From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmodern languageˌmodern ˈlanguage noun [countable] British EnglishSLL a language which is used now, especially a European language such as French or Italian, studied as a subject at school or university a degree in modern languages
Examples from the Corpus
modern language• Descriptive Neither historical nor comparative grammar is a likely foundation for a modern language method.• Students combining Latin with a modern language usually spend their third year studying Latin at a university in the appropriate country.• The now voluminous literature on modernism and postmodernism has been dominated by philosophers and modern language theorists and historians of architecture.• And the importance of modern language teaching will be very much greater.• Our modern language and our modern writing have grown out of the language and literature of the past.• This word, which was originally borrowed from a Celtic language, has been lost in the modern language. 