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Johan Vandewalle
Johan Vandewalle (born 15 February 1960) is a Belgians, Belgian Linguistics, linguist. He teaches at Ghent University and specializes in Turkic languages. Life Vandewalle first became interested in Turkish language, Turkish at the age of thirteen, during a family holiday to Turkey. He initially studied civil engineering and architecture, before deciding to focus on languages. In 1987, at the age of twenty-six, he won the ''Polyglot of Flanders/Babel Prize'', after demonstrating communicative competence in nineteen languages (Arabic language, Arabic, Azerbaijani language, Azerbaijani, Bashkir language, Bashkir, Dutch language, Dutch, English language, English, French language, French, German language, German, Italian language, Italian, Kyrgyz language, Kyrgyz, Persian language, Persian, Russian language, Russian, Swahili language, Swahili, Tajik language, Tajik, Tatar language, Tatar, Turkish language, Turkish, Turkmen language, Turkmen, Tuvan language, Tuvan, Uyghur language, Uyg ...
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Bruges
Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amounts to more than 14,099 hectares (140.99 km2; 54.44 sq. miles), including 1,075 hectares off the coast, at Zeebrugge (from , meaning 'Bruges by the Sea'). The historic city center is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is oval and about 430 hectares in size. The city's total population is 117,073 (1 January 2008),Statistics Belgium; ''Population de droit par commune au 1 janvier 2008'' (excel-file)
Population of all municipalities in Belgium, as of 1 January 2008. Retrieved on 19 October 2008.
of who ...
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Italian Language
Italian (, , or , ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian language, Sardinian. It is spoken by about 68 million people, including 64 million native speakers as of 2024. Italian is an official language in Languages of Italy, Italy, Languages of San Marino, San Marino, Languages of Switzerland, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), and Languages of Vatican City, Vatican City; it has official Minority language, minority status in Minority languages of Croatia, Croatia, Slovene Istria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the municipalities of Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo, Santa Tereza, Encantado, Rio Grande do Sul, Encantado, and Venda Nova do Imigrante in Languages of Brazil#Language co-officialization, Brazil. Italian is also spoken by large Italian diaspora, immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Austral ...
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1960 Births
It is also known as the " Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * January 1 – Cameroon becomes independent from France. * January 9– 11 – Aswan Dam construction begins in Egypt. * January 10 – British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan makes the "Wind of Change" speech for the first time, to little publicity, in Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana). * January 19 – A revised version of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan ("U.S.-Japan Security Treaty" or "''Anpo (jōyaku)''"), which allows U.S. troops to be based on Japanese soil, is signed in Washington, D.C. by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The new treaty is opposed by the massive Anpo protests in Japan. * January 21 ** Coalbrook mining disaster: A coal mine ...
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Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and remains the liturgical language of many Christian Orthodox churches. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the language and undertaking the task of translating the Gospels and necessary Eastern Orthodox worship#Liturgical books, liturgical books into it as part of the Christianization of the Slavs. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th-century Sclaveni, Byzantine Slavs living in the Thessalonica (theme), Province of Thessalonica (in present-day Greece). Old Church Slavonic played an important rol ...
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Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ...
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Uzbek Language
Uzbek is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language endonymically called or , as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s. According to the Joshua Project, Southern Uzbek and Standard Uzbek are spoken as a native language by more than 34 million people around the world, making Uzbek the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish. There are about 36 million Uzbeks around the world, and the reason why the number of speakers of the Uzbek language is greater than that of ethnic Uzbeks themselves is because many other ethnic groups such as Tajiks, Kazakhs, Russians who live in Uzbekistan speak Uzbek as their second language. There are two major variants of the Uzbek language: Northern Uzbek, or simply "Uzbek", spoken in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and China; and Southern Uzbek, spoken in Afghanistan and Paki ...
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Uyghur Language
Uyghur or Uighur (; , , or , , ), formerly known as Turki or Eastern Turki, is a Turkic languages, Turkic language with 8 to 13 million speakers (), spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a Lingua franca, common language. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk languages, Karluk branch of the Turkic languages, Turkic language family, which includes languages such as Uzbek language, Uzbek. Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a Branchi ...
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Tuvan Language
Tuvan, also spelt Tyvan, is a Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tuva in South Central Siberia, Russia. There are small groups of Tuvans that speak distinct dialects of Tuvan in China and Mongolia. History The earliest record of Tuvan is from the early 19th century by ''Wūlǐyǎsūtái zhìlüè'' (), Julius Klaproth 1823, Matthias Castrén 1857, Nikolay Katanov, Vasily Radlov, etc. The name Tuva goes back as early as the publication of ''The Secret History of the Mongols''. The Tuva (as they refer to themselves) have historically been referred to as Soyons, Soyots or Uriankhais. Classification Tuvan (also spelled Tyvan) is linguistically classified as a Sayan Turkic language. Its closest relative is the moribund Tofa. Tuvan, as spoken in Tuva, is principally divided into four dialect groups; Western, Central, Northeastern, Southeastern. * Central: forms the basis of the literary language and includes Ovyur and Bii-Khem subdialects. The geographical c ...
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Turkmen Language
Turkmen (, , , or , , , ) is a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 4.7 million native speakers in Turkmenistan (where it is the official language), and a further 359,000 speakers in northeastern Iran and 1.2 million people in northwestern Afghanistan, where it has no official status. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and by diaspora communities, primarily in Turkey and Russia. Turkmen is a member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. It is closely related to Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Qashqai, and Turkish, sharing varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with each of those languages. However, the closest relative of Turkmen is considered Khorasani Turkic, spoken in northeastern regions of Iran and with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages, as well as Khorazm, the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek spoken mainly in Khorezm along the ...
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Tatar Language
Tatar ( ; or ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken by the Volga Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan (European Russia), as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with Crimean Tatar language, Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar language, Siberian Tatar, which are closely related but belong to different subgroups of the Kipchak languages. Geographic distribution The Tatar language is spoken in Russia by about 5.3 million people, and also by communities in Azerbaijan, China, Finland, Georgia (country), Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Uzbekistan, and several other countries. Globally, there are more than 7 million speakers of Tatar. Tatar is also the mother tongue for several thousand Mari people, Mari, a Finnic peoples, Finnic people; Mordva's Qaratay group also speak a variant of Kazan Tatar. In the Russian Census (2010), 2010 census, 69% of Russian Tatars claimed at least some knowledge of the ...
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Tajik Language
Tajik, Tajik Persian, Tajiki Persian, also called Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by ethnic Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari of Afghanistan with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of the Persian language. Several scholars consider Tajik as a dialectal variety of Persian rather than a language on its own. The popularity of this conception of Tajik as a variety of Persian was such that, during the period in which Tajik intellectuals were trying to establish Tajik as a language separate from Persian, prominent intellectual Sadriddin Ayni counterargued that Tajik was not a "bastardised dialect" of Persian. The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a single language or two discrete languages has political aspects to it. By way of Early New Persian, Tajik, like Iranian Persian and Dari Persian, is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official administrative, religio ...
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Swahili Language
Swahili, also known as as it is referred to endonym and exonym, in the Swahili language, is a Bantu languages, Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent littoral islands). Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely. They generally range from 150 million to 200 million; with most of its native speakers residing in Tanzania and Kenya. Swahili has a significant number of loanwords from other languages, mainly Arabic, as well as from Portuguese language, Portuguese, English language, English and German language, German. Around 40% of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including the name of the language ( , a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coasts'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab slave trade, Arab traders and the Northeast Bantu languages, B ...
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