The remainder of this section discusses the type of information given under each of the headings. Names of the language and different spellings that have been used Under this heading are alternative spellings and alternative names of languages. There are usually many ways of spelling a language name, and there may be a number of different names for the same language. The name of a language may have been recorded from someone who speaks a different language, and each of the neighbouring languages may have different names for that one language. For example the Germans call their language 'Deutsch', in English it is 'German', in French 'Allemand', and in Italian 'Tedescho', and so on.
Classification means grouping languages together on the basis of some similarities.
The broad classifications, given in this section vary slightly from each other, largely as a result of the amount of information that was available to the researchers. They all use the same method for establishing subgroups, that is, they all compare a list of 100 or more words from the languages in question and determine the relationship between the languages on that basis. See the family tree diagram in section 3.5 for an illustration of the hypothesised relationships between southern Western Australian languages. Dialects of the language Decisions on what constitutes a dialect are made on the basis of the most detailed work in the area. A dialect is a variety of the language that may still be understood by speakers of other dialects, but which varies significantly in some aspects of the sound system, vocabulary or grammar.