Assimilation
Part of speech: noun
Definition: The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated. The metabolic conversion of nutriments into tissue. The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure. A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs. The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.
Adaptation
Part of speech: noun
Definition: The quality of being adapted; adaption; adjustment.Adjustment to extant conditions: as, adjustment of a sense organ to the intensity or quality of stimulation; modification of some thing or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its current environment.Something which has been adapted; variation.