Portal:Language

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Introduction

A mural in Teotihuacan, Mexico (c. 2nd century) depicting a person emitting a speech scroll from his mouth, symbolizing speech

Braille writing, a tactile variant of a writing system

Cuneiform is the first known form of written language, but spoken language predates writing by at least tens of thousands of years.

Two girls learning American Sign Language

A language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means of communication of humans, and can be conveyed through speech (spoken language), sign, or writing. Many languages, including the most widely-spoken ones, have writing systems that enable sounds or signs to be recorded for later reactivation. Human language is unique among the known systems of animal communication in that it is not dependent on a single mode of transmission (sight, sound, etc.), is highly variable between cultures and across time, and affords a much wider range of expression than other systems.

Human languages have the properties of productivity and displacement, and rely on social convention and learning.

Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) being established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille. In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.

Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances. (Full article...)

Outline of linguistics • Index of language articles

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Spanish as official language.

Spanish (español or castellano, lit. 'Castilian') is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial spoken Latin in the Iberian Peninsula. Today, it is a global language with nearly 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi; and the world's most widely spoken Romance language.

Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Modern Spanish was then taken to the viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire beginning in 1492, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa and Asia. (Full article...)

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the 1978 science-fiction novel Dreamsnake includes a named character for whom gender pronouns are never used, thereby subverting gender expectations?
... that under Du Ruiqing's leadership, the Xi'an Foreign Languages Institute established one of the first centres for Australian studies in China?
... that Dennis Howard Green was such a productive book reviewer for the Modern Language Review that they implemented a rule called Lex Green, which limits the number of reviews per person to three per year?
... that Travancore Radio's first English-language broadcaster, Indira Joseph Venniyoor, was paid 69 rupees (then equivalent to US$14.50) for her broadcasts in 1949?
... that Mahatma Gandhi praised the Gujarati-language poem "Amar Asha" ('Immortal Hope'), saying that both Hindus and Muslims "should be proud of it"?
... that Indigenous Australian elder Ivaritji was the last speaker of the Kaurna language before its revival in the 1990s?

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...that linguist Asim Peco is an expert in the language of eastern Herzegovina?
...that three different languages that used to be spoken in Nicaragua are now extinct?
...that Russian is spoken in Israel by about 20% of the total population?
...that the name of the koala derives from the word gula in Dharuk and other Yuin–Kuric languages?

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Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time. The oldest surviving Chinese verse, in the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), shows which words rhymed in that period. Scholars have compared these bodies of contemporary evidence with the much later Middle Chinese reading pronunciations listed in the Qieyun rime dictionary published in 601 AD, though this falls short of a phonemic analysis. Supplementary evidence has been drawn from cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages and in Min Chinese, which split off before the Middle Chinese period, Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, and early borrowings from and by neighbouring languages such as Hmong–Mien, Tai and Tocharian languages.

Although many details are disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless sonorants. Most recent reconstructions also posit consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. (Full article...)

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Credit: © Hans Hillewaert

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek.

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Language News

16 February 2022 –

Cristina Calderón, the last full-blooded Yahgan and last native speaker of the Yahgan language, dies in Chile. (France24)

2 February 2022 – Human rights in Chechnya, Corruption in Russia

Mass government-organized protests against the Yangulbayev family occur in the Russian city of Grozny, Chechnya. The Chechen government claimed that protests were spontaneous and gathered 400,000 men, "not counting women," though the total population of Grozny is 325,000 people. [1] Despite the COVID-19 restrictions, Rospotrebnadzor did nothing because they "couldn't find protest organizers."[2] Earlier a member of the Russian State Duma, Adam Delimkhanov, stated that he will rip the heads off of Yangulbayevs and those who translate his speech from the Chechen language to Russian.[3][4]

1 February 2022 – Russo-Ukrainian War

The Luhansk People's Republic accuses Ukraine of deploying a 9K33 Osa anti-aircraft missile system in a residential area of Popasna, a majority Russian-speaking city near the frontline. (TASS)

8 November 2021 –

Ukraine's oldest English language newspaper the Kyiv Post suspends publication after 26 years in print following a dispute between its owner and journalists. All of the newspaper's journalists have been fired with immediate effect. (The Guardian)

29 September 2021 – COVID-19 misinformation

Russia threatens to ban YouTube if it does not reinstate two German-language channels backed by the Russian state that were deleted for violating COVID-19 misinformation guidelines. (BBC News)

Language news from Wikinews...

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