languages

Birinin beş dilden daha fazlasını akıcı olarak konuştuğunu iddia ettiğini duyduğumda şüphe ederim. - I'm skeptical when I hear someone claim to speak more than five languages fluently.

Tom Mary'ye üç dilden daha fazla konuşup konuşmadığını sordu. - Tom asked Mary if she spoke more than three languages.

language

dilde

language

dilin

romance languages

Latince kökenli diller

string processing languages

dizgi işleme dilleri

click languages

(Dilbilim) şaklamalı diller

indigeneous languages

(Dilbilim) yerli dilleri

inflected languages

(Dilbilim) bükünlü diller

(Askeri) DİL, MAKİNA DİLİ: Haber ve bilgileri göstermek ve bunları halk arasında veya halkla makina arasında alıp vermek için kullanılan bir sistem. Böyle bir sistem; dikkatle belirtilmiş bir harf grubu ile bu harfleri kelime veya ifade şeklinde daha geniş birimler halinde birleştiren kurallardan ve özel anlamlar meydana getirecek kelime düzme ve kullanma kurallarından ibarettir

language

finger language sağırların kullandığı parmak işaretleri ile konuşulanstrong language küfür

language

bir kabileye veya bir yere mahsus lehçe

language

herhangi bir ifade tarzı

language

konuşma kabiliyeti

radical languages

(Dilbilim) tekheceli diller

romance languages

romen dilleri

synthetic languages

bireşimli diller

the classical languages

eski diller

tone languages

(Dilbilim) ton dilleri

Английский Язык - Английский Язык

Определение languages в Английский Язык Английский Язык словарь: English-French; These fields were marked if the majority of an advertisement was written in another language The most frequent languages found were French and Spanish There was one Italian language advertisement; a category of information for enhanced profiles that lists the languages in which business is conducted; This entry provides a rank ordering of languages starting with the largest and sometimes includes the percent of total population speaking that language; plural of language; The number of different languages in which the phone can display its text; Primarily conceived in English, the Glossary has been further developed in French and Spanish, and now exists in all the FAO languages (i e Arabic and Chinese as well) Informal versions exist in other languages (for example, Russian); Numerous; Wouldn't it be funny to watch "Friday" in Spanish? Ok, maybe not But some DVD's will allow you to re-dub the voices in different tongues or simply choose the language of the subtitles
Mongolic languages: plural form of Mongolic language
Romance languages: plural form of Romance language
artificial languages: plural form of artificial language
assembly languages: plural form of assembly language
attested languages: plural form of attested language
computer languages: plural form of computer language
computing languages: plural form of computing language
constructed languages: plural form of constructed language
dead languages: plural form of dead language
first languages: plural form of first language
foreign languages: plural form of foreign language
formal languages: plural form of formal language
high level languages: Common misspelling of high-level languages
high-level languages: plural form of high-level language
language: The vocabulary and usage used in a particular specialist field
legal language.
language: Profanity
language: A form of communication using words either spoken or gestured with the hands and structured with grammar, often with a writing system
sign language.
living languages: plural form of living language
low-level languages: plural form of low-level language
machine languages: plural form of machine language
markup languages: plural form of markup language
mixed languages: plural form of mixed language
moon languages: plural form of moon language
native languages: plural form of native language
reconstructed languages: plural form of reconstructed language
scripting languages: plural form of scripting language
sign languages: plural form of sign language
standard languages: plural form of standard language
target languages: plural form of target language
what languages do you speak: What are the natural languages which you can understand and which you can speak or write in?
language: lingo
language: {n} all human speech, a tongue, a style
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages: TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.) is a global education association for English language teachers to speakers of others languages with individual and institutional members and extensive affiliations worldwide
Adamawa-Ubangi languages: formerly Adamawa-Eastern languages Branch of the huge Niger-Congo language family. Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in eastern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, southwestern Chad, and western Central African Republic. The branch has two divisions, Adamawa in the west and Ubangi in the east. The Adamawa group comprises 80 languages, the least-studied languages in the Niger-Congo family. Nearly all have fewer than 100,000 speakers. The Ubangi group includes 40 languages and extends across a much broader region, from northern Cameroon across the Central Africa Republic to adjacent parts of southern Sudan and northern Congo (Kinshasa). Ubangi languages with more than a million speakers include those of the Banda, Gbaya, Ngbaka, and Zande peoples. Sango, a restructured form of one or more languages of the Ngbandi group of Ubangi, has become a lingua franca of the Central African Republic
African languages: Languages indigenous to Africa that belong to the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Afro-Asiatic language phyla. Africa is the most polyglot continent; estimates of the number of African languages range from 1,000 to more than 1,500. Many have numerous dialects. Distinctions in tone play a significant role in nearly all sub-Saharan languages. Contact between people who do not speak the same language has necessitated the development of lingua francas such as Swahili in East Africa, Lingala in the Congo River basin (see Bantu languages), Sango in the Central African Republic (see Adamawa-Ubangi languages), and Arabic across much of the Sahel
Afro-Asiatic languages: formerly Hamito-Semitic languages Family of about 250 languages spoken in North Africa, parts of sub-Saharan African, and the Middle East. It includes such languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Hausa. The total number of speakers is estimated to be more than 250 million. The major branches of Afro-Asiatic are Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, Omotic, and Chadic. Berber languages are spoken by perhaps 15 million people in enclaves scattered across North Africa from Morocco to northwestern Egypt and in parts of the western Sahara. Cushitic consists of some 30 languages spoken by more than 30 million people in northeastern Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, and a few areas of northeastern Tanzania. Omotic, formerly classified as part of Cushitic, is a cluster of perhaps more than 30 languages spoken by 2-3 million people, most of whom live near the Omo River in southwestern Ethiopia. Chadic comprises about 140 languages (most of which are poorly known to linguists), spoken in northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon; except for Hausa, it is likely that no individual Chadic language has more than half a million speakers
Algonquian languages: or Algonkian languages Family of 25-30 North American Indian languages spoken or formerly spoken across a broad area of eastern and central North America. They are divided conventionally into three geographic groups. Eastern Algonquian languages, spoken from the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to coastal North Carolina, include Micmac, East and West Abenaki, Delaware, Massachusett, and Powhatan (or Virginia Algonquian) the latter two now long extinct. Central Algonquian languages include Shawnee, Miami-Illinois, Sauk, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Menominee (all spoken around the Great Lakes), Ojibwa (around the upper Great Lakes and north from eastern Quebec through Manitoba), and Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi (spoken from Labrador west to Hudson Bay and Alberta). Plains Algonquian includes the languages of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Atsina (Gros Ventres), and Blackfoot (spoken in the central and northern Great Plains)
Altaic languages: Group of more than 50 languages, comprising the Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus subfamilies. Altaic languages are spoken across Eurasia by more than 140 million people (the overwhelming majority of whom speak Turkic languages). Most scholars consider Altaic itself to be a family, of proven genetic relationship, though a minority attribute similarities in the languages to borrowings and areal convergence. The Uralic and Altaic language families were once believed to form a superfamily, but reliable sound correspondences have not been demonstrated, and the numerous similarities between the two are now attributed to areal influences
