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Language Isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi in Oceania are all examples of such languages. The exact number of language isolates is yet unknown due to insufficient data on several languages. One explanation for the existence of language isolates is that they might be the last remaining member of a larger language family. Such languages might have had relatives in the past that have since disappeared without being documented, leaving them an orphaned language. One example is the Ket language spoken in central Siberia, which belongs to the wider Yeniseian language family; had it been discovered in recent times independently from its now extinct relatives, such as Yugh and Kott, it would have been classified as an isolate. Another explanation for language isolates is that they aro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Isolated Languages
Social isolation, Isolation is the near or complete lack of social contact by an individual. Isolation or isolated may also refer to: Sociology and psychology *Social isolation *Isolation (psychology), a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theory *Emotional isolation, a feeling of isolation despite a functioning social network *Isolation effect, a psychological effect of distinctive items more easily remembered Mathematics * Real-root isolation * Isolation lemma, a technique used to reduce the number of solutions to a computational problem. * Isolated point, a topological notion of having no points near a given point Natural sciences *Electrical or galvanic isolation, isolating functional sections of electrical systems to prevent current flowing between them *An isolated system, a system without any external exchange *Isolating language, a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio *Isolation (microbiology), techniques to separate microbes from a sample containing mixt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Japanese Language
is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many Classification of the Japonic languages, attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as Ainu languages, Ainu, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, Koreanic languages, Koreanic, and the now discredited Altaic languages, Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Its spread is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as Southwestern Mandarin, those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Because Mandarin originated in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Indo-European Languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e.g., Tajikistan and Afghanistan), Armenia, and areas of southern India. Historically, Indo-European languages were also spoken in Anatolia. Some European languages of this family—English language, English, French language, French, Portuguese language, Portuguese, Russian language, Russian, Spanish language, Spanish, and Dutch language, Dutch—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, including Albanian language, Albanian, Armenian language, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic languages, Celtic, Germanic languages, Germanic, Hellenic languages, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian, and Italic languages, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, migrated to Britain after its End of Roman rule in Britain, Roman occupiers left. English is the list of languages by total number of speakers, most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the list of languages by number of native speakers, third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish language, Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in list of countries and territories where English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Language Family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin.Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.)''Ethnologue: Languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pama–Nyungan Languages
The Pama–Nyungan languages () are the most widespread language family, family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it is derived from the two end-points of the range, the Pama languages of northeast Australia (where the word for 'man' is ) and the Nyungan languages of southwest Australia (where the word for 'man' is ). The other language families indigenous to the continent of Australia are often referred to, by exclusion, as non-Pama–Nyungan languages, though this is not a taxonomic term. The Pama–Nyungan family accounts for most of the geographic spread, most of the Aboriginal population, and the greatest number of languages. Most of the Pama–Nyungan languages are spoken by small ethnic groups of hundreds of speakers or fewer. Many languages have become extinct, and almost all remaining ones are endangered in some way. Only in the central inland portions of the continent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller islands. It has a total area of , making it the list of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania. Australia is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent. It is a megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and Climate of Australia, climates including deserts of Australia, deserts in the Outback, interior and forests of Australia, tropical rainforests along the Eastern states of Australia, coast. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last glacial period. By the time of British settlement, Aboriginal Australians spoke 250 distinct l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Yanyuwa Language
Yanyuwa () is the language of the Yanyuwa people of the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria outside Borroloola () in the Northern Territory, Australia. Yanyuwa, like many other Australian Aboriginal languages, is a highly agglutinative language with ergative-absolutive alignment, whose grammar is pervaded by a set of 16 noun classes whose agreements are complicated and numerous. Yanyuwa is a critically endangered language. The anthropologist John Bradley has worked with the Yanyuwa people for three decades and is also a speaker of Yanyuwa. He has produced a large dictionary and grammar of the language, along with a cultural atlas in collaboration with a core group of senior men and women. Classification Dixon (2002), who rejects the validity of Pama–Nyungan, accepts that Yanyuwa is demonstrably related to Warluwara and languages closely related to it. Speech styles In Yanyuwa, certain words have synonyms used to replace the everyday term in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Extinct Language
An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts. Languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign ''lingua franca''. As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the languages spoken at that time will have become extinct by 2050. Language death Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Unclassified Languages
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Kartvelian Languages
The Kartvelian languages ( ; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian or Kartvelic languages Boeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. There are approximately 5 million Georgian language speakers worldwide, with large groups in Russia, Iran, the United States, the European Union, Israel, and northeastern Turkey. The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families. The most widely spoken of these languages is Georgian. The earliest literary source in any Kartvelian language is the Old Georgian Bir el Qutt inscriptions, written in ancient Georgian Asomtavruli script at the once-existing Georgian monastery near Bethlehem,Lang (1966), p. 154 dated to . Georgian scripts are used to write all Kartvelian languages. Status Georgian is the official language of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |