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Syllable-timed Language
Isochrony is a linguistic analysis or hypothesis assuming that any spoken language's utterances are divisible into equal rhythmic portions of some kind. Under this assumption, languages are proposed to broadly fall into one of two categories based on rhythm or timing: syllable-timed or stress-timed languages (or, in some analyses, a third category: mora-timed languages). However, empirical studies have been unable to directly or fully support the hypothesis, so the concept remains controversial in linguistics. History Rhythm is an aspect of prosody, others being intonation, stress, and tempo of speech. ''Isochrony'' refers to rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. The idea of was first expressed thus by Kenneth L. Pike in 1945, though the concept of language naturally occurring in chronologically and rhythmically equal measures is found at least as early as 1775 (in ''Prosodia Rationalis''). Soames (1889) attributed the idea to Curwen. This has implic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as ''"The measured flow of words or phrases in verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by the relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this"''. Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats: In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel Reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Muscogee language), and which are perceived as "weakening". It most often makes the vowels shorter as well. Vowels which have undergone vowel reduction may be called ''reduced'' or ''weak''. In contrast, an unreduced vowel may be described as ''full'' or ''strong''. The prototypical reduced vowel in English is schwa. In Australian English, that is the only reduced vowel, though other dialects have additional ones. Transcription There are several ways to distinguish full and reduced vowels in transcription. Some English dictionaries indicate full vowels by marking them for secondary stress even when they are not stressed, so that e.g. is a unstressed full vowel while is a reduced ''schwi''. Or the vowel quality may be portrayed as distinct, with reduced vowels centra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korean Language
Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is known as (). Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean Wave, Korean popular culture have spread around the world through globalization and Korean Wave, cultural exports. Beyond Korea, the language is recognized as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin, and specifically Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai Korean Autonomous County, Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few Extinct language, extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkish Language
Turkish ( , , also known as 'Turkish of Turkey') is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, a member of Oghuz languages, Oghuz branch with around 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and one of two official languages of Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, other parts of Europe, the South Caucasus, and some parts of Central Asia, Iraqi Turkmen, Iraq, and Syrian Turkmen, Syria. Turkish is the List of languages by total number of speakers, 18th-most spoken language in the world. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish language, Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Persian alphabet, Perso-Arabic script-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet was repl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armenian Language
Armenian (endonym: , , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the sole member of the independent branch of the Armenian language family. It is the native language of the Armenians, Armenian people and the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian highlands, today Armenian is also widely spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora. Armenian is written in its own writing system, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Saint Mesrop Mashtots. The estimated number of Armenian speakers worldwide is between five and seven million. History Classification and origins Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages. It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological changes within that family. Armenian exhibits Centum and satem languages, more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While the term ''Cantonese'' specifically refers to the prestige variety, in linguistics it has often been used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but partially mutually intelligible varieties like Taishanese. Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas communities. In mainland China, it is the ''lingua franca'' of the province of Guangdong (being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. It is also the dominant and co-official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Furthermore, Cantonese is widely spoken among overseas Chinese in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singlish
Singlish (a portmanteau of ''Singapore'' and '' English''), formally known as Colloquial Singaporean English, is an English-based creole language originating in Singapore. Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact between speakers of many different Asian languages in Singapore, such as Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, Teochew, and Tamil. The term ''Singlish'' was first recorded in the early 1970s. Singlish has similar roots and is highly mutually intelligible with Manglish, particularly Manglish spoken in Peninsular Malaysia. Singlish originated with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English language education in Singapore. Elements of English quickly filtered out of schools and onto the streets, resulting in the development of a pidgin language spoken by non-native speakers as a lingua franca used for communication between speakers of the many different languages used in Singapore. Singlish evolved mainly among the working cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Icelandic Language
Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian languages, West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese language, Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language Norn language, Norn. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish language, Danish, Norwegian language, Norwegian, and Swedish language, Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English language, English and German language, German. The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. The language is more Linguistic conservatism, conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brazilian Portuguese Language
Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora, today consisting of about two million Brazilians who have emigrated to other countries. With a population of over 203 million, Brazil is by far the world's largest List of Portuguese speaking countries, Portuguese-speaking nation and the only one in the Americas where Portuguese, of which Brazilian Portuguese is a variety, is the official language under Article 13 of the Constitution. The Academia Brasileira de Letras (ABL) plays a significant cultural role in its development but has no legal regulatory authority over the language, which is shaped primarily by usage and educational norms in Brazil. Brazilian Portuguese differs notably from European Portuguese in phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar, though it remains a variety of Portuguese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romanian Language
Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian; , or , ) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance languages, Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Italo-Western languages, Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called ''#Dialects, Daco-Romanian'' as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian language, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian language, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian language, Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Romanians in Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Romanians in Hungary, Hungary, Romanians in Serbia, Serbia and Romanians in Ukraine, Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