American Indian languages: Languages spoken by the original inhabitants of the Americas and the West Indies and by their modern descendants. They display an extraordinary structural range, and no attempt to unite them into a small number of genetic groupings has won general acceptance. Before the arrival of Columbus, more than 300 distinct languages were spoken in North America north of Mexico by an estimated population of two to seven million. Today fewer than 170 languages are spoken, of which the great majority are spoken fluently only by older adults. A few widespread language families (Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan, Muskogean, Athabaskan, Uto-Aztecan, Salishan) account for many of the languages of eastern and interior North America, though the far west was an area of extreme diversity (see Hokan; Penutian). It is estimated that in Mexico and northern Central America (Mesoamerica), an estimated 15-20 million people spoke more than 300 languages before Columbus. The large Otomanguean and Maya families and a single language, Nahuatl, shared Mesoamerica with many smaller families and language isolates. More than 10 of these languages and language complexes still have more than 100,000 speakers. South America and the West Indies had an estimated pre-Columbian population of 10-20 million, speaking more than 500 languages. Important language families include Chibchan in Colombia and southern Central America, Quechuan and Aymaran in the Andean region, and Arawakan, Cariban, and Tupian in northern and central lowland South America. Aside from Quechuan and Aymaran, with about 10 million speakers, and the Tupian language Guaraní, most remaining South American Indian languages have very few speakers, and some face certain extinction
Anatolian languages: Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in Anatolia in the 2nd-1st millennia BC. The attested Anatolian languages are Hittite, Palaic, Luwian (Luvian), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian. Hittite, by far the most copiously attested of the group, is known chiefly from a vast archive of cuneiform tablets found in 1905 at Hattusas (now Bogazköy, in north-central Turkey), the capital of the Hittite empire; Hittite texts date from the 16th to 13th century BC. By the late Roman or early Byzantine period at the latest, Anatolian languages had all become extinct. Several non-Indo-European languages of ancient Anatolia, all known from cuneiform texts, are also sometimes considered Anatolian languages: Hattic, spoken in central Anatolia before the coming of the Hittites and known solely from words and texts preserved by Hittite scribes; Hurrian, spoken in the 2nd millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia; and Urartian (Urartean), known from northwestern Anatolian texts of the 9th-7th centuries BC
Arawakan languages: or Maipuran languages Largest family of American Indian languages. The family comprises an estimated 65 known languages, of which at least 30 are now extinct. They stretch from the Caribbean coast of Central America to the Gran Chaco and southern Brazil, and from western Peru to the Guianas and central Brazil. Taino, a now-extinct Arawakan language of the Antilles, was the first American Indian language encountered by Europeans. Arawakan languages that are still viable include Goajiro in Colombia and Venezuela; Amuesha, Machiguenga, and the Campa languages in Peru; and Terena in Brazil
Athabaskan languages: or Athapaskan languages Family of North American Indian languages. There are perhaps 200,000 speakers of Athabaskan. Northern Athabaskan includes more than 20 languages scattered across an immense region of subarctic North America from western Alaska to Hudson Bay and south to southern Alberta and British Columbia. Pacific Coast Athabaskan consisted of four to eight languages, all now extinct or nearing extinction. Apachean consists of eight closely related languages spoken in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, including Navajo and the various subdivisions of Apache. In 1990 Navajo had some 150,000 speakers, far more than any other indigenous language of the U.S. or Canada. In 1915 Edward Sapir placed the Athabaskan family together with Tlingit and Haida (languages of Alaska and British Columbia, respectively) in a larger grouping called Na-Dene; this hypothetical relationship continues to be controversial
Atlantic languages: formerly West Atlantic languages Branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Atlantic comprises some 45 languages spoken by some 30 million people living mainly in Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. About half of these people speak Fula, the language of the Fulani. The languages of the Wolof of Senegal and The Gambia and the Temne of northwest Sierra Leone are spoken by more than 1 million people
Australian Aboriginal languages: Group of perhaps 250 languages spoken by the one to two million native inhabitants of Australia before the beginning of European conquest in 1788. More than half are now extinct; of the remainder, only about 20, mostly in the North Territory and northern Western Australia, remain in active use by both adults and children. Most Australian languages belong to a single superfamily, Pama-Nyungan, and the remainder, a very diverse group of languages spoken in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and parts of the North Territory, may be remotely akin to Pama-Nyungan
Austroasiatic languages: Superfamily of about 150 languages spoken by close to 90 million physically and culturally very diverse people in South and Southeast Asia. Today most scholars believe that it is subdivided into two families, Munda and Mon-Khmer. The present fragmented distribution of Austroasiatic languages is most likely the result of relatively recent incursions by Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Tai, and Austronesian-speaking peoples. In prehistoric times Austroasiatic languages most likely extended over a much broader and more continuous area, including much of what is now southeastern China. Other than Vietnamese and Khmer, no Austroasiatic language is an official national language
Austronesian languages: formerly Malayo-Polynesian languages Family of about 1,200 languages spoken by more than 200 million people in Indonesia, the Philippines, Madagascar, the central and southern Pacific island groups (except most of New Guinea; see Papuan languages), and parts of mainland Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Before European colonial expansion, it had the widest territorial extent of any language family. A primary genetic division in the family separates the Austronesian languages of Taiwan from the remaining languages, which are divided into Western and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Western Malayo-Polynesian includes Javanese, which is spoken by about 76 million people more than a third of all Austronesian-speakers. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian includes Oceanic, the best-defined subgroup of Austronesian, comprising nearly all the languages of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Typological generalizations about Austronesian languages are difficult because of their enormous number and diversity, though content words tend to be disyllabic, and vowel and consonant inventories tend to be limited, especially in Polynesian. Written records in scripts of Southeast Asian provenance (see Indic writing system) survive for several languages, including Old Javanese and Cham, the language of the kingdom of Champa
Baltic languages: Branch of the Indo-European language family that includes three attested languages, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Old Prussian. They were or are spoken along the eastern and southeastern shore and hinterlands of the Baltic Sea. Medieval chronicles report four other Baltic-speaking peoples in the region, though by the 16th century these peoples had been completely assimilated. Baltic has certain striking features in common with Slavic languages, though the deep divisions within Baltic itself, among other factors, make the hypothesis of a common Balto-Slavic protolanguage difficult to defend
Bantu languages: {i} group of languages that belong to the Benue-Congo languages
Bantu languages: Group of some 500 languages belonging to the Benue-Congo language branch of the Niger-Congo language family. They are spoken by more than 200 million people in a very large area, including most of Africa from southern Cameroon eastward to Kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. Twelve Bantu languages, including Rundi (Kirundi), Rwanda (Kinyarwanda), Shona, Zulu, and Xhosa, are spoken by more than 5 million people
Benue-Congo languages: Largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in numbers of languages (900) and speakers (at least 500 million). Its major divisions are Defoid, including Yoruba, with more than 20 million speakers; Edoid, including Edo (see kingdom of Benin); Nupoid, including Nupe, Ebira, and Gbagyi; Idomoid, including Idoma; Igboid, including the many dialects of the approximately 19 million Igbo people; Kainji, with 40 languages; Platoid, a congeries of 50 languages; Cross River, a group of more than 55 languages; and Bantoid. The largest branch, Bantoid, comprises a Northern and a Southern group and includes more than 500 languages, 47 of which are spoken by more than 1 million people. The Bantu languages make up the largest subgroup of Southern Bantoid
Cariban languages: Large family of South American Indian languages. It has an estimated 43 members; nearly half are now extinct, and most of the remainder have very few speakers. Most Cariban languages are spoken in southern Venezuela, the Guianas, and Brazil north of the Amazon, though several have strayed far from this area. Cariban incursions into the mainly Arawakan-speaking Antilles at the time of Columbus provided European languages with the words Carib (hence, Caribbean) and cannibal, both perhaps from a proto-Cariban form meaning "Indian, person
