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Albanian Language
Albanian ( endonym: or ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. With about 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other modern Indo-European language. Albanian was first attested in the 15th century and it is a descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For historical and geographical reasons,: "It is often thought (for obvious geographic reasons) that Albanian descends from ancient Illyrian (see above), but this cannot be ascertained as we know next to nothing about Illyrian itself." the prevailing opinion among modern historians and linguists is that the Albanian language is a descendant of a southern Illyrian dialect spoken in much the same region in classical times. Alternativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albanian Alphabet
The Albanian alphabet ( sq, alfabeti shqip) is a variant of the Latin alphabet used to write the Albanian language. It consists of 36 letters: ''Note:'' The vowels are shown in bold. The letters are named simply by their sounds, followed by ë for consonants (e.g. fë). to the pronunciation of the 36 letters. History The earliest known mention of Albanian writings comes from a French Catholic church document from 1332. Written either by archbishop Guillaume Adam or the monk Brocardus Monacus the report notes that ''Licet Albanenses aliam omnino linguam a latina habeant et diversam, tamen litteram latinam habent in usu et in omnibus suis libris'' ("Though the Albanians have a language entirely their own and different from Latin, they nevertheless use Latin letters in all their books"). Scholars warn that this could mean Albanians also wrote in the Latin language, not necessarily just Albanian with a Latin script. The history of the later Albanian alphabet is closely linked w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luxembourgish Language
Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of the Moselle Franconian language, Luxembourgish has similarities with other varieties of High German and the wider group of West Germanic languages. The status of Luxembourgish as an official language in Luxembourg and the existence there of a regulatory body have removed Luxembourgish, at least in part, from the domain of Standard German, its traditional . History Luxembourgish was considered a German dialect like many others until about World War II but then it underwent ausbau, that is it created its own standard form in vocabulary, grammar and spelling and therefore is seen today as an independent language, an ausbau language. Due to the fact that Luxembourgish has a maximum of some 285,000 native speakers, resources in the language lik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca Language
Seneca (; in Seneca, or ) is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League; it is an Iroquoian language, spoken at the time of contact in the western portion of New York. While the name ''Seneca'', attested as early as the seventeenth century, is of obscure origins, the endonym translates to "those of the big hill." About 10,000 Seneca live in the United States and Canada, primarily on reservations in western New York, with others living in Oklahoma and near Brantford, Ontario. As of 2013, an active language revitalization program is underway. Classification and history Seneca is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Seneca people, one of the members of the Iroquois Five (later, Six) Nations confederacy. It is most closely related to the other Five Nations Iroquoian languages, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk (and among those, it is most closely related to Cayuga). Seneca is first attested in two damaged dictionaries produced by the Frenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kashubian Language
Kashubian or Cassubian (Kashubian: ', pl, język kaszubski) is a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic subgroup along with Polish and Silesian.Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael, ''Language and Nationalism in Europe'', Oxford University Press, 2000, p.199, Although often classified as a language in its own right, it is sometimes viewed as a dialect of Pomeranian or as a dialect of Polish. In Poland, it has been an officially recognized ethnic-minority language since 2005. Approximately 108,000 people use mainly Kashubian at home. It is the only remnant of the Pomeranian language. It is close to standard Polish with influence from Low German and the extinct Polabian (West Slavic) and Old Prussian (West Baltic) languages. The Kashubian language exists in two different forms: vernacular dialects used in rural areas, and literary variants used in education. Origin Kashubian is assumed to have evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called Kas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trema (diacritic)
The diaeresis ( ; is a diacritical mark used to indicate the separation of two distinct vowels in adjacent syllables when an instance of diaeresis (or hiatus) occurs, so as to distinguish from a digraph or diphthong. It consists of two dots placed over a letter, generally a vowel; when that letter is an , the diacritic replaces the tittle: . The diaeresis diacritic indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph and be pronounced as one sound, are instead to be read as separate vowels in two syllables. For example, in the spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables ''co-op-er-ate'', not three, ''*coop-er-ate''. In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well. Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazine ''The New Yorker''. In English language texts it is perhaps most familiar in the spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ladin Language
Ladin (, also ; autonym: , it, ladino; german: Ladinisch) is a Romance language of the Rhaeto-Romance subgroup, mainly spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, and Belluno, by the Ladin people. It exhibits similarities to Swiss Romansh and Friulian. The precise extension of the Ladin language area is a subject of scholarly debate. A more narrow perspective includes only the dialects of the valleys around the Sella group, while wider definitions comprise the dialects of adjacent valleys in the Province of Belluno and even dialects spoken in the northwestern Trentino. A standard variety of Ladin () has been developed by the Office for Ladin Language Planning as a common communication tool across the whole Ladin-speaking region. Geographic distribution Ladin is recognized as a minority language in 54 Italian municipalities belonging to the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno. It is not possible to asses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the ''Organisation internationale de la Francophonie'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics during the course of the 18th century. Now spoken in South Africa, Namibia and (to a lesser extent) Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, estimates circa 2010 of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million. Most linguists consider Afrikaans to be a partly creole language. An estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary is of Dutch origin with adopted words from other languages including German and the Khoisan languages of Southern Africa. Differences with Dutch include a more analytic-type morphology and grammar, and some pronunciations. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form. About 13.5% of the South ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uyghur Language
The Uyghur or Uighur language (; , , , or , , , , CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki), is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8-11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur speakers are located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio; and is used as a common language by other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, which includes languages such as Uzbek. Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acehnese Language
Acehnese or Achinese (Jawi alphabet, Jawi: بهسا اچيه) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language natively spoken by the Acehnese people in Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia. This language is also spoken by Acehnese descendants in some parts of Malaysia like Yan, Kedah, Yan, in Kedah. Name As of 1988, "Acehnese" is the modern English language, English name spelling and the bibliographical standard, and Acehnese people use the spelling "Acehnese" when writing in English. "Achinese" is an antiquated spelling of the English language tradition. "Atjehnese" is the Dutch language, Dutch spelling and an outdated Indonesian language, Indonesian one. The spelling "Achehnese" originates from a 1906 English translation of the Dutch language ''Studien over atjesche klank- en schriftleer. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 35.346-442'' by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1892. In Acehnese the language is called ''Basa/Bahsa Acèh''. In Indonesian it is called ''Bahasa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it represents the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded), produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the in the English word ''about''. In English, some long-established phonetic transcription systems assert that the mid central vowel as an unstressed vowel and transcribed with schwa (ə) is always a different vowel sound from the open-mid back unrounded vowel as a stressed vowel and transcribed with turned v ( ʌ), although they may recognize allophony between the pair. As Geoff Lindsey explains, within these systems, it is said that "schwa is never stressed"; but other authorities (including Lindsey himself) recognize that in some varieties of English, such as General American Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
