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Mid Central Vowel
The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. A reduced mid central vowel is known as a schwa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents either sound is , a rotated lowercase letter e. While the ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' does not define the roundedness of , a schwa is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the unrounded variant as follows: "a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity and vocalising." To produce the rounded variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Afrikaans contrasts unrounded and rounded mid central vowels; the latter is usually transcribed with . The contrast is not very stable, and many speakers use an unrounded vowel in both cases. Danish and Luxembourgish have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded. In other languages, the chang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in Vowel length, quantity (length). They are usually voice (phonetics), voiced and are closely involved in Prosody (linguistics), prosodic variation such as tone (linguistics), tone, intonation (linguistics), intonation and Stress (linguistics), stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (, , , , , and sometimes and ). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one Phonetics, phonetic and the other Phonology, phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English language, English "ah" or "oh" , produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as ( "the eloquent Arabic") or simply ' (). Arabic is the List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language, third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations, and the Sacred language, liturgical language of Islam. Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanization system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students in mainland China and Singapore. Pinyin is also used by various Chinese input method, input methods on computers and to lexicographic ordering, categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial (linguistics), initial and a final (linguistics), final, each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in ''The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century&n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon. Hong Kong written Chinese, used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau, is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters. Like other Sinitic languages, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. Compared with southern varieties, the language has fewer vowels, final consonants and tones, but more ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred to as Quanzhang ( zh, c=泉漳, poj=Choân-chiang, links=no), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity. In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of Han Chinese subgroups, all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken Varieties of Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic languages, Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a Language family, family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin with 66%, or around 800&nb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Catalan
The Catalan dialects (and restrictively also, Valencian dialects) feature a relative uniformity, especially when compared to other Romance languages; both in terms of vocabulary, semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology. Mutual intelligibility between its dialects is very high, estimates ranging from 90% to 95%.R. A. Hall, Jr. (1989), cited oEthnologue (archived)/ref> The only exception is the isolated idiosyncratic Alguerese dialect. Geographic classifications Overview of main varieties and areas Western vs. Eastern In 1861, linguist Manuel Milà i Fontanals split Catalan into two main dialectal blocks: Western and Eastern. The most obvious phonetic difference lies in the treatment of unstressed a and e, which have merged to in Eastern dialects, but remain distinct as and in Western dialects. There are a few other differences in pronunciation, verbal morphology, and vocabulary. Western Catalan comprises the two varieties of North-Western Catalan and Valencia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Phonology
The Catalan phonology (or Valencian phonology) has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two standard varieties, one based on Central Catalan, Central Eastern dialect and another one based on South-Western or Valencian language, Valencian, this article deals with features of all or most dialects, as well as regional pronunciation differences. Catalan is characterized by final-obstruent devoicing, lenition, and voicing assimilation; a vowel system, set of 7 to 8 phoneme, phonemic vowels, vowel assimilation (phonology), assimilations (including vowel harmony), many phonetic diphthongs, and vowel reduction, whose precise details differ between dialects. Consonants : Phonetic notes: * , are Laminal consonant, laminal Denti-alveolar consonant, denti-alveolar , . After , they are laminal Alveolar consonant, alveolar , . * , are Velar consonant, velar but fronted to pre-velar position before front vowels. In some Majorcan dialects, the situation is revers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Orthography
The Catalan and Valencian orthographies encompass the spelling and punctuation of standard Catalan (set by the IEC) and Valencian (set by the AVL). There are also several adapted variants to the peculiarities of local dialects of Insular Catalan ( Alguerese and the Balearic subdialects). History The history of the Catalan and Valencian orthographies shows a singularity in regard to the other Romance languages. These have been mostly developed from Latin, adapting them to their own phonetic particularities. It had been a gradual and slow process through centuries until the creation of the Academies in the 18th century that fixed the orthography from their language dominant variety. Badia i Margarit, Antoni M. «». In the case of Catalan and Valencian, the mediaeval orthography had a noticeable homogeneity. The Royal Chancellery set a unitary written model in several fields. Thus, Ramon Muntaner expressed in his Chronicle (1325–1328) that the Catalans are the lar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balearic Catalan
Balearic ( ) is the group of dialects of Catalan spoken in the Balearic Islands: in Mallorca, in Ibiza and ''menorquí'' in Menorca. At the 2011 census, 861,232 respondents in the Balearic Islands claimed to be able to understand either Balearic or mainland Catalan, compared to 111,912 respondents who could not; proportions were similar on each of the islands. Dialects The dialects spoken in the Balearic Islands are , spoken on Mallorca, on Menorca and on Ibiza and Formentera. Features Distinctive features of Catalan in the Balearic Islands differ according to the specific variant being spoken (Mallorcan, Menorcan, or Ibizan). Phonology ;Vowels : :Notes: :* Most variants preserve a vocalic system of eight stressed vowels; , , , , , , , : :** The Majorcan system has eight stressed vowels , reduced to four in unstressed position. :** The Western Minorcan system has eight stressed vowels , reduced to three in unstressed position. :** The Eastern Minorcan and part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Language
Catalan () is a Western Romance languages, Western Romance language and is the official language of Andorra, and the official language of three autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, where it is called ''Valencian language, Valencian'' (). It has semi-official status in the Italy, Italian ''comune'' of Alghero, and it is spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the La Franja, eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking territories are often called the or "Països Catalans". The language evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees. It became the language of the Principality of Catalonia and the kingdoms of kingdom of Valencia, Valencia and Kingdom of Majorca, Mallorca, being present throughout the Mediterranean. Replaced by Spanish as a language of gov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
