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Quechuan Languages
Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" language, it is today the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with the number of speakers estimated at 8–10 million speakers in 2004,Adelaar 2004, pp. 167–168, 255. and just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011. Approximately 13.9% (3.7 million) of Peruvians speak a Quechua language. Although Quechua began expanding many centuries before the Incas, that previous expansion also meant that it was the primary language family within the Inca Empire. The Spanish also tolerated its use until the Peruvian struggle for independence in the 1780s. As a result, various Quechua languages are still widely spoken today, being co-official in many regions and the most spoken language in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yurok Language
Yurok (also Chillula, Mita, Pekwan, Rikwa, Sugon, Weitspek, Weitspekan) is an Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok people of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the far north coast of California, most of whom now speak English. The last known native speaker, Archie Thompson, died in 2013. As of 2022, Yurok language classes were taught to high school students, and other revitalization efforts were expected to increase the population of speakers. The standard reference on the Yurok language grammar is by R. H. Robins (1958). Robins, Robert H. 1958The Yurok Language: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon University of California Publications in Linguistics 15. Name Concerning the etymology of ''Yurok'' ( ''Weitspekan''), this below is from Campbell (1997): History Decline of the language began during the California Gold Rush, due to the influx of new settlers and the diseases they brought with them and Native American boarding schools initiated by the Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ubykh Language
Ubykh is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, an ethnic group of Circassian nation who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported ''en masse'' to the Ottoman Empire during the Circassian genocide. The Ubykh language is ergative and polysynthetic, with a high degree of agglutination, with polypersonal verbal agreement and a very large number of distinct consonants but only two phonemically distinct vowels. With around eighty consonants, it has one of the largest inventories of consonants in the world, and the largest number for any language without clicks. The name Ubykh is derived from (), from , its name in the Adyghe language. It is known in linguistic literature by many names: variants of Ubykh, such as ''Ubikh'', ( French); and its Germanised variant (from Ubykh ). Major features Ubykh is distinguished by the following features, some of which are shared with other Northwest Caucasian langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing system, writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of Productivity (linguistics), productivity and Displacement (linguistics), displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armenian Alphabet
The Armenian alphabet (, or , ) or, more broadly, the Armenian script, is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It is one of the three historical alphabets of the South Caucasus. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The script originally had 36 letters. Eventually, two more were adopted in the 13th century. In reformed Armenian orthography (1920s), the ligature is also treated as a letter, bringing the total number of letters to 39. The Armenian word for 'alphabet' is ('), named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet: ' and '. Armenian is written horizontally, left to right. History and development Possible antecedents One of the classical accounts of the existence of an Armenian alphabet before Mesrop Mashtots comes from Philo of Alexandria (20 BCAD 50), who in his writings notes that the work of the Greek philosoph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lushootseed
Lushootseed ( ), historically known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, or Skagit-Nisqually, is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main dialects, Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed, which are further separated into smaller sub-dialects. Lushootseed was historically spoken across southern and western Puget Sound roughly between modern-day Bellingham and Olympia by a number of Indigenous peoples. Lushooteed speakers were estimated to number 12,000 at the peak. Today, however, it is primarily a ceremonial language, spoken for heritage or symbolic purposes. There are about 472 known second-language speakers of Lushootseed. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger and classified as Reawakening by Ethnologue. Many Lushootseed-speaking tribes are attempting to revitalize the daily use of their language. Seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgian Alphabet
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: #Asomtavruli, Asomtavruli, #Nuskhuri, Nuskhuri and #Mkhedruli, Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their Letter (alphabet), letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written horizontally from Writing system#Directionality, left to right. Of the three scripts, Mkhedruli, once the official script of the Kingdom of Georgia and mostly used for the royal charters, is now the standard script for modern Georgian and its related Kartvelian languages, whereas Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri are used only by the Georgian Orthodox Church, in ceremonial religious texts and Iconography#Christian iconography, iconography. It is one of the three Alphabets of the South Caucasus, historical alphabets of the South Caucasus. Georgian scripts are unique in their appearance and their exact origin has never been established; however, in strictly structural terms, their alphabetical or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicography, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathology, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators. The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical item, lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in oral language: phone (phonetics), phones, Intonation (linguistics), intonation and the separation of syllables. To represent additional qualities of speechsuch as tooth wikt:gnash, gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft lip and cleft palate, cleft palatean extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, extended set of symbols may be used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bilabial Consonants
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita, though all of these have a labial–velar approximant /w/. Varieties The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are: Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: . Other varieties The extensions to the IPA also define a () for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips audibly parting would be . The IPA chart shades out ''bilabial lateral consonants'', which is sometimes read as indicating that such sounds are not possible. The fricatives and are often lateral, but since no language makes a distinction for centrality, the allophony is not noticeable. See also * Place of articulation * Index of phonetics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ossetian Language
Ossetian ( , , ), commonly referred to as Ossetic and rarely as Ossete, is an Eastern Iranian language that is spoken predominantly in Ossetia, a region situated on both sides of the Russian-Georgian border in the Greater Caucasus region. It is the native language of the Ossetian people, and a relative and possibly a descendant of the extinct Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic languages. The northern half of the Ossetian region is part of Russia and is known as North Ossetia–Alania, while the southern half is part of the '' de facto'' country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as Russian-occupied territory that is ''de jure'' part of Georgia). Ossetian-speakers number about 614,350, with 451,000 recorded in Russia per the 2010 Russian census. Despite Ossetian being the official languages of both North and South Ossetia, since 2009 UNESCO has listed Ossetian as "vulnerable". In the 2010 Russian census only 36% of North Ossetians claimed to be fluent i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halkomelem Language
Halkomelem (; in the Upriver dialect, in the Island dialect, and in the Downriver dialect) is a language of various First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples of the British Columbia Coast. It is spoken in what is now British Columbia, ranging from southeastern Vancouver Island from the west shore of Saanich Inlet northward beyond Gabriola Island and Nanaimo to Nanoose Bay and including the Lower Mainland from the Fraser River Delta upriver to Harrison Lake and the lower boundary of the Fraser Canyon. In the classification of Salishan languages, Halkomelem is a member of the Central Salish branch. There are four other branches of the family: Tsamosan, Interior Salish, Bella Coola, and Tillamook. Speakers of the Central and Tsamosan languages are often identified in ethnographic literature as "Coast Salish languages, Coast Salish". The word ''Halkomelem'' is an anglicization of the name ''Halq̓eméylem''. The language has three distinct dialect groups: # Hulquminum / Hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Americanist Phonetic Notation
Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists (many of whom were Neogrammarians) for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic, Uralic, Semitic languages and for the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa; however, Uralicists commonly use a variant known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. Despite its name, NAPA has always been widely used outside the Americas. For example, a version of it is the standard for the transcription of Arabic in articles published in the , the journal of the German Oriental Society. Diacritics are more widely used in Americanist notation than in the Interna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
