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Topic: Language families and languages


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In the News (Sat 21 Nov 09)

  
  language families of the world
There are three language isolates represented on this map, unrelated to any of the language families: Basque thrives between France and Spain.
The Kartvelian languages are considered by many linguists to be a separate family, possibly related to Indo-European.
Possibly related are the 170 languages of the Australian aborigines.
www.ship.edu /~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html   (835 words)

  
  Language - MSN Encarta
In northern Asia there are a number of languages that appear either to form small, independent families or to be language isolates, such as the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family of the Chukchi and Kamchatka peninsulas in the far east of Russia.
The family stretches from the eastern edge of Siberia to the Aleutian Islands, and across Alaska and northern Canada to Greenland, where one variety of the Inuit language, Greenlandic, is an official language.
Languages of the Algonquian and Iroquoian families constitute the major indigenous languages of northeastern North America, while the Siouan family is one of the main families of central North America.
encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761570647_5/Language.html   (1296 words)

  
 Kids.Net.Au - Encyclopedia > Language families and languages
A properly defined family should be a genetic unit, which means that all its members should derive from a common ancestor.
Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "family tree" diagram).
The common ancestor of a family (or branch) is known as its "protolanguage".
www.kids.net.au /encyclopedia-wiki/la/Language_families_and_languages   (233 words)

  
 Native American Languages - MSN Encarta
It includes Nahuatl, the language of the ancient civilizations of the Toltecs, which lasted from the 10th to 13th centuries, and the Aztecs, which lasted from the 14th to 16th centuries, and their modern descendents.
Languages in this family are spoken throughout the Antilles; in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua; and in all South American countries except Uruguay and Chile.
Languages in the Cariban family are spoken mainly in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, and Venezuela.
encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761573518_3/Native_American_Languages.html   (1064 words)

  
  Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations (the dialect continuum).
It is a compilation of various elements of different languages, and it is intended to be an easy-to-learn language.
While the term animal languages is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as human language; a more accurate term is animal communication.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Language   (1034 words)

  
 Language article - Language system gestures grammar signs sounds symbols words communicate - What-Means.com   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Language is a system of gestures, grammar, signs, sounds, symbols, or words, which is used to represent and communicate concepts, ideas, meanings, and thoughts.
The study of language as such a code is called linguistics, an academic discipline introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure.
Those who speak or otherwise use a language are deemed (by the self-appointed linguists) to be part of that language's theoretical linguistic community.
www.what-means.com /encyclopedia/Language   (583 words)

  
 Stocks and families of Mexican languages
The indigenous languages of Mexico belong to three major groups, sometimes called 'linguistic stocks', besides six 'linguistic families' that are not related to other languages.
Regardless of the details of family subgroupings, the Otomanguean stock, which includes languages from as far north as the states of Hidalgo and Querétaro (Otomi) and as far south as Nicaragua (Mangue, now extinct), is a group of languages whose potential for the study of language change over the centuries rivals that of Indo-European languages.
The genetic relationship of the languages which are today known as the Uto-Aztecan language stock was recognized by the late 19th century and firmly established by the middle of the 20th century.
www.sil.org /Mexico/22i-Stocks.htm   (1119 words)

  
 Language families and languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor.
Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family, because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram.
Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as language isolates.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Language_families_and_languages   (903 words)

  
 Learn more about Language families and languages in the online encyclopedia.   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Most languages are known to belong to language families (called simply "families" for the rest of this article).
An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor.
Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "tree" diagram).
www.onlineencyclopedia.org /l/la/language_families_and_languages.html   (483 words)

  
 List of languages article - List of languages Language families languages 639 List languages writing system - ...   (Site not responding. Last check: )
Ethnologue lists about 6,800 main languages in its language name index (see the external link) and distinguishes about 41,000 alternate language names and dialects.
This list deals with particular languages, and includes only natural and constructed languages spoken by humans.
See List of spoken and sign languages beginning with the letter Z for about 50 more.
www.what-means.com /encyclopedia/Languages   (191 words)

