Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Belarusian language

(Encyclopedia)Belarusian language or White Russian: see Russian language; Slavic languages. ...

Ukrainian language

(Encyclopedia)Ukrainian language, also called Little Russian: see Russian language; Slavic languages. ...

Polish language

(Encyclopedia)Polish language, member of the West Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). Polish is spoken as a first language by about 38 million peopl...

French language

(Encyclopedia)CEE French language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). It is spoken as a first language by more than 70 million p...

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...

Spanish language

(Encyclopedia)CEE Spanish language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). The official language of Spain and 19 Latin American nati...

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...

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...