Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Jews | Followers of the various schools of Judaism: in the United States: Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform; in Israel: Haredi, Orthodox, Traditional, Observant, and secular; ethnically, Ashkenazi (Eastern Europe), Mizrahi (Middle Eastern), Sephardic (Iberian Peninsula), and various African ethnicities. |
| Judaism | The religion of the Jews (qv) characterized by belief in one God and in the mission of Jews to teach the Fatherhood of God as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures. |
| Karaites | Readers of the Scriptures, followers of Qaraism (a Jewish sect). |
| Kardecism | High spiritism (qv) or spiritualism, notably in Brazil. |
| karma | (Sanskrit). In Buddhism and Hinduism, the force generated by a person’s actions that is held to be the motive power for the round of rebirths and deaths endured by him until he has achieved spiritual liberation (nirvana). |
| Karmatians | See Qarmatians. |
| Kharijites | (Seceders). Followers of schism from Sunni and Shia Islam, mainly in Ibadite form. |
| Khojas | Nizari Ismailis (qv), followers of the Aga Khan. |
| lama | (Tibetan: one who is superior). Apriest or monk of Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism). |
| Lamaists | Tantrayana, or the Tantrism school of Buddhism (qv). |
| language | A grouping of idioms or dialects whose speech communities share 85% or more common vocabulary. |
| language cluster | Also termed outer language, a grouping of languages which shares 80% or more lexical similarity (shared words, the basic vocabulary of human experience). |
| language net | A grouping of languages sharing 70% or more common vocabulary. |
| language set | A grouping of languages sharing 30% common vocabulary. |
| language user | Speakers of a specific language who can understand or use other languages within a cluster through sharing 80% common vocabulary. |
| language, inner | Technical name for the popularly used simplification ‘language’. |
| language, outer | Synonym for language cluster. |
| languages | Languages that the survey was given in. |
| Languages_Offered | Languages in which the survey was given. |
| Lesser Vehicle | The Theravada or Hinayana school of Buddhists (qv). |
| lingua franca | Or, ‘common language’. Originally a hybrid language (Italian/Spanish/French/Greek/Arabic/Turkish elements) used in Mediterranean ports; now any language with a large number of non-native speakers (defined in this survey as over 100,000), e.g. state official languages, national languages, trade languages, broadcasting languages, and all languages of wider communication. |
| lingua francas | Common languages with over 100,000 non-native speakers each, of 2 main kinds: (a) outer lingua francas are each a language cluster (outer language), and (b) inner lingua francas are each a language (inner language), as defined in the World Language Classification. |
| linguametrics | The scientific measurement and study of the whole world of languages (as distinct from linguistics). |
| linguasphere | The global continuum of languages, extended by humankind around the world since the onset of speech; the multilingual structure of human communication; the continuum of all spoken conventions through space and time—lexical, phonological, and grammatical. |
| literates | Adults over 15 years old who have learned how to read and write in a language, either their mother-tongue or lingua franca or other second language. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
Data on all religions, Christian activities, and trends.
Membership data, year begun, and rates of change.
Population and religion data on all major cities & provinces.
Detailed information covering religion, culture, and geography.
A repository of historical data, including a chronology of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries.