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Czech language

(Encyclopedia)Czech language chĕk [key], in the past sometimes also called Bohemian, member of the West Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). The off...

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...

Penutian

(Encyclopedia)Penutian pəno͞oˈshən [key], linguistic family, or stock, of Native Americans of North and Central America. See Native American languages. ...

glossolalia

(Encyclopedia)glossolalia glŏsˌəlāˈlēə [key] [Gr.,=speaking in tongues], ecstatic utterances usually of unintelligible sounds made by individuals in a state of religious excitement. Religious revivals are of...

creole language

(Encyclopedia)creole language krēōlˈ [key], any language that began as a pidgin but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the original mother tongue or tongues. Examples are the Gullah o...

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...

English language

(Encyclopedia)English language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world...

Marathi

(Encyclopedia)Marathi məräˈtē [key], language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Indo-Iranian. ...

J

(Encyclopedia)J, 10th letter of the alphabet, a Western European medieval development of I, with which it was formerly quite interchangeable in writing. It is pronounced as a consonant in English and often as a y i...

Norris, Edwin

(Encyclopedia)Norris, Edwin, 1795–1872, English philologist. Norris wrote a number of articles on little-known languages of Asia and Africa. His most important work was his uncompleted Assyrian Dictionary (3 vol....