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Himyaritic

(Encyclopedia)Himyaritic hĭmˌyərĭtˈĭk [key], another name for Old South Arabian. See Arabic languages; Afroasiatic languages. ...

Urdu

(Encyclopedia)Urdu o͞orˈdo͞o [key], language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The official tongue of Pakistan, Urdu is also one of the 15 langu...

Erpenius, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Erpenius, Thomas ûrpēˈnēəs [key], 1584–1624, Dutch Orientalist, whose name in Dutch was Van Erpe. Erpenius was one of the most celebrated scholars of his day and wrote several grammars of Middl...

Indo-Iranian

(Encyclopedia)Indo-Iranian, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by more than a billion people, chiefly in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (see The Indo-Eu...

Turkic

(Encyclopedia)Turkic tûrˈkĭk [key], group of languages forming a subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages). The Turkic group of languages has a ...

Persian language

(Encyclopedia)Persian language, member of the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-Iranian languages). The official language of Iran, it has about 38 millio...

Gottheil, Richard James Horatio

(Encyclopedia)Gottheil, Richard James Horatio, 1862–1936, American Orientalist and Semitic scholar, b. Manchester, England; son of Gustav Gottheil. He taught Semitic languages at Columbia from 1886 and was head o...

Polyglot Bible

(Encyclopedia)Polyglot Bible pŏlˈēglŏt [key], Bible in which different texts, often in different languages, are laid out in parallel columns. Polyglot Bibles serve as tools for textual criticism. Origen's Hexap...

Aramaic

(Encyclopedia)Aramaic ârəmāˈĭk [key], language belonging to the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). At some point during the se...

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