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Greek language

(Encyclopedia)Greek language, member of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-European). It is the language of one of the major civilizations of the world and of one of the greatest literatures of all tim...

Assyrian language

(Encyclopedia)Assyrian language, East Semitic dialect that evolved from Akkadian after 1950 b.c. The term Assyrian is sometimes incorrectly used for the Akkadian language as a whole because the first inscriptions i...

German language

(Encyclopedia)German language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). It is the official language of Germany and Austria and i...

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...

Hebrew language

(Encyclopedia)Hebrew language, member of the Canaanite group of the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). Hebrew was the language of t...

Tibetan language

(Encyclopedia)Tibetan language, member of the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages). It is spoken by 5 million people in the Tibet autonomous region and the Qi...

Icelandic language

(Encyclopedia)Icelandic language, member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Spoken chiefly in Iceland, where it is the official languag...

Irish language

(Encyclopedia)Irish language, also called Irish Gaelic and Erse, member of the Goidelic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Celtic languages). The history of Irish as a liter...

Romanian language

(Encyclopedia)CEE Romanian language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). It is spoken by about 22 million people in Romania, wher...

Flemish language

(Encyclopedia)Flemish language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Generally regarded as the Belgian variant of Dutch (see...