Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wikipedia
A modern language is any human language that is currently in use. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such as Latin, Sanskrit, and Classical Chinese, which are studied for their cultural or linguistic value.
Usage examples of "modern language".
An ancestor of mine who traveled central and southern Europe in the mid 1800's had a number of useful conversations with academics and clerics in Latin since he did not speak either Italian or German and some of his conversants could not speak French (his other modern language).
We can borrow a word from another modern language, either in something like its original form, as with knout (Russian), khaki (Hindustani), or corrupted, as with crawfish (Old French crevice), dunk (German tunken).
As for its cause, I argued in my book The Third Chimpanzee for the perfection of the voice box and hence for the anatomical basis of modern language, on which the exercise of human creativity is so dependent.
Others have suggested instead that a change in brain organization around that time, without a change in brain size, made modern language possible.
Whereas once biologists used to speak of organisms as the product of the interplay of nature and nurture, or, in modern language, genes and environment, today this dichotomy is recognized as simplistic, for it is an individual's genes, expressed during development, which provide the basis for both specificity and plasticity.
By 1979, Derrida was the most frequently cited authority in papers submitted to the journal of the Modern Language Association.
Somehow, as though the words were flowing from God himself, he spoke the modern language .
In them I have used modern language and modern patterns of thought to point out the position of modern science in relation to this ancient philosophy.
In more modern language he would have said 'I deduce', referring to matters that had not come under his direct observation, but on which he had formed a conclusion based on study.
Weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible Old Testament moral tone were the Modern Language Association types who believed that everything was relative and that, for example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy.
Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery.