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Ditema Tsa Dinoko
Ditema tsa Dinoko (Sesotho for "Ditema syllabary"), also known by its IsiZulu name, ''Isibheqe Sohlamvu'', and various other related names in different languages, is a constructed writing system (specifically, a featural syllabary) for the ''siNtu'' or Southern Bantu languages (for example, for Sesotho, Setswana, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SiSwati, SiPhuthi, Xitsonga, EMakhuwa, ChiNgoni, SiLozi, or Tshivenḓa), developed in the 2010s from antecedent ideographic traditions of the Southern African region. Its visual appearance is inspired by these, including the traditional litema arts style. It was developed between 2014 and 2016 by a group of South African linguists and software programmers with the goal of creating a denser writing system to avoid the slowness in reading caused by the word length and visual homogeneity of Southern Bantu languages written in the Roman alphabet. The Ditema / Isibheqe syllabary has the capacity to represent the full phonological range of these ''sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Featural
In a featural writing system, the shapes of the symbols (such as letters) are not arbitrary but encode phonological features of the phonemes that they represent. The term featural was introduced by Geoffrey Sampson to describe the Korean alphabet and Pitman shorthand. Joe Martin introduced the term featural notation to describe writing systems that include symbols to represent individual features rather than phonemes. He asserts that "alphabets have no symbols for anything smaller than a phoneme". A ''featural'' script represents finer detail than an alphabet. Here, symbols do not represent whole phonemes, but rather the elements (features) that make up the phonemes, such as voicing or its place of articulation. Theoretically, each feature could be written with a separate letter; abjads or abugidas, or indeed syllabaries, could be featural, but the only prominent system of this sort is the Korean alphabet, also known as hangul. In the Korean alphabet, the featural symbols ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lozi Language
Lozi, also known as siLozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language of the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho–Tswana branch of Zone S (S.30), that is spoken by the Lozi people, primarily in southwestern Zambia and in surrounding countries. This language is most closely related to Northern Sotho (''Sesotho sa Leboa''), Tswana (''Setswana''), Kgalagari (''SheKgalagari'') and Sotho (''Sesotho''/Southern Sotho). Lozi, sometimes written as Rotse, and its dialects are spoken and understood by approximately six percent of the population of Zambia. ''Silozi'' is the endonym (the name of the language used by its native speakers) as defined by the United Nations. ''Lozi'' is the exonym. The Lozi language developed from a mixture of two languages: Luyana and Kololo. The Luyana people originally migrated south from the Kingdom of Luba and Kingdom of Lunda in the Katanga area of the Congo River basin, either late in the 17th century or early in the 18th century. The language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization. Nasalized vowels are vowels under the influence of neighbouring sounds. For instance, the [] of the word ''hand'' is affected by the following nasal consonant. In most languages, vowels adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, but few speakers would notice. That is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels, and all vowels are considered phonemically oral. The nasality of nasal vowels, however, is a distinctive feature of certain languages. In other words, a language may contrast oral vowels and nasalized vowels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics''. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a Character (computing), character. By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given typeface is called a glyph. Conceptualization There are two main opposing grapheme concepts. In the so-called ''referential conception'', graphemes are interpreted as the smallest units of writing that correspond with sounds (more accurately phonemes). In this concept, the ''sh'' in the written English word ''shake'' would be a grapheme because it represents the phoneme Voiceless postalveolar fricative, /ʃ/. This referential concept is linked to the ''dependency hypothesis'' that claims that writing merely depicts speech. By contrast, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tekela Languages
The Nguni languages are a group of closely related Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa by the Nguni peoples. Nguni languages include Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele (sometimes referred to as "Northern Ndebele"), and Swazi. The appellation "Nguni" derives from the Nguni cattle type. ''Ngoni'' (see below) is an older, or a shifted, variant. It is sometimes argued that the use of ''Nguni'' as a generic label suggests a historical monolithic unity of the people in question, where in fact the situation may have been more complex. The linguistic use of the label (referring to a subgrouping of Bantu) is relatively stable. From an English editorial perspective, the articles "a" and "an" are both used with "Nguni", but "a Nguni" is more frequent and arguably more correct if "Nguni" is pronounced as it is suggested. Classification Within a subset of Southern Bantu, the label "Nguni" is used both genetically (in the linguistic sense) and typologically (quite apart from any historical sign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulana Language