Caucasian languages: Group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region that are not members of any language families spoken elsewhere in the world. Caucasian languages, spoken by some nine million people, are divided into three subgroups: the South Caucasian, or Kartvelian family; the Northwest Caucasian, or Abkhaz-Adyghe languages; and the Northeast Caucasian, or Nakh-Dagestanian languages. Kartvelian, with more than 4.5 million speakers, comprises four relatively closely related languages, including Georgian. Northwest Caucasian languages include Abkhaz and a chain of dialects called collectively Circassian. The Northeast Caucasian languages are further divided into two groups, Nakh and Dagestanian. The Nakh languages include Chechen and Ingush, spoken by more than a million people mainly in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Dagestanian is an extraordinarily diversified group of 25-30 languages spoken by some 1.7 million people mainly in northern Azerbaijan and the Republic of Dagestan. Several Dagestanian languages, including Avar, Lak, Dargva, and Lezgi, number their speakers in the hundreds of thousands; others are spoken in only a few villages. In spite of their great diversity, most Caucasian languages have in common large consonant inventories; in some languages the number of consonants distinguished approaches
Caucasian languages: Those Caucasian languages with standard written forms employ the Cyrillic alphabet, with the prominent exception of Georgian. An effort is being made to introduce the Latin alphabet for Chechen in Chechnya
Celtic languages: group of Indo-European languages (includes Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Manx, Cornish)
Celtic languages: Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken across a broad area of western and central Europe by the Celts in pre-Roman and Roman times, now confined to small coastal areas of northwestern Europe. Celtic can be divided into a continental group of languages (all extinct) and an insular group. Attestation of Insular Celtic begins around the time Continental Celtic fades from the scene as Celtic tongues gave way to Latin and other languages on the European continent. The Insular Celtic languages are conventionally divided into Goidelic (Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic) and Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, and Breton). Traditional Cornish was supplanted by English at the end of the 18th century. Manx, spoken on the Isle of Man, expired in the 20th century with the death of the last reputed native speaker in 1974. Both Manx and Cornish have been revived by enthusiasts, though neither can be considered community languages
Chinese languages: or Sinitic languages Family of languages comprising one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan. They are spoken by about 95% of the inhabitants of China and by many communities of Chinese immigrants elsewhere. Linguists regard the major dialect groups of Chinese as distinct languages, though because all Chinese write with a common system of ideograms, or characters (see Chinese writing system), and share Classical Chinese as a heritage, traditionally all varieties of Chinese are regarded as dialects. There is a primary division in Chinese languages between the so-called Mandarin dialects which have a high degree of mutual intelligibility and cover all of the Chinese speech area north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) and west of Hunan and Guangdong provinces and a number of other dialect groups concentrated in southeastern China. Far more people more than 885 million speak a variety of Mandarin Chinese as a first language than any other language in the world. The northern Mandarin dialect of Beijing is the basis for Modern Standard Chinese, a spoken norm that serves as a supradialectal lingua franca. Important dialect groups other than Mandarin are Wu (spoken in Shanghai), Gan, Xiang, Min (spoken in Fujian and Taiwan), Yue (including Cantonese, spoken in Guangzhou [Canton] and Hong Kong), and Kejia (Hakka), spoken by the Hakka. The modern Chinese languages are tone languages, the number of tones varying from four in Modern Standard Chinese to nine in some dialects
Conference on Data Systems Languages: (Computers) now-defunct organization established by the U.S. Department of Defense for the purpose of developing computer programming languages (known for the development of COBOL), CODASYL
Dravidian languages: Family of 23 languages indigenous to and spoken principally in South Asia by more than 210 million people. The four major Dravidian languages of southern India Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam have independent scripts and long documented histories. They account for the overwhelming majority of all Dravidian-speakers, and they form the basis of the linguistic states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. All have borrowed liberally from Sanskrit. The only Dravidian language spoken entirely outside of India is Brahui, with fewer than two million speakers mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of the Dravidian languages, Tamil has the greatest geographical extension and the richest and most ancient literature, which is paralleled in India only by that of Sanskrit. The Dravidian family, with no demonstrated relationship to other language families, is assumed to have covered a much more extensive area of South Asia before the spread of Indo-Aryan and was the source of loanwords into early Indo-Aryan dialects
Dravidian languages: {i} large family of languages spoken in Sri Lanka and in south and central India
Eskimo-Aleut languages: Family of languages spoken in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, U.S., and eastern Siberia by the Eskimo and Aleut peoples. Aleut, distantly related to the Eskimo languages, consists of eastern and western dialects; today both are spoken by fewer than 400 people. The Eskimo languages have two subgroups: Yupik (five languages), spoken on the Chukchi Peninsula in Siberia and in southwestern Alaska; and Inupiaq-Inuktitut, a continuum of dialects spoken across arctic Alaska and Canada to the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. Yupik languages are spoken today by about 13,000 people, while Inupiaq-Inuktitut has more than 100,000 speakers, nearly half of whom speak Greenlandic Inuktitut
Ethiopic languages: Group of Semitic languages, spoken by more than 25 million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Ethiopic has been divided by linguists into North Ethiopic, comprising Geez, Tigré, and Tigrinya (or Tigrai), and South Ethiopic, comprising the rest of the 22 languages. Geez (or Ethiopic) is the oldest Ethiopian Semitic language, first attested in inscriptions from the kingdom of Aksum. It became the language of Christianity in the Aksumite period, and though probably extinct as a vernacular sometime before the 10th century AD it remained the classical language of highland Ethiopian civilization and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church into the 20th century. Tigré has about 800,000 speakers in northern Eritrea, while Tigrinya has about 4 million speakers. The estimated 1.3 million Tigrinya speakers in Eritrea constitute about 50% of the country's population. The most important South Ethiopic language is Amharic
Finno-Ugric languages: Branch of the Uralic language family spoken by about 25 million people in northeastern Europe, northern Asia, and (through immigration) North America. More than 20 million are accounted for by two languages, Finnish and Hungarian. The Ugric subbranch comprises Hungarian and Ob-Ugrian. The latter consists of two language complexes of western Siberia, Khanty and Mansi, spoken by fewer than 15,000 people. The Finnic branch comprises the Sami (Saami, Lappish) languages, the Baltic Finnic languages, Mordvin, Mari, and the Permic languages. Sami is spoken by some 20,000 people in northern Scandinavia and adjacent Russia. Baltic Finnic comprises Finnish, Estonian (with 1.1 million speakers worldwide), and a string of declining languages in Latvia and Russia. Mordvin is spoken by 1.1 million people in scattered enclaves of central European Russia. Mari is also spoken in central Russia and in scattered areas east toward the Ural Mountains; its two major varieties have about 600,000 speakers. The Permic languages, spread over a broad swath of northeastern European Russia, comprise Udmurt (spoken by some 500,000 people) and Komi (spoken by fewer than 400,000 people but with two literary forms). Finno-Ugric languages written in Russia use variants of the Cyrillic alphabet, while those outside Russia use the Latin alphabet
Germanic languages: Branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising languages descended from Proto-Germanic. These are divided into West Germanic, including English, German, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Yiddish; North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faeroese (the language of the Faroe Islands); and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes. The Gothic Bible of AD 350 is the earliest extensive Germanic text. The West Germanic languages developed around the North Sea and in overseas areas colonized by their speakers. The North Germanic, or Scandinavian, languages, were carried as far west as Greenland and as far east as Russia in the Viking expansion of the early Middle Ages. The continental Scandinavian languages were strongly influenced by Low German in the late Middle Ages, but Icelandic and Faeroese have preserved many characteristics of Old Scandinavian grammar
Gur languages: formerly Voltaic languages Branch of the huge Niger-Congo language family. Gur comprises some 85 languages and language complexes spoken by about 20,000,000 people mainly in Burkina Faso, northern Côte d'Ivoire, northern Ghana, and northern Togo. Moore in Burkina Faso has the largest number of speakers, more than 6,000,000 (see Mossi). Once considered a Gur language, Dogon is spoken by about 600,000 people in Mali; it is of uncertain affiliation within Niger-Congo
Hmong-Mien languages: or Miao-Yao languages Language family of southern China, northern Vietnam, Laos, and northern Thailand, with more than nine million speakers. Hmong (Miao, Meo) has been divided into three dialect groups, Western, Central, and Northern. Beginning in the 18th century, groups of Western dialect speakers immigrated into northern Indochina. In the aftermath of the Indochina wars that ended in 1975, many Hmong fled from Laos to Thailand. Some were eventually resettled in the U.S., which now has perhaps 150,000 Western dialect speakers. Mien (Yao) has three major dialects; the largest of which, also called Mien, accounts for about 85% of Mien speakers. Though these languages are structurally similar to other languages of the area, most notably Chinese, no genetic relationship between Hmong-Mien and any other language family has been demonstrated
