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Soft Sign
The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer , the vowel phoneme that it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels. In the modern Slavic Cyrillic writing systems in which it appears (all East Slavic languages and Bulgarian and Church Slavic), it does not represent an individual sound but indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant. Uses and meanings Palatalization sign The soft sign is normally written after a consonant and indicates its ''softening'' (palatalization) (for example Ukrainian батько 'father'). Less commonly, the soft sign just has a grammatically determined usage with no phonetic meaning (like russian: туш 'fanfare' and тушь 'India ink', both pronounced but different in grammatical gender and declensi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrillic Script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia. , around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek alphabets. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, who had previously created the Glagolitic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belarusian Language
Belarusian ( be, беларуская мова, biełaruskaja mova, link=no, ) is an East Slavic language. It is the native language of many Belarusians and one of the two official state languages in Belarus. Additionally, it is spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries. Before Belarus gained independence in 1991, the language was only known in English as ''Byelorussian'' or ''Belorussian'', the compound term retaining the English-language name for the Russian language in its second part, or alternatively as ''White Russian''. Following independence, it became known as ''Belarusan'' and since 1995 as ''Belarusian'' in English. As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. Its predecessor stage is known in Western academia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, '' The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the '' Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg and Belgium, as well as a national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France ( Bas-Rhin), Czech Republic ( North Bohemia), Poland (Upper Silesia), Slovakia ( Bratislava Region), and Hungary (Sopron). German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish. It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group, such as Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language after English, which is also a West Germanic language. Germ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tabasaran Language
Tabasaran (also written Tabassaran) is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Lezgic branch. It is spoken by the Tabasaran people in the southern part of the Russian Republic of Dagestan. There are two main dialects: North (Khanag) and South Tabasaran. It has a literary language based on the Southern dialect, one of the official languages of Dagestan. Tabasaran is an ergative language. The verb system is relatively simple; verbs agree with the subject in number, person and (in North Tabasaran) class. North Tabasaran has two noun classes (also dubbed with the term "grammatical gender"), whereas Southern Tabasaran lacks noun classes. Geographical distribution It is spoken in the basin of Upper Rubas-nir and Upper Chirakh-nir. Phonology Consonants The post-alveolar sibilants may be whistled. Vowels Vowel sounds of Tabasaran are , y, ɛ, æ, ɑ, u Writing system Tabasaran is written using Cyrillic since 1938 (from 1928 to 1938 the Latin alphabet was used as a base ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dagestanian Languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in diaspora populations in Western Europe and the Middle East. They are occasionally called ''Caspian'', as opposed to ''Pontic'' for the Northwest Caucasian languages. Name of the family Several names have been in use for this family. The most common term, ''Northeast Caucasian'', contrasts the three established families of the Caucasian languages: ''Northeast Caucasian'', '' Northwest Caucasian'' (Abkhaz–Adyghean) and ''South Caucasian'' ( Kartvelian). This may be shortened to ''East Caucasian''. The term ''Nakh(o)-Dagestanian'' can be taken to reflect a primary division of the family into Nakh and Dagestanian branches, a view which is no longer widely accepted, or ''Dagestanian'' can subsume the entire family. The rare term ''North ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ingush Language
Ingush (; , , pronounced ) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya. Classification Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. There is pervasive passive bilingualism between Ingush and Chechen. Geographic distribution Ingush is spoken by about 413,000 people (2002), primarily across a region in the Caucasus covering parts of Russia, primarily Ingushetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey and Jordan. Official status Ingush is, alongside Russian, an official language of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia. Writing system Ingush became a written language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century. After the October Revolution it first used a Latin alphabet, which was later replaced by Cyril ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chechen Language
Chechen (, ) (, , ) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by 2 million people, mostly in the Chechen Republic and by members of the Chechen diaspora throughout Russia and the rest of Europe, Jordan, Central Asia (mainly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) and Georgia. Classification Chechen is a Northeast Caucasian language. Together with the closely related Ingush, with which there exists a large degree of mutual intelligibility and shared vocabulary, it forms the Vainakh branch. Dialects There are a number of Chechen dialects: Ehki, Chantish, Chebarloish, Malkhish, Nokhchmakhkakhoish, Orstkhoish, Sharoish, Shuotoish, Terloish, Itum-Qalish and Himoish. The Kisti dialect of Georgia is not easily understood by northern Chechens without a few days' practice. One difference in pronunciation is that Kisti aspirated consonants remain aspirated when they are doubled (fortis) or after /s/, but they then lose their aspiration in other dialects. Dialects of Chechen can be classified by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram (from the grc, δίς , "double" and , "to write") is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined. Some digraphs represent phonemes that cannot be represented with a single character in the writing system of a language, like the English '' sh'' in ''ship'' and ''fish''. Other digraphs represent phonemes that can also be represented by single characters. A digraph that shares its pronunciation with a single character may be a relic from an earlier period of the language when the digraph had a different pronunciation, or may represent a distinction that is made only in certain dialects, like the English '' wh''. Some such digraphs are used for purely etymological reasons, like '' rh'' in English. Digraphs are used in some Romanization schemes, like the '' zh'' often used to represent t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Аь (digraph)
The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer , the vowel phoneme that it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels. In the modern Slavic Cyrillic writing systems in which it appears (all East Slavic languages and Bulgarian and Church Slavic), it does not represent an individual sound but indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant. Uses and meanings Palatalization sign The soft sign is normally written after a consonant and indicates its ''softening'' (palatalization) (for example Ukrainian батько 'father'). Less commonly, the soft sign just has a grammatically determined usage with no phonetic meaning (like russian: туш 'fanfare' and тушь 'India ink', both pronounced but different in grammatical gender and declen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in: Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Kannada, Malayalam, Japanese, Latin, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, and Vietnamese. While vowel length alone does not change word meaning in most dialects of English, it is said to do so in a few dialects, such as Australian English, Lunenburg English, New Zealand English, and South African English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, unlike in other varieties of Chinese. Many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length does not change meaning, and the length of a vowel is conditioned by other factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it, for instance whether the vowel is followed by a voiced or a voiceless c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th century A.D. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages. Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during the Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain the traditional definition of a pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
