The term auxiliary language is a language which is not the primary or native language of a community. It may refer to:
- an international auxiliary language, a planned, artificial language constructed for international communication, such as Esperanto
- a local minority language which has official recognition
- a liturgical language, such as Latin, Sanskrit, or Old Church Slavonic, used in religious services
- a professional, trade, or otherwise secret language such as Kallawaya among Andean herbalists
- an initiation language such as Damin in Australia
- a language of ethnic identity such as Eskayan in the Philippines
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen—but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)