Hokan languages: Hypothetical superfamily of North American Indian languages uniting a number of languages and language families of the western U.S. and Mexico. The Hokan hypothesis was first proposed by Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber in 1913 and refined by Edward Sapir; like the Penutian designation, it was an attempt to reduce the number of unrelated language families in one of the most linguistically heterogeneous areas of the world. Its core consisted of languages of aboriginal California and the Southwest, with outlying members from Sonora and Oaxaca in Mexico. Except for some Yuman languages (spoken in southern California, Arizona, and Baja California), all were either extinct or spoken almost exclusively by older adults by the beginning of the 21st century
Ijoid languages: The smallest branch of the huge Niger-Congo language family. The Ijoid languages are found in the relatively narrow coastal Niger River delta region of Nigeria. They consist of a language cluster, Ijo, which is spoken by about two million people, and the solitary Defaka, spoken by very few. The Ijo were among the first West Africans to have contact with Europeans, and the Ijo language is believed to be one of the first Nigerian languages written
Indo-Aryan languages: or Indic languages Major subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by more than 800 million people, principally in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Old Indo-Aryan period is represented by Sanskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan ( 600 BC-AD 1000) consists principally of the Prakrit dialects, including Pali. Modern Indo-Aryan speech is largely a single dialect continuum spread over an undivided geographical space, so demarcations between languages and dialects are somewhat artificial. Complicating the situation are competing distinctions between languages with an old literary tradition, local language identification by native speakers (as in censuses), supraregional languages such as Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu, and labels introduced by linguists, particularly those of George Abraham Grierson. In the centre of the Indo-Aryan speech area (the "Hindi zone"), covering northern India and extending south as far as Madhya Pradesh, the most common language of administration and education is Modern Standard Hindi. Important regional languages in the northern Indian plain are Haryanvi, Kauravi, Braj, Awadhi, Chhattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Maithili. Regional languages in Rajasthan include Marwari, Dhundhari, Harauti, and Malvi. In the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh are Grierson's Pahari languages. Surrounding the Hindi zone, the most significant languages are, moving clockwise, Nepali (East Pahari), Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, the speech of southern, northwestern, and northern Punjab province in Pakistan (called West Punjabi or Lahnda by Grierson), Punjabi, and Dogri. In Jammu and Kashmir and the far north of Pakistan are the Dardic languages; the most important are Kashmiri, Kohistani, Shina, and Khowar. The Nuristani languages of northwestern Afghanistan are sometimes considered a separate branch of Indo-Iranian. Sinhalese (spoken in Sri Lanka), Divehi (spoken in the Maldive Islands), and Romany are also Indo-Aryan languages
Indo-Chinese languages: languages of Indochina (peninsula in southeastern Asia)
Indo-European languages: Family of languages with the greatest number of speakers, spoken in most of Europe and areas of European settlement and in much of southwestern and southern Asia. They are descended from a single unrecorded language believed to have been spoken more than 5,000 years ago in the steppe regions north of the Black Sea and to have split into a number of dialects by 3000 BC. Carried by migrating tribes to Europe and Asia, these developed over time into separate languages. The main branches are Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (including Indo-Aryan and Iranian), Greek, Italic, Germanic, Armenian, Celtic, Albanian, the extinct Tocharian languages, Baltic, and Slavic. The study of Indo-European began in 1786 with Sir William Jones's proposal that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Germanic, and Celtic were all derived from a "common source." In the 19th century linguists added other languages to the Indo-European family, and scholars such as Rasmus Rask established a system of sound correspondences. Proto-Indo-European has since been partially reconstructed via identification of roots common to its descendants and analysis of shared grammatical patterns
Indo-European languages: {i} family of languages including languages spoken in most of Europe and in Southwest and South Asia (also the languages spoken in the parts of the world colonized by Europeans since 1500 as well as in Persia,subcontinent of India and other parts of Asia)
Iranian languages: Major subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Iranian languages are probably spoken by more than 80 million people in southwestern and southern Asia. Only two Old Iranian languages are known, Avestan and Old Persian. A greater number of Middle Iranian languages ( 300 BC-AD 950) are known; these are divided into a western and an eastern group. Modern Iranian languages fall into four groups. The southwestern group includes Modern Persian (Farsi), Dari (in northern Afghanistan), Tajiki (in Tajikistan and other Central Asian republics); Luri and Bakhtiari (in southwestern Iran); and Tat. The northwestern group includes Kurdish (spoken in Kurdistan) and Baluchi (in southwestern Pakistan, southeastern Iran, and southern Afghanistan). The southeastern group includes Pashto (in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan) and the 10 or so Pamir languages (in eastern Tajikistan and adjacent parts of Afghanistan and China). The northeastern group includes Ossetic, spoken by the Ossetes in the central Caucasus Mountains, and Yaghnobi, formerly spoken in a single valley of the Pamirs. Nearly all the Modern Iranian languages have been written if at all in adaptations of the Arabic alphabet
Iroquoian languages: Family of about 16 North American Indian languages aboriginally spoken around the eastern Great Lakes and in parts of the Middle Atlantic states and the South. Aside from the languages of the Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, all originally spoken in New York, along with Tuscarora, originally spoken in North Carolina) and Cherokee (originally spoken in the southern Appalachians), the Iroquoian languages are extinct, and with the exception of Huron and Wyandot, the extinct languages are poorly documented. Iroquoian languages are remarkable for their grammatical intricacy. Much of a sentence's semantic content is bound around a verbal base, so a single very long word may constitute a fairly complex utterance
Italic languages: Indo-European languages spoken in the Apennine Peninsula (Italy) during the 1st millennium BC, after which only Latin survived. Traditionally thought to be a subfamily of related languages, these languages include Latin, Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Venetic. Latin, the language of Latium and Rome, began to emerge as the predominant language as early as the 3rd century BC. By AD 100 it had replaced all dialects (except Greek) between Sicily and the Alps. Until then, Oscan dialects were most widely spoken; Umbrian, in central Italy, was closely related to Oscan. Venetic was spoken in the region of Venice. These languages were written in various alphabets, including the Greek and Latin alphabets and modified versions of the Etruscan
Khoisan languages: Group of more than 20 languages presently spoken by perhaps several hundred thousand Khoekhoe and San peoples of southern Africa. A number of Khoisan languages are now either extinct or spoken by very few people. Their most distinctive linguistic characteristic is the original and extensive use of click consonants. The genetic unity of the Khoisan languages remains disputed
Kordofanian languages: Branch of the Niger-Congo language family. It is geographically separated from the rest of the Niger-Congo languages and is believed to represent the oldest layer of languages in the region. The Kordofanian branch consists of some 20 languages spoken by 250,000 to 500,000 people, mainly in the Nuba Hills of central Sudan
Kru languages: Branch of the Niger-Congo language family. It consists of some 24 languages (or language clusters) spoken by some three million Kru people living in the forest regions of southwestern Côte d'Ivoire and southern Liberia
Kwa languages: Branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Forty-five Kwa languages are spoken by approximately 20 million people in the southern areas of Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin and in the extreme southwestern corner of Nigeria. Languages and language groups having more than a million speakers include Anyi and Baule in Côte d'Ivoire, Akan (including Asante, Fante, and Brong) and Guang in Ghana, and Gbe (including Ewe, Fon, and Anlo) in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and Benin
