Wowsers. What's a good mass noun for languages?

[pauamma]

Aside from numerous Turkic tongues, among other languages and groups it touches on, the following are mentioned: Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Tocharian, Uyghur, Bulgar, Tatar, Bactrian, Tungusic, Celtic, Dravidian, Yeniseian, Samoyedic, Chuvash, Latin, Italic, Prussian, Slavic (various languages), Sanskrit, Kitan, Hungarian, Xiongnu (Appendix 2 is a list of Xiongnu words surviving in Altaic languages), Circassian, Caucasian, Avar, Dingling 丁零, Khotanese Saka, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Old Persian, Middle and New Persian, Pashto, Ossetian, and numerous Iranian languages, Yuezhi, Koguryŏan (Korean).

Comments

[pauamma]

I was aware of "topolect" in a Sinological context from reading Language Log, but I don't remember ever seeing it used to mean a group of related dialects. Or did you mean a subset of "dialect"?

[claire_chan]

Gosh, I was branching off accidentally into set theory with the word "dialect" due to past research.

[pauamma]

No worry. (Was I a bit curt? That's been known to happen before.)

[claire_chan]

It didn't come off that way! No problems.