  
 Top 10 World Language Families by Number of Speakers
Language families: By speakers - By languages
These languages belong to 94 different language families, that is, groups of languages whose share their origins.
Indo-European languages are the most widely spoken languages: 44% of the world population, or 2.5 billion people, speak a language in the Indo-European family.
www.vistawide.com /languages/language_families_statistics1.htm   (0 words)

  
 KryssTal : Language Page
Languages belonging to the same family share common ancestors.
A collection of words in the English language that were originally borrowed from other languages.
A search engine allows borrowed words to be found by language, continent, language family, and type of word.
www.krysstal.com /language.html   (0 words)

  
 Learn Korean: Part 1 - Asian Languages and Language Families - Language
Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean are in the same language family, the Altaic family.
Spanish is a very useful language to learn as it is the world's second most popular language.Outside of the popular coastal tourist resorts a basic knowledge of Spanish is invaluable.
The development of literacy by English language learners (ELLs) includes all of the challenges implicit for English speaking children literacy attainments, and is additionally compounded by a diversity of linguistic, cognitive and academic variables.
www.languagefast.com /46683.php   (1826 words)

  
 Codicil
If a character is in conversation with someone who speaks a language in the same language family as one the PC is proficient in, but not the exact language of the PC, conversation is possible with a successful Intelligence check by the PC (DC 13).
The most glaring inaccuracy is the classification of “Canaanite” languages as a family distinct from the Semitic languages.
Languages grouped in table 2 in the “Isolates” column are languages featured in Testament that are not closely related to other Testament languages and should not be eligible for cross-conversation as described in the Testament rule quoted above.
www.heardworld.com /codicil/play/languages.htm   (1038 words)

  
 Language families and languages
Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "tree" diagram).
The common ancestor of a family (or branch) is known as its "protolanguage".
Families of east and southeast Asia and the Pacific
www.askfactmaster.com /Language_families_and_languages   (503 words)

  
 Indigenous Languages
A language family is a grouping of languages descended from a single language.
Examples of language families outside of South America are the Germanic, the Romance, and the Slavic language families.
A language stock is a grouping of language families all of which are descended from a single language.
www.sil.org /americas/brasil/EnglLang.htm   (441 words)

  
 Indigenous Languages of South America
There is great confusion in the names of languages and language families, due to the different orthographic traditions of Spanish and Portuguese, and tothe lack of a standardized classification scheme.
Arawakan languages formerly extended from the peninsula of Florida in North America to the present-day Paraguay–Argentina border, and from the foothills of the Andes eastward to the Atlantic Ocean.
Even languages with relatively large populations of speakers are in danger of disappearing by the end of the 21st century unless governments institute meaningful language preservation programs.
www.nvtc.gov /lotw/months/december2005/saIndigenous.html   (1369 words)

  
 NOVA | Transcripts | In Search of the First Language | PBS
JAMES MATISOFF: This is one of the great language families of the world, over a billion speakers, and it's very much understudied, compared to other languages families, like Indo-European or Semitic or Bantu, so it's long overdue that this family receive the attention it deserves from the linguistic world in general.
It's estimated that these languages, both living and extinct, might include as many as two hundred language families, but despite this scant amount of evidence, there is no lack of determination to draw a complete picture of the languages of the Americas.
If one simply compares these language families among themselves, in other words, look at the words which have been identified by scholars in those individual families as characteristic of those families, one runs across the exact same word in family after family after family.
www.pbs.org /wgbh/nova/transcripts/2120glang.html   (6653 words)

  
 Indo-European Language Families
These languages became families by breaking up into dialects that became languages which themselves then produced dialects and languages, and so on and so forth.
Ancient languages are listed under the heading "Family" and "Subfamilty" because they died out when other families and subfamilies were forming.
Family and Subfamily names without bullets are just speculative groupings that do not correspond to languages whose existence is documented.
www.yourdictionary.com /library/pietable.html   (148 words)