Manchu-Tungus languages: or Tungusic languages Family of about 10 Altaic languages spoken by fewer than 55,000 people in Siberia, Mongolia, and northern China. All the languages have been losing ground for centuries as their speakers switch to the languages of surrounding populations Russian and Yakut in Siberia, and Chinese, Turkic, and Mongolian languages in China. Evenki has about 10,000 speakers in Siberia and far northeastern China. Even has fewer than 6,000 speakers in northeastern Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Nanai has fewer than 7,000 speakers near the lower Amur River. Juchen, the tribal language of the founders of the Juchen dynasty, is now extinct, and Manchu is spoken by fewer than 100 people, though some 10 million inhabitants of northeastern China count themselves as ethnically Manchu. Effectively a dialect of Manchu is Xibe, spoken by 10,000 descendants of Manchu-speaking soldiers garrisoned at 18th-century military outposts
Mande languages: Branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Mande comprises 40 languages of West Africa with more than 20 million speakers in a more or less contiguous area of southeastern Senegal, The Gambia, southern Mauritania, southwestern Mali, eastern Guinea, northern and eastern Sierra Leone, northern Liberia, and western Côte d'Ivoire. Substantial numbers are also found in Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Burkina Faso; and there are very much smaller, isolated pockets in the region. The most significant subgroup is the Mandekan complex a continuum of languages and dialects, including those spoken by the Bambara, Malinke, Maninka, and Dyula spoken from Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea east through Mali to Burkina Faso. Mande, spoken in Sierra Leone, also has more than a million speakers. Several independent writing systems based on the syllable were developed by speakers of Mande languages. The best-known is the Vai script, but Mende, Loma, and Kpelle also have their own scripts
Maya languages: or Mayan languages Family of about 30 American Indian languages and language complexes, spoken by more than three million people, mainly in southern Mexico and Guatemala. While some have few remaining speakers, Yucatec in Mexico and K'iche (Quiché), Kaqchikel (Cakchiquel), Mam, and Q'eqchi' (Kekchí) in Guatemala count speakers in the hundreds of thousands. Maya languages were recorded in an indigenous script (see Maya Codices; Mayan hieroglyphic writing), as well as in colonial documents in a Spanish-based orthography, including the Popol Vuh and the Yucatec prophetic texts known as the Books of Chilam Balam
Mon-Khmer languages: Family of about 130 Austroasiatic languages, spoken by more than 80 million people in South and Southeast Asia. Vietnamese has far more speakers than all other Austroasiatic languages combined. Other languages with many speakers are Muong, with about a million speakers in northern Vietnam; Khmer; Kuay (Kuy), with perhaps 800,000 speakers; and Mon, spoken by more than 800,000 people in southern Myanmar and parts of Thailand. Of all the Mon-Khmer languages, only Mon, Khmer, and Vietnamese have written traditions dating earlier than the 19th century. Old Mon, which is attested from the 7th century, was written in a script of South Asian origin that was later adapted by the Burmese (see Mon kingdom; Indic writing systems). Typical phonetic features of Mon-Khmer languages are a large vowel inventory and lack of tone distinctions
Mongolian languages: Family of about eight Altaic languages spoken by five to seven million people in central Eurasia. All Mongolian languages are relatively closely related; those languages whose speakers left the core area in Mongolia the earliest tend to be the most divergent. The most remote language is Mogholi (Moghul, Mongol), now spoken by fewer than 200 people in western Afghanistan. Less divergent are the languages of several ethnic groups in northwestern China, eastern Qinghai, and adjacent parts of Gansu and Inner Mongolia, altogether spoken by fewer than 500,000 people. The core languages are Mongolian proper, the dominant dialect in the Republic of Mongolia and the basis of Modern Standard Mongolian, and a group of peripheral dialects. The core group of Mongolian speakers traditionally have used Classical Mongolian as their literary language; it is written in a vertical alphabetic script borrowed from the Uighurs (see Turkic languages). Modern Mongolian was written in this script until 1946, when the People's Republic of Mongolia introduced a script using a modified Cyrillic alphabet. With political democratization in the 1990s, the old script has been revived. In Inner Mongolia it has been in continuous use
Munda languages: Family of about 17 languages spoken in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal that together with Mon-Khmer comprises the Austroasiatic superfamily. Munda languages are spoken by more than seven million people, all members of tribal groups living mainly in hilly and forested regions. Most significant are Santali, with more than four million speakers concentrated in northern Orissa, southern and eastern Bihar, northwestern Bengal, and the Nepal-Assam border; Ho, with about 750,000 speakers mainly in Bihar and Orissa; Mundari, with about 850,000 speakers scattered over northeastern India; and Korku, the westernmost Munda language, spoken by about 320,000 in southern Madhya Pradesh and northern Maharashtra. Munda languages differ from all other Austroasiatic languages in complexity of morphology and in having basic subject-object-verb rather than subject-verb-object word order
Muskogean languages: Family of about eight North American Indian languages spoken or formerly spoken across much of what is now the southeastern U.S. In the 16th century Koasati (Coushatta) and Alabama were probably spoken in what is now northern Alabama, Creek (Muskogee) and Hitchiti in Alabama and Georgia, and Apalachee in the Florida Panhandle. To the west were Chickasaw in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee and Choctaw in central Mississippi. By the mid-19th century Apalachee was long extinct, and the forced removals of the 1830s (see Trail of Tears) had pushed most of the remaining Muskogean-speakers either west of the Mississippi or into Florida, where the Seminole continue to speak a dialect of Creek in central Florida and Mikasuki (Miccosukee) in the Everglades. The extant Muskogean languages continue to be spoken, at least by adults, with Choctaw (in Oklahoma and Mississippi) having the most speakers
Niger-Congo languages: Family of some 1,400 languages of Africa. All of these are considered to be distinct languages and not simply dialects. The named dialects of these languages number many thousands more, not to mention the variant names for those languages and dialects. Niger-Congo languages are spoken by about 85% of the population of Africa, from Dakar, Senegal, in the west to Mombasa, Kenya, and in the east and south to Cape Town, S.Af. The name Niger-Congo was introduced in 1955 by Joseph H. Greenberg. As understood today, Niger-Congo has nine branches: Mande, Kordofanian, Atlantic (formerly West Atlantic), Kru, Gur, Kwa, Ijoid, Adamawa-Ubangi (formerly Adamawa-Eastern), and Benue-Congo
Nilo-Saharan languages: Group of perhaps 115 African languages spoken by more than 27 million people from Mali to Ethiopia and from southernmost Egypt to Tanzania. The concept of Nilo-Saharan as a single stock combining a number of earlier groupings was introduced in 1963 by Joseph H. Greenberg; most Africanists accepted it as a working hypothesis, though shifts have taken place. In terms of numbers of speakers, the most significant divisions of Nilo-Saharan languages include Central Sudanic, Fur, Nilotic, Nubian, Saharan, Songhai, and Surmic. Songhai is spoken by more than 2 million people in Mali and Niger, and Kanuri (a Saharan language) is spoken by about 4.5 million in northeastern Nigeria and adjacent Chad and Niger. Central Sudanic comprises languages of southern Chad, southern Sudan, and northeastern Congo (Kinshasa). Nubian languages (including the only Nilo-Saharan language with an ancient written tradition) are spoken along the Nile in northern Sudan and southern Egypt. The Nilotic languages are spoken by some 14 million people (see Nilotes), including the Dinka, Nuer, Luo, Turkana, Kalenjin, and Masai
North Germanic languages: {i} northern family of Germanic languages, Scandinavian
Otomanguean languages: Diverse family of more than 20 American Indian languages and language clusters concentrated in central and southern Mexico, with more than a million speakers. Several of the language clusters, such as Otomí (dispersed through eastern central Mexico), Chinantecan, Mixtecan, and Zapotecan (all spoken in the state of Oaxaca), are highly differentiated and may be considered language families in themselves. Otomanguean languages differ in many ways from other American Indian languages, for example, in the extensive use of tone
Paleo -Siberian languages: or Paleo-Asiatic languages Group of four unrelated language families spoken in northeastern Asia. Believed to have covered much larger areas of Siberia and perhaps Manchuria in the past, they have lost ground to Uralic and Altaic languages and more recently to Russian (see Siberian peoples). Of the Yeniseian languages, the only survivors are Ket, spoken by fewer than 500 people, and the virtually extinct Yug. The two extant Yukaghir languages (which are believed by some specialists to belong to the Uralic languages), North, or Tundra, Yukaghir and South, or Kolyma, Yukaghir, together have fewer than 100 speakers. The Chukotko-Kamchatkan (Luorawetlan) family includes Chukchi, with about 10,000 speakers in extreme northeastern Siberia; Koryak, with fewer than 5,000 speakers south of Chukchi; and Itelmen, spoken on the Kamchatka Peninsula by fewer than 100 people. The two Nivkh (Gilyak) varieties, Amur Nivkh and Sakhalin Nivkh, together have fewer than 1,000 speakers
