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Ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives. Description In producing an ejective, the stylohyoid muscle and digastric muscle contract, causing the hyoid bone and the connected glottis to raise, and the forward articulation (at the velum in the case of ) is held, raising air pressure greatly in the mouth so when the oral articulators separate, there is a dramatic burst of air. The Adam's apple may be seen moving when the sound is pronounced. In the languages in which they are more obvious, ejectives are often de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottalic Consonant
In phonetics, a glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution (movement or closure) of the glottis. Glottalic sounds may involve motion of the larynx upward or downward, as the initiator of an egressive or ingressive glottalic airstream mechanism respectively. An egressive glottalic airstream produces '' ejective consonants'', while an ingressive glottalic airstream produces ''implosive consonants''. Ejectives are almost always voiceless stops (plosives) or affricates, while implosives are almost always voiced stops. However, when a sound is said to be ''glottalized'', this is often not what is meant. Rather, glottalization usually means that a normal pulmonic airstream is partially or completely interrupted by closure of the glottis. Sonorants (including vowels) may be glottalized in this fashion. There are two ways this is represented in the IPA: (a) the same way as ejectives, with an apostrophe; or, (b) more properly with a superscript glottal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airstream Mechanism
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for sound production and constitutes the first part of this process, which is called initiation. The organ generating the airstream is called the ''initiator'' and there are three initiators used in spoken human languages: * the diaphragm together with the ribs and lungs ''(pulmonic'' mechanisms), * the glottis ''(glottalic'' mechanisms), and * the tongue ''(lingual'' or ''"velaric"'' mechanisms). Though not used in any language, the cheeks may be used to generate the airstream ''(buccal'' mechanism, notated in VoQS). See buccal speech. After a laryngectomy, the esophagus may be used as the initiator (notated for simple esophageal speech and for tracheo-esophageal speech in VoQS). See esophageal speech. ''Percussive'' consonants are produce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hausa Language
Hausa (; /; Ajami: ) is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people in the northern half of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern half of Niger, Chad and Sudan, with significant minorities in Ivory Coast. Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic languages, Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72 million. In Nigeria, the Hausa-speaking film industry is known as Hausa-language cinema, Kannywood. Classification Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. Geographic distribution Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in southern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo, Somali, Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, Saho, and Sidama. Official status The Cushitic languages with the greatest number of total speakers are Oromo (37 million), Somali (22 million), Beja (3.2 million), Sidamo (3 million), and Afar (2 million). Oromo serves as one of the official working languages of Ethiopia and is also the working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system including Oromia, Harari and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. Somali is the first of two official languages of Somalia and three official languages of the self declared republic of Somaliland. It also serves as a la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; , and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose ( nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs like , , , and are used to extend the alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uvular Consonant
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages. (Ejective uvular affricates occur as realizations of uvular stops in Lillooet, Kazakh, or as allophonic realizations of the ejective uvular fricative in Georgian.) Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels. Uvular consonants in IPA The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: , being/existence , - !χʼ , uvular ejective fricative , Tlingit , x̱'aan , ''χʼàː ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geography Of Africa
Africa is a continent comprising 63 political territories, representing the largest of the great southward projections from the main mass of Earth's surface. Within its regular outline, it comprises an area of , excluding adjacent islands. Its highest mountain is Mount Kilimanjaro, its largest lake is Lake Victoria. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from much of Asia by the Red Sea, Africa is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez (which is transected by the Suez Canal), wide. For geopolitical purposes, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt – east of the Suez Canal – is often considered part of Africa. From the most northerly point, Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia, at 37°21′ N, to the most southerly point, Cape Agulhas in South Africa, 34°51′15″ S, is a distance approximately of ; from Cap-Vert, 17°31′13″W, the westernmost point, to Ras Hafun in the Somali Puntland region, in the Horn of Africa, 51°27′52″ E, the most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago and the Russian Far East to the east. The continental landmass is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Africa to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and by Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean to the south. The division between Europe and Asia as two continents is a historical social construct, as many of their borders are over land; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of the six, five, or four continents on Earth. In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on paleomagnetic data. Eurasia covers around , or around 36.2% of the Earth's total land area. It is also home to the largest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically been considered as a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Mount Elbrus in Russia, Europe's highest mountain, is situated in the Western Caucasus. On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and the Armenian highlands, part of which is in Turkey. The Caucasus is divided into the North Caucasus and South Caucasus, although the Western Caucasus also exists as a distinct geographic space within the North Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is occupied by several independent states, mostly by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, but also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afroasiatic Languages
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic subregions of Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara/Sahel. With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the African continent. Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of native speakers of any language family (after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo). The phylum has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. The most widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum by far is Arabic, a ''de facto'' group of distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch. The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omotic
The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have complex tonal systems (for example, the Bench language). The languages have around 6.2 million speakers. The group is generally classified as belonging to the Afroasiatic language family, but this is disputed by some. Four separate "Omotic" groups are accepted by ''Glottolog'' 4.0 and Güldemann (2018): Ta-Ne-Omotic, Dizoid (Maji), Mao, and Aroid ("South Omotic"). Languages The North and South Omotic branches ("Nomotic" and "Somotic") are universally recognized, with some dispute as to the composition of North Omotic. The primary debate is over the placement of the Mao languages. Bender (2000) classifies Omotic languages as follows: *South Omotic / Aroid ( Hamer-Banna, Aari, Dime, Karo) *North Omotic / Non-Aroid ** Mao *** Bambassi ** ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Mountains
The Maya Mountains are a mountain range located in Belize and eastern Guatemala, in Central America. Etymology The Maya Mountains were known as the ''Cockscomb'' or ''Coxcomb Mountains'' to Baymen and later Belizeans at least until the mid-20th century. Their current appellation is thought to be in honour of the Mayan civilisation. Geography Physical Peaks The range's highest peaks are Doyle's Delight at and Victoria Peak at . Rivers Nine streams with a Strahler order greater than 1 flow from the Mountains into the Caribbean Sea, namely, five tributaries of the Belize River, two tributaries of the Monkey River, and the Sittee River and Boom Creek. Karst Prominent karstic features within the Mountains include the Chiquibul Spring and Cave System, the Vaca Plateau, the Southern and Northern Boundary Faults, and possibly an aquifer contiguous with that of the Yucatan Peninsula. Plutons The Mountains 'are the only source of igneous and metamorphic materials' in Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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