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sign language

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Manual alphabet sign language, gestural communication used as an alternative or replacement for speech. Sign languages resemble oral languages in every way other than their modality. As with o...

programming language

(Encyclopedia)programming language, syntax, grammar, and symbols or words used to give instructions to a computer. Once the program is written and has had any errors repaired (a process called debugging), it may ...

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...

Alexis, Russian czarevich

(Encyclopedia)Alexis (Aleksey Petrovich) əlyĭksyāˈ pētrôˈvĭch [key], 1690–1718, Russian czarevich; son of Peter I (Peter the Great) by his first wife, and father of Peter II. Opposing his father's anticle...

Finnish-Russian War

(Encyclopedia)Finnish-Russian War, 1939–40, war between Finland and the Soviet Union. After World War II broke out in Sept., 1939, the USSR, never on cordial terms with Finland, took advantage of its nonaggressio...

Nestor, Russian chronicler

(Encyclopedia)Nestor nĕsˈtər [key], d. 1115?, Russian chronicler. A monk in a Kiev monastery, he wrote a life of saints Boris and Gleb and of the prior of his monastery St. Feodosi. Until recently the authorship...

Russian American Company

(Encyclopedia)Russian American Company, colonial trading company, chartered by Czar Paul I in 1799. The charter granted the merchant-dominated company monopoly trading privileges in Russian America, which included ...

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