Papuan languages: Group of about 750 languages spoken by indigenous peoples of New Guinea and parts of some neighbouring islands, including Alor, Bougainville, Halmahera, New Britain, New Ireland, and Timor. Spoken by perhaps five million people, Papuan languages belong to about 60 families, the higher genetic relationships of which are still uncertain. This diversity, conjoined with the numerous Austronesian languages spoken on smaller parts of New Guinea and on adjacent islands, makes the region the most linguistically heterogeneous area of the world. The vast majority of Papuan languages have fewer than 100,000 speakers; among those with more are Chimbu and Enga, spoken in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
Penutian languages: Hypothetical superfamily of North American Indian languages that unites a number of languages and language families mainly of the far western U.S. and Canada. The Penutian hypothesis was proposed by Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber in 1913 and refined by Edward Sapir in 1921. Like the Hokan hypothesis (see Hokan languages), it attempted to reduce the number of unrelated language families in one of the world's most linguistically diverse areas. At its core was a group of languages spoken along California's central coast and in the Central Valley, including Ohlone (Costanoan), Miwok, Wintuan, Maidu, and Yokuts. Sapir added Oregon Penutian (languages once spoken in eastern Oregon), Chinookan (spoken along the lower Columbia River), Plateau Penutian (languages of Plateau Indian peoples), Tsimshian (spoken in western British Columbia), and Mexican Penutian (spoken in southern Mexico). Aside from the Mexican group, all the languages are today either extinct or spoken almost exclusively by older adults. Though the hypothesis remains unproven, at least some languages of the group are probably related to each other
Quechuan languages: Family of closely related South American Indian languages still spoken by some 12 million people in southern Colombia and Ecuador, Bolivia, and northern Argentina. Southern Peruvian Quechua, one language of the family, was a koine and administrative language within the Inca empire and was spread by Inca colonization
Romance languages: Group of related languages derived from Latin, with nearly 920 million native speakers. The major Romance languages French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian are national languages. French is probably the most internationally significant, but Spanish, the official language of 19 American countries and Spain and Equatorial Guinea, has the most speakers. Languages spoken in smaller areas include Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, and Rhaeto-Romance. The Romance languages began as dialects of Vulgar Latin, which spread during the Roman occupation of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Balkans and developed into separate languages in the 5th-9th centuries. Later, European colonial and commercial contacts spread them to the Americas, Africa, and Asia
Salishan languages: Family of about 23 North American Indian languages, spoken or formerly spoken in the Pacific Northwest and adjoining areas of Idaho, Montana, and southern British Columbia. Today Salishan languages are spoken almost exclusively by older adults. They are remarkable for their elaborate consonant inventories and small number of vowels
Semitic languages: Family of Afro-Asiatic languages spoken in northern Africa and South Asia. No other language family has been attested in writing over a greater time span from the late 3rd millennium BC to the present. Both traditional and some recent classifications divide the family into an eastern and western group. Until recently the sole known East Semitic language was Akkadian; now some scholars add Eblaite, the language of a cuneiform archive found at the ancient city of Ebla, with documents dating from 2300-2250 BC. West Semitic contains as one major subgroup Northwest Semitic, which includes Ugaritic, known from alphabetic cuneiform texts of 1400-1190 BC; the closely related Canaanite languages (including Moabite, Phoenician, and Ancient Hebrew); and Aramaic. Further subgrouping is controversial; traditionally, Arabic was placed in a distinct South Semitic subgroup of West Semitic, though a more recent classification puts it together with Northwest Semitic. The South Semitic languages include Epigraphic South Arabian; Modern South Arabian (or Modern South Arabic), a group of six languages spoken in eastern Yemen, southwestern Oman, and the island of Socotra; and Ethiopic
Sino-Tibetan languages: Superfamily of languages whose two branches are the Sinitic or Chinese languages and the Tibeto-Burman family, an assemblage of several hundred very diverse languages spoken by about 65 million people from northern Pakistan east to Vietnam, and from the Tibetan plateau south to the Malay Peninsula. Western Tibeto-Burman languages include Tibetan and the Bodish and Himalayan languages, spoken mainly in Nepal. Tibeto-Burman languages of northeastern India include the Bodo-Garo languages (spoken in Assam) and the northern Naga languages of Nagaland; perhaps allied to these is Jinghpaw (Jingpo), spoken in northern Myanmar. Kuki-Chin and southern Naga languages are spoken in eastern India, eastern Bangladesh, and western Myanmar. Central Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken mainly in Arunachal Pradesh in India and in adjacent parts of China and Myanmar; they include Lepcha, an official language of Sikkim. Northeastern Tibeto-Burman comprises a heterogeneous group of languages spoken in western Sichuan and northwestern Yunnan in China. Burmese-Lolo, a geographically wide-ranging subgroup, includes Burmese, the national language of Myanmar (Burma). Loloish languages include the speech of the Yi or Lolo of Yunnan as well as several languages spread over Yunnan and parts of Southeast Asia, including Lahu and Akha. Karen, spoken by the Karen of Myanmar and Thailand, forms a distinct subgroup. Tibetan and Burmese are the only Tibeto-Burman languages with long literary traditions. Burmese is written in an adaptation of the Mon script (see Mon-Khmer languages)
Siouan languages: Family of North American Indian languages, spoken mainly west of the Mississippi River in the 17th and 18th centuries. The principal languages and language groups at this time were Winnebago in Wisconsin, Chiwere (Iowa, Oto, and Missouri) in Iowa and northern Missouri, Dhegiha (Ponca, Omaha, Kansa, Osage, Quapaw) in an area extending from eastern Nebraska to Arkansas, Sioux or Dakota (a range of dialects including Santee or Dakota proper in Minnesota, Teton or Lakota in North and South Dakota, and Assiniboine in Canada), Hidatsa and Mandan on the middle Missouri River, and Crow in Wyoming and Montana. Separated from the main body of Siouan languages were the now-extinct languages Tufelo and Biloxi, near the Gulf of Mexico, and the distantly related Catawba, once spoken in South Carolina. The extant Siouan languages are now spoken mainly or solely by older adults
Slavic languages: or Slavonic languages Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by more than 315 million people in central and eastern Europe and northern Asia. The Slavic family is usually divided into three subgroups: West Slavic, comprising Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Sorbian; East Slavic, comprising Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian; and South Slavic, comprising Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. Polish belongs to the Lekhitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, which also includes Kashubian now spoken in western Poland by fewer than 150,000 people and regarded in Poland as a Polish dialect and several now-extinct languages. A distinctive feature of this subgroup is its preservation of the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels. Another remnant language is Sorbian, spoken by 60,000-70,000 people in eastern Germany. Western Lekhitic and Sorbian are all that remains of what was once a much greater Slavic speech area in central Europe; that area was gradually Germanized from about the 9th century. Among Indo-European languages, Slavic is closest to the family of Baltic languages
Tai languages: Family of closely related languages spoken in Southeast Asia and southern China by more than 80 million people. According to a widely used classification, Tai comprises three branches. The Southwestern group includes Thai, the national language of Thailand; northeastern Thai and Lao, spoken in eastern Thailand and Laos; Pak Tay (South Thai), spoken in southern Thailand; Shan, spoken in eastern and northern Myanmar; and Tai Dam (Black Tai) and Tai Don (Tai Khaw, or White Tai), spoken mainly in North Vietnam. The Central group includes Nung and South Zhuang, a dialect chain in northern Vietnam and China's Guangxi province; and Tay (Thô), spoken in the same area. The Northern group includes Buyi and North Zhuang, a dialect chain spoken in Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, China. All Tai languages are tone languages. Most scholars believe the Tai family is related to a number of other languages spoken by minority peoples of southern China and northern Vietnam. Together with Tai, the entire group has been named the Kadai or Tai-Kadai family
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages: {i} TESOL, teachers who teach English language to people who speak other languages
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages: {i} TESOL, teaching the English language to people who speak other languages
Tocharian languages: or Tokharian languages Two extinct Indo-European languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B, formerly spoken in the Tarim River Basin in China. Documents date back to AD 500-700. Tocharian literature, written in a northern Indian syllabary derived from Brahmi (see Indic writing systems), was preserved in Buddhist monasteries. Spoken at the eastern frontier of the Indo-European world, Tocharian shows the influence of Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages but seems closer to western Indo-European languages in vocabulary and grammar
