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Native American languages

(Encyclopedia)Native American languages, languages of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their descendants. A number of the Native American languages that were spoken at the time of the European arriv...

Southeast Asian languages

(Encyclopedia)Southeast Asian languages, family of languages, sometimes also called Austroasiatic, spoken in SE Asia by about 80 million people. According to one school of thought, it has three subfamilies: the Mon...

Finno-Ugric languages

(Encyclopedia)Finno-Ugric languages fĭnˈō-o͞oˈgrĭk [key], also called Finno-Ugrian languages, group of languages forming a subdivision of the Uralic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Urali...

Tibeto-Burman languages

(Encyclopedia)Tibeto-Burman languages, subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. See Sino-Tibetan languages; Burmese; Tibetan language. ...

Sino-Tibetan languages

(Encyclopedia)Sino-Tibetan languages, family of languages spoken by over a billion people in central and SE Asia. This linguistic family is second only to the Indo-European stock in the number of its speakers. It i...

Uralic and Altaic languages

(Encyclopedia)Uralic and Altaic languages yo͝orălˈĭk, ăltāˈĭk [key], two groups of related languages thought by many scholars to form a single Ural-Altaic linguistic family. However, other authorities hold ...

Turkish language

(Encyclopedia)Turkish language, member of the Turkic subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages). Turkish is the official language of Turkey and one ...

Swahili language

(Encyclopedia)Swahili language, member of the Bantu group of African languages (see African languages and Bantu languages). Swahili is spoken by 30 million people, chiefly in Tanzania, Kenya, Congo (Kinshasa), Buru...

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