: the lect (linguistic variety) spoken by a particular speech community.

Noun

communalect (plural communalects)

  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...1957 January, Harold Hickerson, Glen D. Turner, Nancy P. Hickerson, “Testing Procedures for Estimating Transfer of Information among Iroquois Dialects and Languages”, in C[harles] F[rederick]...
    • No one knows exactly how many Fijian communalects there are, but it is certain that the total number runs into the hundreds. Fijians have names for many of them, particularly where the communalect coincides with the speech of a single village, island or tikina, […]1971, Andrew Pawley, Timoci Sayaba, “Fijian Dialect Divisions: Eastern and Western Fijian”, in The Journal of the Polynesian Society, volume 80, number 4, Auckland: Polynesian Society, →ISSN, →OCLC...

Forms of communalect

pluralcommunalects
alternative formcommunilect
alternative formcommunolect

Origin of communalect

Probably from communa(l) + -lect (suffix denoting a language variety).

Questions about communalect

What does communalect mean?
Communalect means especially in Pacific linguistics: the lect (linguistic variety) spoken by a particular speech community.
What part of speech is communalect?
Communalect is a noun.
How do you pronounce communalect?
Communalect is pronounced /kəˈmjuːnəˌlɛkt/ (UK).
What is the plural of communalect?
The plural of communalect is communalects.

Words near communalect in the dictionary

  1. communal
  2. communal bin
  3. communal bins
  4. communal shower
  5. communal showers
  6. communalect
  7. communalects
  8. communalisation
  9. communalise
  10. communalised
  11. communalises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: communalect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-communalect.wav.

Cite this entry: “communalect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/communalect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.