Tupian languages: Family of South American Indian languages with at least seven subgroups, spoken or formerly spoken in scattered areas from the Andes Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean and (with two exceptions) south of the Amazon River to southernmost Brazil and Paraguay. About one half of the 50 attested Tupian languages are extinct. The largest subgroup, Tupí-Guaraní, includes the extinct language Tupinambá, the source for borrowings of many New World flora and fauna terms into Portuguese and hence other European languages. Another language of the subgroup, Guaraní, is spoken as a first or second language by more than 90% of Paraguayans, who consider it a token of Paraguayan identity
Turkic languages: {i} family of languages comprising of more than 30 Altaic languages spoken in western Asia and eastern Europe (including Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, etc.)
Turkic languages: Family of more than 20 Altaic languages spoken by some 135 million people from the Balkans to central Siberia. The traditional division of Turkic is into four groups. The southeastern or Uighur group comprises Uighur, spoken mainly in Xinjiang, China; and Uzbek, spoken mainly in Uzbekistan, other Central Asian republics, and northern Afghanistan. The southwestern, or Oguz, group includes Turkish; Azerbaijani (Azeri), spoken in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran; Crimean Tatar, spoken mostly in Ukraine and Uzbekistan; and Turkmen, used in Turkmenistan, northern Iran, and northern Afghanistan. The northwestern, or Kipchak, group includes Kazakh, spoken in Kazakhstan, other Central Asian republics, and western China and Mongolia; Kyrgyz, spoken in Kyrgyzstan, other Central Asian republics, and western China; Tatar; Baskhir, spoken in Bashkortostan and adjacent areas in Russia; Karachay-Balkar and Kumyk, spoken in the Russian Caucasus; and Karaim, with a few speakers in Lithuania and parts of southwestern Ukraine. The northeastern, or Altai, group comprises languages and dialects spoken in Siberia northeast of the Irtysh River and in adjacent parts of Mongolia, including Altai, Khakas, Shor, and Tuvan; and Sakha, spoken in Sakha (Yakutia) republic of Russia and adjacent areas. Distinct from all the other languages is Chuvash, spoken in Russia's Chuvash republic and adjacent areas. The earliest attestations of Turkic are a group of 8th-century funerary inscriptions of northern Mongolia, in a distinctive writing system called runic script, or Turkic runes. With the Islamization of nearly all Turkic peoples southwest of the Irtysh beginning 900, Turkic languages began to adopt the Arabic alphabet. Today the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet are more extensively used
Uralic languages: Family of more than 30 languages spoken by some 25 million people in central and northern Eurasia. A primary division is between the Finno-Ugric languages, which account for most of the languages and speakers, and the Samoyedic languages. The latter languages have historically been spoken in the forest region of northern Siberia and in the tundra and coastal zones from the Ob to the White Sea and east into the Taymyr Peninsula. The known languages are Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Selkup, Kamas (which became extinct in the late 20th century), and Mator (which became extinct in the 19th century). Of the other languages that are still spoken, Nenets, which has 25,000 speakers and is still being learned by children, is the most viable. The Samoyedic languages share little vocabulary with Finno-Ugric. At its very earliest stages Uralic most probably included the ancestors of the Yukaghir languages, still sometimes included with the Paleo-Siberian languages
Uto-Aztecan languages: Family of more than 30 American Indian languages spoken in pre-Columbian times from the northern Great Basin to Central America. Geographically, Uto-Aztecan can be divided into a northern and a southern branch. The northern branch, spoken from Oregon and Idaho to southern California and Arizona, includes the languages of the Northern and Southern Paiutes, Utes, Northern and Eastern Shoshone, Comanche, and Hopi. The southern branch includes the languages of the O'odham (Pima and Papago) in Arizona, and of a number of Mexican Indian peoples, including the Tarahumara of Chihuahua, the Yaqui of northwestern Mexico and Arizona, and the Cora and Huichol of Nayarit and Jalisco; its southernmost extension includes Nahuatl
indodochinese languages: A family of languages, mostly of the isolating type, although some are agglutinative, spoken in the great area extending from northern India in the west to Formosa in the east and from Central Asia in the north to the Malay Peninsula in the south
kindred languages: languages that are closely related in structure and form
language: The forms of speech, or the methods of expressing ideas, peculiar to a particular nation
language: According to the Orthodox tradition, the Church adopts and uses the language of any particular country or ethnic group that she serves The main liturgical languages in the Orthodox Church are Greek, the various descendants of old Church Slavonic, and Arabic
language: a system of words used in a particular discipline; "legal terminology"; "the language of sociology"
language: Nonverbal communication
language: The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to man express their feelings or their wants
language: Language is the use of a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds or written symbols. Students examined how children acquire language
language: The language in which the data element is specified
language: The particular words used in speech or a passage of text
language: The words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a considerable community
language: A race, as distinguished by its speech
language: the use of an organised means of combining words in order to communicate [cf communication]
language: To communicate by language; to express in language
language: Information on the language or languages of the unit being described [RAD 1 8B14]
language: The ability to communicate using words
language: system for communicating ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs, or marks
language: words chosen by authors to convey their ideas, attitudes and points of view and to guide our reactions to texts
language: The language in which the article is published
language: the mental faculty or power of vocal communication; "language sets homo sapiens apart from all other animals" a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols; "he taught foreign languages"; "the language introduced is standard throughout the text"; "the speed with which a program can be executed depends on the language in which it is written
language: The Dublin Core element used to designate the language of the intellectual content of the resource Recommended best practice for the values of the Language element is defined by RFC 3066 See also section 4 of the Dublin Core Users Guide
language: A language is a set of strings from the alphabet Σ The set may be empty, finite or infinite The symbol Σ* is the set of all possible strings from the alphabet Σ There are many ways to define a language See definitions below There are many classifications for languages See definitions below Because a language is a set of strings, the words language and set are often used interchangeably in talking about formal languages
language: The characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; manner of expression; style
language: A computer language
language: Language is the code we all use to express ourselves and communicate to others
language: You can refer to the words used in connection with a particular subject as the language of that subject. the language of business
language: The written and spoken methods of combining words to create meaning used by a particular group of people
language: You can use language to refer to various means of communication involving recognizable symbols, non-verbal sounds, or actions. Some sign languages are very sophisticated means of communication. the digital language of computers. System of conventional spoken or written symbols used by people in a shared culture to communicate with each other. A language both reflects and affects a culture's way of thinking, and changes in a culture influence the development of its language. Related languages become more differentiated when their speakers are isolated from each other. When speech communities come into contact (e.g., through trade or conquest), their languages influence each other. Most existing languages are grouped with other languages descended "genetically" from a common ancestral language (see historical linguistics). The broadest grouping of languages is the language family. For example, all the Romance languages are derived from Latin, which in turn belongs to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the ancient parent language, Proto-Indo-European. Other major families include, in Asia, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Dravidian, Altaic, and Austroasiatic; in Africa, Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, and Nilo-Saharan; and in the Americas, Uto-Aztecan, Maya, Otomanguean, and Tupian. Relationships between languages are traced by comparing grammar and syntax and especially by looking for cognates (related words) in different languages. Language has a complex structure that can be analyzed and systematically presented (see linguistics). All languages begin as speech, and many go on to develop writing systems. All can employ different sentence structures to convey mood. They use their resources differently for this but seem to be equally flexible structurally. The principal resources