Meaning of similect | Babel Free

Definitions

A variety of a language spoken by people who have a different first language, with features transferred from the first language in parallel by individual speakers rather than by a cohesive group.

Examples

“We cannot simply equate the L1-based lects with dialects, but could speak of them instead as ‘similects’, because they arise in parallel, not in mutual interaction. In short, there is no community of similect speakers. Similects do not develop new features or new discourse practices in the same way that language communities do — in interaction, from one linguistic generation to another.”

CEFR level