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Melanesia

(Encyclopedia)Melanesia mĕlənēˈzhə, –shə [key], one of the three main divisions of Oceania, in the SW Pacific Ocean, NE of Australia and S of the equator. Melanesia includes the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Ne...

Southeast Asia

(Encyclopedia)Southeast Asia, region of Asia (1990 est. pop. 442,500,000), c.1,740,000 sq mi (4,506,600 sq km), bounded roughly by the Indian subcontinent on the west, China on the north, and the Pacific Ocean on t...

Mongolian languages

(Encyclopedia)Mongolian languages, group of languages forming a subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages). The Mongolian languages are spoken by ab...

artificial languages

(Encyclopedia)artificial languages, languages that are invented by one or more human beings as opposed to languages that develop naturally among peoples. Examples of artificial languages are Volapük, Esperanto, an...

Munda languages

(Encyclopedia)Munda languages mo͝onˈdə [key], group of languages generally regarded as a subfamily of the Southeast Asian family of languages. See Southeast Asian languages. ...

Hamitic languages

(Encyclopedia)Hamitic languages, subfamily of the Hamito-Semitic family of languages, a now-abandoned system of classification for languages of N Africa and SW Asia. The Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and (sometimes) ...

Anatolian languages

(Encyclopedia)Anatolian languages ănˌətōˈlēən [key], subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see The Indo-European Family of Languages, tableIndo-European, table); the term “Anatolian languages...

Germanic languages

(Encyclopedia)Germanic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern ...

Indic languages

(Encyclopedia)Indic languages, group of languages belonging to the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Indo-Iranian. ...

Italic languages

(Encyclopedia)Italic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages that may be divided into two groups. The first group consists of the ancient Italic languages and dialects that were once spoken in...