are word order, word form, syntactic structure, and, in speech, intonation. Different languages keep indicators of number, person, gender, tense, mood, and other categories separate from the root word or attach them to it. The innate human capacity to learn language fades with age, and languages learned after about age 10 are usually not spoken as well as those learned earlier. See also dialect. Common Business Oriented Language. HyperText Markup Language Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. Standard Generalized Markup Language Structured Query Language. Extensible Markup Language. Afrikaans language Akkadian language Assyro Babylonian language Albanian language Amharic language Arabic language Aramaic language Armenian language assembly language Avestan language Basque language Belarusian language Belarusan language Bengali language Breton language Bulgarian language Catalan language Circassian language Czech language Bohemian language Danish language Dutch language Egyptian language English language Etruscan language Finnish language fourth generation language French language Frisian language Georgian language German language Gothic language Greek language Hausa language Hebrew language Hindi language Hungarian language Icelandic language Irish language Gaelic language Italian language Japanese language Kannada language Kanarese language Khmer language Cambodian language Korean language Ladino language Sephardic language language philosophy of Latin language Latvian language Lettish language Lithuanian language machine language Malay language Malayalam language Maltese language markup language Nahuatl language Norwegian language Occitan language Provençal language Old Church Slavonic language Old Church Slavic language Old Norse language Oscan language Pali language Persian language Farsi language Polish language Portuguese language programming language Punjabi language Panjabi language Romanian language Romany language Russian language Sanskrit language Sardinian language Scottish Gaelic language Serbo Croatian language sign language Slovak language Slovene language Slovenian language Spanish language Swahili language Swedish language Tagalog language Tamil language Tatar language Volga Tatar language Telugu language Tibetan language Turkish language Ukrainian language Ruthenian language Umbrian language Urdu language Vietnamese language Welsh language Yiddish language Adamawa Ubangi languages Adamawa Eastern languages African languages Afro Asiatic languages Hamito Semitic languages Algonquian languages Algonkian languages Altaic languages American Indian languages Anatolian languages Arawakan languages Maipuran languages Athabaskan languages Athapaskan languages Atlantic languages West Atlantic languages Australian Aboriginal languages Austroasiatic languages Austronesian languages Malayo Polynesian languages Baltic languages Bantu languages Benue Congo languages Cariban languages Caucasian languages Celtic languages Chinese languages Sinitic languages Dravidian languages Eskimo Aleut languages Ethiopic languages Finno Ugric languages Germanic languages Gur languages Voltaic languages Hmong Mien languages Miao Yao languages Hokan languages Ijoid languages Indo Aryan languages Indic languages Indo European languages Iranian languages Iroquoian languages Italic languages Khoisan languages Kordofanian languages Kru languages Kwa languages Manchu Tungus languages Tungusic languages Mande languages Maya languages Mayan languages Mon Khmer languages Mongolian languages Munda languages Muskogean languages Niger Congo languages Nilo Saharan languages Otomanguean languages Paleo Siberian languages Paleo Asiatic languages Papuan languages Penutian languages Quechuan languages Romance languages Salishan languages Semitic languages Sino Tibetan languages Siouan languages Slavic languages Slavonic languages Tai languages Tocharian languages Tokharian languages Tupian languages Turkic languages Uralic languages Uto Aztecan languages
language: A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing. the English language Students are expected to master a second language
language: Computer programs can be written in a variety of different languages Different languages are optimized for different tasks Common languages include Java, C, C++, ForTran, Pascal, Lisp, and BASIC Some people classify languages into two categories, higher-level and lower-level These people would consider assembly language and machine language lower-level languages and all other languages higher-level In general, higher-level languages can be either interpreted or compiled; many languages allow both, but some are restricted to one or the other Many people do not consider machine language and assembly language at all when talking about programming languages
language: the language learners use in completing a task (e g the mother tongue or English, or the particular vocabulary, structures or functions the task requires the learners to use)
language: Windows 3 1 and 95 can support foreign languages In most cases, the foreign country has a different set of accented characters and a different keyboard layout The UK and USA use the Qwerty keyboard layout (this describes the first keys on the top left hand row) France uses the Azerty layout If you want tp use a different language for display and printing you will have to change the language setup for the font used to support the accents and the keyboard layout for Windows If you want to use central European or Asian languages, you'll need to buy new fonts
language: The vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or department of knowledge; as, medical language; the language of chemistry or theology
language: A set of characters, conventions, and rules that is used for conveying information (188)
language: You can refer to someone's use of rude words or swearing as bad language when you find it offensive. Television companies tend to censor bad language in feature films There's a girl gonna be in the club, so you guys watch your language
language: The language of a piece of writing or speech is the style in which it is written or spoken. a booklet summarising it in plain language The tone of his language was diplomatic and polite
language: {i} body of spoken or written words with which people communicate thoughts and feelings; specialized vocabulary; nonverbal means of communication (system of symbols, etc.); manner in which a person writes or speaks; manner in which animals communicate
language: the cognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic communication; "he didn't have the language to express his feelings"
language: The sounds, structure, meaning, and usage associated with some linguistic community Note that this definition refers to language in a general sense, and not merely the sounds uttered by its speakers
language: The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality
language: the mental faculty or power of vocal communication; "language sets homo sapiens apart from all other animals"
language: Any means of conveying or communicating ideas; specifically, human speech; the expression of ideas by the voice; sounds, expressive of thought, articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth
language: The term often used by semioticians and others in a very general sense to mean any system of signs It is also frequently used in a narrower sense to designate a system of verbal signs, talking verbal here to include both spoken (or auditory) and written signs Language is the most common English translation for langue, although some authors propose ''tongue'' to be the better choice In this paper, I will use language in a more general sense and langue as defined by Saussure
language: The Language in which the original article appeared in the primary journal is a separate information field in IPA
language: A system of organized and defining syntax errors
language: This is a system for communicating Written languages use symbols (i e characters) to build words The entire set of words is the language's vocabulary The ways in which the words can be meaningfully combined is defined by the language's syntax and grammar The actual meaning of words and combinations of words is defined by the language's semantics
language: A system of communication using the spoken word or using symbols that represent words or sounds
language: The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers
language: [ISO] A set of characters, conventions, and rules, that is used for conveying information The three aspects of language are pragmatics, semantics, and syntax
language: the text of a popular song or musical-comedy number; "his compositions always started with the lyrics"; "he wrote both words and music"; "the song uses colloquial language"
language: This file should contain a single line with the name of the language for which you are creating a dictionary This information is used to create appopriate titles for the HTML files You should edit this file to adapt it to your language
language: A system for communicating ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs, or marks
language: (language) communication by word of mouth; "his speech was garbled"; "he uttered harsh language"; "he recorded the spoken language of the streets"
language: a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols; "he taught foreign languages"; "the language introduced is standard throughout the text"; "the speed with which a program can be executed depends on the language in which it is written
modern languages: Modern languages refers to the modern European languages, for example French, German, and Russian, which are studied at school or university. head of modern languages at a London grammar school
romance languages: {i} general name for European languages based on the early Italian languages such as Latin (such as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian)