Variation is natural to all languages at every level

Types of variation

• Regional: dialect
• A language, say English, is really a collection of dialects.
• Social: sociolect
• A language variation which is associated with the circumstances of their birth and upbringing.
• Functional: idiolect
• A language variation covered by a single user
• what is happening
• who is taking part
• what part is the language playing
• speech genre-the context of the language situation
• register-language used for a particular purpose

My favorite language links

• Language Maps
• International Phonetics Association
• Language Varieties
• Rickford's Bibliograhy

Wikipedia Links

• Linguistcs
• History of Linguistcs
• Sanskrit
• Panini
• Pidgin
• Creole
• Black English Vernacular