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Prenasalized Stops
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English ''finger'' or ''member'', lies in their behaviour; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of the additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants are not as common as prenasalized stops or affricates, and the presence of the former implies the latter. In most languages, when a prenasalized consonant is described as "voiceless", it is only the oral portion that is voiceless, and the nasal portion is modally voiced. Thus, a language may have "voiced" and "voiceless" . However, in some Southern Min (including Taiwanese) dialects, voiced consonants are preceded by voiceless prenasalization: . Yey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines based on the research questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech ( articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound ( acoustic phonetics), or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information ( auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production—the ways humans make sounds—and perception—the way speech is understood. The communicative moda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllabic Consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet is used, . It may be instead represented by an overstroke, if the symbol that it modifies has a descender, such as in . Syllabic consonants in most languages are sonorants, such as nasals and liquids. Very few have syllabic obstruents, such as stops and fricatives in normal words, but English has syllabic fricatives in paralinguistic words like ''shh!'' and ''zzz''. Examples Germanic languages In many varieties of High and Low German, pronouncing syllabic consonants may be considered a shibboleth. In High German and Tweants (a Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Netherlands; more Low Saxon dialects have the syllabic consonant), all word-final syllables in infinite verbs and feminine plural nou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquor
Liquor (or a spirit) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit drink, distilled beverage or hard liquor. The distillation process concentrates the liquid to increase its alcohol by volume. As liquors contain significantly more alcohol ( ethanol) than other alcoholic drinks, they are considered 'harder'; in North America, the term ''hard liquor'' is sometimes used to distinguish distilled alcoholic drinks from non-distilled ones, whereas the term ''spirits'' is more common in the UK. Some examples of liquors include vodka, rum, gin, and tequila. Liquors are often aged in barrels, such as for the production of brandy and whiskey, or are infused with flavorings to form a flavored liquor such as absinthe. While the word ''liquor'' ordinarily refers to distilled alcoholic spirits rather than beverages produced by fermentation alone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buckwheat
Buckwheat (''Fagopyrum esculentum''), or common buckwheat, is a flowering plant in the knotweed family Polygonaceae cultivated for its grain-like seeds and as a cover crop. The name "buckwheat" is used for several other species, such as '' Fagopyrum tataricum'', a domesticated food plant raised in Asia. Despite its name, buckwheat is not closely related to wheat. It is not a cereal, nor is it even a member of the grass family. Buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb, and is known as a pseudocereal because its seeds' culinary use is the same as cereals, owing to their high starch content. Etymology The name "buckwheat" or "beech wheat" comes from its triangular seeds, which resemble the much larger seeds of the beech nut from the beech tree, and the fact that it is used like wheat. The word may be a translation of Middle Dutch ''boecweite'': ''boec'' (Modern Dutch ''beuk''), "beech" (see PIE *''bhago''-) and ''weite'' (Mod. Dut. ''tarwe'', antiquated Dut. ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of speech sounds in written form.International Phonetic Association (IPA), ''Handbook''. The IPA is used by lexicography, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguistics, linguists, speech–language pathology, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators. The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of wiktionary:lexical, lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in oral language: phone (phonetics), phones, phonemes, Intonation (linguistics), intonation, and the separation of words and syllables. To represent additional qualities of speech—such as tooth wiktionary:gnash, gnashing, lisping, and sounds made wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means " Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yi Script
The Yi script (Yi: ; ) is an umbrella term for two scripts used to write the Yi languages; Classical Yi (an ideogram script), and the later Yi Syllabary. The script is historically known in Chinese as ''Cuan Wen'' () or ''Wei Shu'' () and various other names (), among them "tadpole writing" (). This is to be distinguished from romanized Yi (彝文羅馬拼音 Yíwén Luómǎ pīnyīn) which was a system (or systems) invented by missionaries and intermittently used afterwards by some government institutions. There was also a Yi abugida or alphasyllabary devised by Sam Pollard (missionary), Sam Pollard, the Pollard script for the Miao language, which he adapted into "Nasu" as well. Present day traditional Yi writing can be sub-divided into five main varieties (Huáng Jiànmíng 1993); Nuosu language, Nuosu (the prestige form of the Yi language centred on the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Liangshan area), Nasu language, Nasu (including the Wusa), Nisu language, Nisu (Souther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naxi Language
