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Weyto Language
Weyto is a speculative extinct language thought to have been spoken in the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia by the Weyto, a small group of hippopotamus hunters who now speak Amharic. The Weyto language was first mentioned by the Scottish traveler James Bruce, who spoke Amharic. Bruce passed through the area about 1770 and reported that "the Wayto speak a language radically different from any of those in Abyssinia," but was unable to obtain any "certain information" on it, despite prevailing upon the king to send for two Weyto men for him to ask questions, which they would "neither answer nor understand" even when threatened with hanging. The next European to report on the Weyto, Eugen Mittwoch, described them as uniformly speaking a dialect of Amharic (Mittwoch 1907). This report was confirmed by Marcel Griaule when he passed through in 1928, although he added that at one point a Weyto sang an unrecorded song "in the dead language of the Wohitos" whose meaning the singer himself d ...
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Lake Tana
Lake Tana ( am, ጣና ሐይቅ, T’ana ḥāyik’i; previously Tsana) is the largest lake in Ethiopia and the source of the Blue Nile. Located in Amhara Region in the north-western Ethiopian Highlands, the lake is approximately long and wide, with a maximum depth of , and an elevation of . Lake Tana is fed by the Gilgel Abay, Reb and Gumara rivers. Its surface area ranges from , depending on season and rainfall. The lake level has been regulated since the construction of the control weir where the lake discharges into the Blue Nile. This controls the flow to the Blue Nile Falls (Tis Abbai) and hydro-power station. In 2015, the Lake Tana region was nominated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve recognizing its national and international natural and cultural importance. Overview Lake Tana was formed by volcanic activity, blocking the course of inflowing rivers in the early Pleistocene epoch, about 5 million years ago. The lake was originally much larger than it is today. S ...
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Agaw Languages
The Agaw or Central Cushitic languages are Afro-Asiatic languages spoken by several groups in Ethiopia and, in one case, Eritrea. They form the main substratum influence on Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages. Classification The Central Cushitic languages are classified as follows (after Appleyard): * Awngi (South Agaw) spoken southwest of Lake Tana, much the largest, with over 350,000 speakers :(Kunfal, spoken west of Lake Tana, is poorly recorded but most likely a dialect of Awngi) * Northern Agaw: :*Bilen–Xamtanga: ::* Bilen (North) spoken (70,000 speakers) in Eritrea around the town of Keren and eastern Sudan around the town of Kassala ::* Xamtanga (Central Agaw; also called Khamir, Khamta) 143,000 speakers in the North Amhara Region :* Qimant (Western Agaw) nearly extinct, spoken by the Qemant in Semien Gondar Zone ::(dialects Qwara – nearly extinct, spoken by Beta Israel formerly living in Qwara, now in Israel; Kayla – extinct, formerly spoken by so ...
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Extinct Languages Of Africa
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the Endling, last individual of the species, although the Functional extinction, capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential Range (biology), range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxon, Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the Fossil, fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever Life, lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct a ...
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Languages Of Ethiopia
The languages of Ethiopia include the official languages of Ethiopia, its national and regional languages, and a large number of minority languages, as well as foreign languages. Overview There are 92 individual languages indigenous to Ethiopia according to Ethnologue, with the 1994 Ethiopian census indicating that some 77 tongues were spoken locally. Most of these languages belong to the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family (Semitic languages, Semitic and Cushitic languages; Omotic languages are also spoken, but their classification as Afroasiatic remains disputed). Additionally, Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by what the government calls the Nilotic peoples, "Nilotic" people, though scholars distinguish Nilotic from the Surmic languages, Gumuz languages, and Koman languages spoken in Ethiopia. Of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, 91 are living and 1 is extinct. 41 of the living languages are institutional, 14 are developing, 18 are vigorous, 8 are in danger of extinc ...
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Nancy Dorian
Nancy Currier Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death. Dorian's study is possibly the longest such study in the field. She is considered "a prime authority" on language death. ''Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect'', her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland, is considered "the first major monograph" on language death. According to linguist Joan Argenter, Dorian's name "is well known to scholars working in" several areas of linguistics. Life Nancy Dorian was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1936. She studied German at the Connecticut College for Women and graduated summa cum laude in 1958. She received an MA (1961) and PhD (1965) ...
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Summer Institute Of Linguistics
SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development. Based on its language documentation work, SIL publishes a database, ''Ethnologue'', of its research into the world's languages, and develops and publishes software programs for language documentation, such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) and Lexique Pro. Its main offices in the United States are located at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas. History William Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934, after undertaking a Christian mission with the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala in the early 1930s.George Thomas ...
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Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both List of U.S. states and territories by area, area (after Alaska) and List of U.S. states and territories by population, population (after California). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Houston is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas and the List of United States cities by population, fourth-largest in the U.S., while San Antonio is the second most pop ...
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Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and County seat, seat of Dallas County, Texas, Dallas County with portions extending into Collin County, Texas, Collin, Denton County, Texas, Denton, Kaufman County, Texas, Kaufman and Rockwall County, Texas, Rockwall counties. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 1,304,379, it is the List of United States cities by population, ninth most-populous city in the U.S. and the List of cities in Texas by population, third-largest in Texas after Houston and San Antonio. Located in the North Texas region, the city of Dallas is the main core of the largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the U.S. that lacks any navigable link ...
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Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics known as the Delegates of the Press, who are appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century. The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho. For the last 500 years, OUP has primarily focused on the publication of pedagogical texts and ...
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Lionel Bender (linguist)
Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist. Life Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accomplished chess player. Dr. Bender died of complications from a stroke and brain hemorrhage on February 19, 2008 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Career Bender wrote and co-wrote several books, publications and essays on the languages of Africa, particularly those spoken in Ethiopia and Sudan, and was a major contributor to Ethiopian Studies. He did extensive work on the Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages spoken locally. Together with J. Donald Bowen, Robert L. Cooper, and Charles A. Ferguson, Bender carried out the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in East Africa, funded by the Ford Foundation in 1968-1970. He later conducted other research sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Among other works, his books include ''Amh ...
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Unclassified Language
An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding influence of language contact, if different layers of its vocabulary or morphology point in different directions and it is not clear which represents the ancestral form of the language. Some poorly known extinct languages, such as Gutian and Cacán, are simply unclassifiable, and it is unlikely the situation will ever change. A supposedly unclassified language may turn out not to be a language at all, or even a distinct dialect, but merely a family, tribal or village name, or an alternative name for a people or language that is classified. If a language's genetic relationship has not been established after significant documentation of the language and comparison with other languages and families, as in the case of Basque in Europe, it is ...
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Awngi Language
The Awngi language, in older publications also called Awiya (an inappropriate ethnonym), is a Central Cushitic language spoken by the Awi people, living in Central Gojjam in northwestern Ethiopia. Most speakers of the language live in the Agew Awi Zone of the Amhara Region, but there are also communities speaking the language in various areas of Metekel Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz Region. Until recently, Kunfäl, another Southern Agaw language spoken in the area west of Lake Tana, has been suspected to be a separate language. It has now been shown to be linguistically close to Awngi, and it should be classified as a dialect of that language. Phonology Vowels The central vowel is the default epenthetic vowel of the language and almost totally predictable in its occurrence. Likewise, , normally an allophone of , is fossilized in some words and might be justified as a separate phoneme. Consonants *Palatal and velar together in Awngi form only one place of articulation, whi ...
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