  
 The relationship of Tai languages to other language families (from Tai languages) --  Encyclopædia Britannica
The closest relatives of the Tai languages are the Kam-Sui languages, spoken in Kweichow, China; and the languages Be (Hainan Island) and Lakkia (Kwangsi, China).
language spoken in the northern and eastern states of Myanmar (Burma) and belonging to the Southwestern group of the Tai language family of Southeast Asia.
A language family that covers a broad geographical region and a vast historical period, the Semitic language group is part of an even larger language family known as Afro-Asiatic, or Hamito-Semitic.
www.britannica.com /eb/article-75055?tocId=75055   (777 words)

  
 language families-- teacher handout   (Site not responding. Last check: )
In this set of activities students discuss the languages of the world, becoming familiar with the great diversity and number of languages spoken around the world on the one hand, and with elements that are common to various languages on the other.
Based on that information, the class prepares a database of languages, and proceeds to explore language families and similarities or differences in the lexicon and sounds of languages.
To make the activity manageable, only thirty-two major languages out of the one hundred and twenty languages included in the first set of handouts were selected to be included in the chart.
www.laits.utexas.edu /hebrew/personal/language/families   (270 words)

  
 Xhosa language - free-definition
Almost all languages with clicks are Khoisan languages, and the presence of clicks in Xhosa betray the strong historical interaction with its Khoisan neighbors.
The language represents the most South Western branch of the Nguni subfamily of the Bantu languages.
An example of the written language is a section of the national anthem of South Africa.
www.netlexikon.akademie.de /Xh.html   (505 words)

  
 Language Family Information for the Numbers List
Ardhamagadhi, one of the post-Sanskrit dialects or Prakrits, is the language of the Jain scriptures.
Meroitic was the language of Meroe, an ancient kingdom south of Egypt.
Caucasian languages (which many scholars divide into two to four unrelated families) tend to have SOV word order and ergative case systems-- the same can be said of Basque, which has led to plenty of speculation but no solid proof of relationship.
www.zompist.com /families.htm   (3750 words)

  
 Maori language   (Site not responding. Last check: )
In the last 200 years the Maori language has had a very tumultuous history, going from the position of predominant language of New Zealand until into the 1860s, when it became a minority language in the shadow of the English brought by white settlers, missionaries, gold-seekers and traders.
The Maori language belongs to the Austronesian family of languages.
Missionaries made their first attempts to write down the language in a Roman-based alphabet as early as 1814, and Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University worked with chief Hongi Hika and his junior relative Waikato to systematize the written language in 1820.
mywiseowl.com /articles/Maori_language   (816 words)

  
 Learn Korean: Part 1 - Asian Languages and Language Families
Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean are in the same language family, the Altaic family.
The Altaic Family consists of Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese.
As with many Asian languages, a common fact you will notice is many of the languages follow an SOV sentence structure.
www.realbollywood.com /learning/language/46683.php   (1429 words)

  
 Language families and languages - Encyclopedia.WorldSearch   (Site not responding. Last check: )
However, it is possible to recover many of the features of the common ancestor of related languages by applying the comparative method -- a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th-century linguist August Schleicher.
Caucasian languages (generally thought to be two separate families, North Caucasian and South Caucasian)
Teach Me Language: A Language Manual for children with autism, Asperger's syndrome and related developmental disorders.
encyclopedia.worldsearch.com /language_family.htm   (715 words)

  
 Linguist List - Web Resource Listings
Language Aid: Language Aid International is an NGO that promotes the study of both local and foreign languages.
Language Miniatures: A site on which 900-word essays are posted once a month in which a topic relating to all aspects of language and linguistics is presented in an easily readable, non-technical way.
The language partner is someone who speaks the language you study as their native language and is studying your native language.
linguistlist.org /sp/LangAnalysis.html   (8343 words)

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