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Taro
Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in African, Oceanic, and South Asian cultures (similar to yams). Taro is believed to be one of the earliest cultivated plants. Names and etymology The English term '' taro'' was borrowed from the Māori language when Captain Cook first observed ''Colocasia'' plantations there in 1769. The form ''taro'' or ''talo'' is widespread among Polynesian languages:*''talo'': taro (''Colocasia esculenta'') – entry in the ''Polynesian Lexicon Project Online'' (Pollex). in Tahitian; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 3rd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture. Linguistic characteristics The methodology of comparative linguistics, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in time; t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samoan Language
Samoan ( or ; ) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alongside English, in both jurisdictions. It is widely spoken across the Pacific region, heavily so in New Zealand and also in Australia and the United States. Among the Polynesian languages, Samoan is the most widely spoken by number of native speakers. Samoan is spoken by approximately 260,000 people in the archipelago and with many Samoans living in diaspora in a number of countries, the total number of speakers worldwide was estimated at 510,000 in 2015. It is the third-most widely spoken language in New Zealand, where 2.2% of the population, 101,900 people, were able to speak it as of 2018. The language is notable for the phonological differences between formal and informal speech as well as a ceremonial form used in Samoan oratory. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yam (vegetable)
Yam is the common name for some plant species in the genus '' Dioscorea'' (family Dioscoreaceae) that form edible tubers. Yams are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in many temperate and tropical regions, especially in West Africa, South America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Oceania. The tubers themselves, also called "yams", come in a variety of forms owing to numerous cultivars and related species. Yams were independently domesticated on three different continents: Africa ('' Dioscorea rotundata''), Asia ('' Dioscorea alata''), and the Americas ('' Dioscorea trifida''). Etymology The name "yam" appears to derive from Portuguese ''inhame'' or Canarian (Spain) ''ñame'', which derived from West African languages during trade. However in both languages, this name commonly refers to the taro plant (''Colocasia esculenta'') from the genus '' Colocasia'', as opposed to '' Dioscorea''. The main derivations borrow f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Austronesian
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify 3,500–4,000 BCE on Taiwan. Lower-level reconstructions have also been made, and include Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian. Recently, linguists such as Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley have built large lexicons for Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian. Phonology Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed by constructing sets of correspondences among consonants in the various Austronesian languages, according to the comparative method. Although in theory the result should be unambiguous, in practice given the large number of languages there are numerous disagreements, with various scholars differing significantly on the number and nature of the phonemes in Proto-Austronesian. In the past, some disagreements concerned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marquesan Language
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.See Charpentier & François (2015). Phonology The most striking feature of the Marquesan languages is their almost universal replacement of the or of other Polynesian languages by a (glottal stop). Like other Polynesian languages, the phonology of Marquesan languages is characterized by a scarcity of consonants and a comparative abundance of vowels. The consonant phonemes are: Of this small number of consonants, is found only in eastern Nuku Hiva (Tai Pi Marquesan), and is found only in South Marquesan dialects. In writing, the phoneme is written , and is written , the okina. Unlike Samoan, the is not an isolated nasal: it is found only in conjunction with a following . So, whereas the Samoan word for 'bay' is , pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Araceae
The Araceae are a family of monocotyledonous flowering plants in which flowers are borne on a type of inflorescence called a spadix. The spadix is usually accompanied by, and sometimes partially enclosed in, a spathe (or leaf-like bract). Also known as the arum family, members are often colloquially known as aroids. This family of 140 genera and about 4,075 known species is most diverse in the New World tropics, although also distributed in the Old World tropics and northern temperate regions. Many species display very decorative leaves and flowers, and they are widely used for gardening; popular as indoor plants and also outdoor plants where climates are mild, and winter freezes will not generally occur. However, some temperate species are also very popular in Mediterranean-climate gardening, or in moderately cool temperate zones, such as ''Zantedeschia''. Description Species within Araceae are often rhizomatous or tuberous, and the leaves nearly always contain calcium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Root Vegetable
Root vegetables are underground plant parts eaten by humans as food. Although botany distinguishes true roots (such as taproots and tuberous roots) from non-roots (such as bulbs, corms, rhizomes, and tubers, although some contain both hypocotyl and taproot tissue), the term "root vegetable" is applied to all these types in agricultural and culinary usage (see terminology of vegetables). Potatoes are technically tubers, not roots, and sweet potatoes are tuberous roots. Root vegetables are generally storage organs, enlarged to store energy in the form of carbohydrates. They differ in the concentration and the balance among starches, sugars, and other types of carbohydrate. Of particular economic importance are those with a high carbohydrate concentration in the form of starch; starchy root vegetables are important staple foods, particularly in tropical regions, overshadowing cereals throughout much of Central Africa, West Africa and Oceania, where they are used directly or mas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austroasiatic Languages
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are the majority languages of Vietnam and Cambodia. There are around 117 million speakers of Austroasiatic languages. Of these languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have a long-established recorded history. Only two have official status as modern national languages: Vietnamese in Vietnam and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand. In Myanmar, the Wa language is the de facto official language of Wa State. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status. '' Ethnologue'' identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijian Language
Fijian (') is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. The 2013 Constitution established Fijian as an official language of Fiji, along with English and Fiji Hindi and there is discussion about establishing it as the "national language". Fijian is a VOS language. Standard Fijian is based on the speech of Bau, which is an East Fijian language. A pidginized form is used by many Indo-Fijians and Chinese on the islands, while Pidgin Hindustani is used by many rural ethnic Fijians and Chinese in areas dominated by Indo-Fijians. History Phonology The consonant phonemes of Fijian are as shown in the following table: The consonant written has been described as a prenasalized trill or trilled affricate . However, it is only rarely pronounced with a trilled release; the primary feature distinguishing it from is that it is postalveolar, , rather than dental/alveolar. The sounds a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Javanese Language
Javanese (, , ; , Aksara Jawa: , Pegon: , IPA: ) is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 98 million people. Javanese is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers. It has several regional dialects and a number of clearly distinct status styles. Its closest relatives are the neighboring languages such as Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese. Most speakers of Javanese also speak Indonesian for official and commercial purposes as well as a means to communicate with non-Javanese-speaking Indonesians. There are speakers of Javanese in Malaysia (concentrated in the West Coast part of the states of Selangor and Johor) and Singapore. Javanese is also spoken by traditional immigrant communities of Javanese descent in Suriname, Sri L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Austroasiatic Language
Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's ''Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary'', while a new Proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction is currently being undertaken by Paul Sidwell. Scholars generally date the ancestral language to 5,000-4,000 B.P. (i.e. 3,000-2,000 BCE) with a homeland in southern China or the Mekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area about 4,000-4,500 years before present. Phonology Shorto (2006) The Proto-Mon–Khmer language is the reconstructed ancestor of the Mon–Khmer languages, a purported primary branch of the Austroasiatic language family. However, Mon–Khmer as a taxon has been abandoned in recent classifications, making Proto-Mon–Khmer synonymous with Proto-Austroasiatic;Sidwell, Paul (2009)The Austroasiatic Central Riveri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