Northern Sotho, or as an endonym, is a Sotho-Tswana language spoken in the northeastern provinces of South Africa. It is sometimes referred to as or , its main dialect, through synecdoche. According to the South African National Census of 2011, it is the first language of over 4.6 million (9.1%) people, making it the 5th most spoken language in South Africa. The Sepedi language is spoken most commonly in Mpumalanga, Gauteng and the Limpopo provinces. Name The Northern Sotho written language was based largely on the Sepedi dialect. Missionaries studied this dialect the most closely and first developed the orthography in 1860 by Alexander Merensky, Grutzner and Gerlachshoop. This subsequently provided a common writing system for 20 or more varieties of the Sotho-Tswana languages spoken in the former Transvaal, and also helped lead to "Sepedi" being used as the umbrella term for the entire language family. However, there are objections to this synecdoche by other Northern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the other modern European languages. With modifications, it is also used for other alphabets, such as the Vietnamese alphabet. Its modern repertoire is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Etymology The term ''Latin alphabet'' may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case, fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and most of these systems have undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g., "would" and "should"); they can also reflect deliberate efforts to introduce variability for the sake of national identity, as seen in Noah Webster's efforts to introduce easily noticeable differences between American and British spelling (e.g., "honor" and "honour"). Some nations (e.g. France and Spain) have established language academies in an attempt to regulate orthography officially. For most languages (including English) however, there are no such authorities and a sense of 'correct' orthography evol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitonga Language (Mozambique)
The Tonga language of Mozambique, or ''Gitonga'' (spelled ''Guitonga'' in Portuguese) is a Bantu language spoken along the southern coast of the country. Often thought to be closest to Chopi Chopi may refer to: * Chopi people, an ethnic group of Mozambique * Chopi language, a Bantu language spoken along the southern coast of Mozambique * Chopi blackbird (''Gnorimopsar chopi''), a bird of family Icteridae * A spice made from ''Zanthoxy ... to its south, the two languages have only a 44% lexical similarity. References External links''Christian hymns, together with some of the Psalms of David in the language of the Ba Tonga, as spoken in the district of Inhambane, east Africa'' (1901) [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nguni Languages
The Nguni languages are a group of closely related Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa by the Nguni peoples. Nguni languages include Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele (sometimes referred to as "Northern Ndebele"), and Swazi. The appellation "Nguni" derives from the Nguni cattle type. ''Ngoni'' (see below) is an older, or a shifted, variant. It is sometimes argued that the use of ''Nguni'' as a generic label suggests a historical monolithic unity of the people in question, where in fact the situation may have been more complex. The linguistic use of the label (referring to a subgrouping of Bantu) is relatively stable. From an English editorial perspective, the articles "a" and "an" are both used with "Nguni", but "a Nguni" is more frequent and arguably more correct if "Nguni" is pronounced as it is suggested. Classification Within a subset of Southern Bantu, the label "Nguni" is used both genetically (in the linguistic sense) and typologically (quite apart from any historical sign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Press (South Africa)
City Press is a South African news brand that publishes on multiple platforms. Its flagship print edition is distributed nationally on Sunday, and it has a daily newsletter, online platform, and other social media platforms. These include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The publication also runs a popular, daily morning newsletter called ''On a Point of Order'', a play on the South African Parliament scene, which frequently sees members of Parliament rising "on a point of order" to protest against something that somebody has said. Its other newsletters include: * Football Fever, a thrice weekly curation of news and analysis on the beautiful game; * Sundays With City Press, which features all the highlights of the print edition; and * #Trending – The Good Guide, a guide to all the latest culture, entertainment and tech news. History and operations The newspaper was established in 1982 as the ''Golden City Press'' by James R. A. Bailey and the South African Associ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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