Naxi (Naqxi ), also known as ''Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, Mo-su'', is a Sino-Tibetan language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people, most of whom live in or around Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the ethnic group that speaks it, although in detail, officially defined ethnicity and linguistic reality do not coincide neatly: there are speakers of Naxi who are not registered as "Naxi" and citizens who are officially "Naxi" but do not speak it. Classification It is commonly proposed in Chinese scholarship that the Naic languages are Lolo-Burmese languages: for instance, Ziwo Lama (2012) classifies Naxi as part of a "Naxish" branch of Loloish. However, as early as 1975, Sino-Tibetan linguist David Bradley pointed out that Naxi does not partake in the shared innovations that define Loloish.Cited in Thurgood and La Polla (2003) state that "The position of Naxi ... is still unclear despite much speculation" and l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuosu Language
Nuosu or Nosu (, transcribed as ), also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language () and, as such, is the only one taught in schools, both in its oral and written forms. It was spoken by two million people and was increasing as of (PRC census); 60% were monolingual (1994 estimate). Nuosu is the native Nuosu name for their own language and is not used in Mandarin Chinese, though it may sometimes be translated as ''Nuòsūyǔ'' (). The occasional terms "Black Yi" () and 'White Yi' () are castes of the Nuosu people, not dialects. Nuosu is one of several often mutually unintelligible varieties known as Yi, Lolo, Moso, or Noso; the six Yi languages recognized by the Chinese government hold only 25% to 50% of their vocabulary in common. They share a common traditional writing system, though this is used for shamanism rather than daily accounting. Dialects La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lolo–Burmese
The Lolo-Burmese languages (also Burmic languages) of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Names Until ca. 1950, the endonym ''Lolo'' was written with derogatory characters in Chinese, and for this reason has sometimes been avoided. Shafer (1966–1974) used the term "Burmic" for the Lolo-Burmese languages. The Chinese term is ''Mian–Yi'', after the Chinese name for Burmese and one of several words for Tai, reassigned to replace ''Lolo'' by the Chinese government after 1950. Possible languages The position of Naxi (Moso) within the family is unclear, and it is often left as a third branch besides Loloish and Burmish. Lama (2012) considers it to be a branch of Loloish, while Guillaume Jacques has suggested that it is a Qiangic language. The Pyu language that preceded Burmese in Burma is sometimes linked to the Lolo-Burmese family, but there is no good evidence for any particular classification, and it is best left unclassified withi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loloish Languages
The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred Sino-Tibetan languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its relatives. Both the Loloish and Burmish branches are well defined, as is their superior node, Lolo-Burmese. However, subclassification is more contentious. SIL Ethnologue (2013 edition) estimated a total number of 9 million native speakers of Ngwi languages, the largest group being the speakers of Nuosu (Northern Yi) at 2 million speakers (2000 PRC census). Names ''Loloish'' is the traditional name for the family. Some publications avoid the term under the misapprehension that ''Lolo'' is pejorative, but it is the Chinese rendition of the autonym of the Yi people and is pejorative only when it is written with a particular Chinese character (one that uses a beast, rather than a human, radical), a practice that was prohibited by the Chinese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xiang Chinese
Xiang or Hsiang (; ); Changsha Xiang: ''sian1 y3'', also known as Hunanese (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighboring Guizhou and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups, Chang-Yi, Lou-Shao, Hengzhou, Chen-Xu and Yong-Quan. Among those, Lou-shao, also known as Old Xiang, still exhibits the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives, and affricates. Xiang has also been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiang speaking territory, and Gan in Jiangxi Province, from where a large population immigrated to Hunan during the Ming Dynasty. Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in Modern Chinese history, especially in those reformatory and revolutionary movements such as the Self-Strengthening Movement, Hundred Days' Reform, X ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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