Binary is an alphabet. ...it's also a base 2 number system. ...AND a language. The only confusing part is one of terminology. There is no exact analogy for these concepts existing in the English language, as the English language is broken down into several levels of a hierarchy that "binary" is not subject to. In English, "A" and "B" are letters. "A", "B", "C", "D" and the other 22 letters collectively form an "alphabet". Letters form words. Words become language. There are many layers to the hierarchy of 'language', but 'binary' is still 'binary' at every level of this hierarchy. There are no other terms for the different uses at each level. For example, with binary, "10" is the complete alphabet. "10" is also a word that communicates meaning. And since "binary" is both the singular and plural form of the word, "10110101001010110000101001001010100100101010010" is language as well, as the poster demonstrated above with his entire paragraph of 'binary'. Taking the analogy even further, there are actually different 'dialects' of this language, like big-endian and little-endian.