1.
Grammatical case
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Case is a special grammatical category whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in. Distinctions can be seen with the pronouns, forms such as I, he and we are used in the role of subject, whereas forms such as me, him. A language may have a number of different cases, commonly encountered cases include nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. A role that one of these languages marks by case will often be marked in English using a preposition, as a language evolves, cases can merge, a phenomenon formally called syncretism. More formally, case has been defined as a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads, cases should be distinguished from thematic roles such as agent and patient. They are often related, and in languages such as Latin several thematic roles have an associated case. Languages having cases often exhibit free word order, because thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence. The English word case used in this sense comes from the Latin casus, the Latin word is a calque of the Greek πτῶσις, ptôsis, lit. falling, fall. The sense is that all cases are considered to have fallen away from the nominative. This picture is reflected in the word declension, from Latin declinere, to lean. The equivalent to case in several other European languages also derives from casus, including cas in French, caso in Spanish, the Finnish equivalent is sija, which can also mean position or support. Although not very prominent in modern English, cases featured much more saliently in Old English and other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Among modern languages, cases still feature prominently in most of the Balto-Slavic languages, with most having six to eight cases, as well as Icelandic, German and Modern Greek, in German, cases are mostly marked on articles and adjectives, and less so on nouns. Case is based fundamentally on changes to the noun to indicate the role in the sentence. This is not how English works, where word order and prepositions are used to achieve this, Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of Indo-European in favor of analytic constructions. The personal pronouns of Modern English retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class, for other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the genitive clitic -s. The oblique case, used for the direct or indirect object of a verb, for the object of a preposition, for an absolute disjunct, the genitive case, used for a grammatical possessor
2.
Proto-Indo-European language
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Proto-Indo-European is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language and these methods supply all of the knowledge concerning PIE, since there is no written record of the language. PIE is estimated to have spoken as a single language around 3500 B. C. E. during the Neolithic Age. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe. Work has also gone into reconstructing their culture and religion, PIE had a complex system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes as well as ablaut and accent. PIE nominals and pronouns had a system of declension. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed, today, the most widely-spoken daughter languages of PIE are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, and Marathi. There is no evidence of PIE. It has been reconstructed from its present-day descendants using the comparative method, the comparative method is based on the Neogrammarian rule that the Indo-European sound laws are applied without exception. The method compares languages and applies the laws to find a common ancestor. For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English, piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the consonants that is far too frequent to be coincidental. Although his name is associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In many ways Jones work was less accurate than his predecessors, as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi. In 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to include other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In 1816 Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit in which he investigated a common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833 he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, in 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what is now known as Grimms law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik. Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages, and showed that sound change affects an entire language systematically, august Schleichers A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages was an early attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language
3.
Balto-Slavic languages
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The Balto-Slavic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It traditionally comprises the Baltic and Slavic languages, Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development. Some linguists, however, have suggested that Balto-Slavic should be split into three equidistant groups, Eastern Baltic, Western Baltic and Slavic. One particularly innovative dialect separated from the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and became ancestral to the Proto-Slavic language, the nature of the relationship of the Balto-Slavic languages has been the subject of much discussion from the very beginning of historical Indo-European linguistics as a scientific discipline. Baltic and Slavic share many phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic. The notable early Indo-Europeanist August Schleicher proposed a solution, From Proto-Indo-European descended Proto-Balto-Slavic. In turn, the Polish linguist Rozwadowski suggests that the similarities among Baltic and Slavic languages are a result of not only genetic relationship, thomas Olander corroborates the claim of genetic relationship in his research in the field of comparative Balto-Slavic accentology. Even though some linguists still reject a genetic relationship, most scholars accept that Baltic and Slavic languages experienced a period of common development, beekes, for example, states expressly that he Baltic and Slavic languages were originally one language and so form one group. Gray and Atkinsons application of language-tree divergence analysis supports a relationship between the Baltic and Slavic languages, dating the split of the family to about 1400 BCE. That this was using a very different methodology than other studies lends some credence to the links between the two. The Balto-Slavic languages are most often divided into Baltic and Slavic groups, with this, Ivanov and Toporov put Baltic unity in question. This model is supported by studies by V. V. Kromer. Onomastic evidence shows that Baltic languages were spoken in much wider territory than the one they cover today, all the way to Moscow. In 626, the Slavs, Persians and Avars jointly attacked the Byzantine Empire, in that campaign the Slavs fought under Avar officers. As of 2009 there was a controversy over whether the Slavs might then have been a military caste under the khaganate rather than an ethnicity. Their language—at first possibly only one local speech—once koinéized, became a lingua franca of the Avar state, however, such a theory fails to explain how Slavic spread to Eastern Europe, an area that had no historical links with the Avar Khanate. That sudden expansion of Proto-Slavic erased most of the idioms of the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and this secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE. The Baltic and Slavic languages also share some inherited words and this indicates that the Baltic and Slavic languages share a period of common development, the Proto-Balto-Slavic language
4.
Bulgarian language
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Bulgarian /bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, with the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Bulgarian became one of the official languages of the European Union. Development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods, prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian – a literary norm of the southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible, Middle Bulgarian – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar, present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing, as Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, the Slavic language. In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ. In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот, непонятен, ядро and others. As usual in cases, many other loans from French, English. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and linguistic chaos ensued. Eventually the eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography, the language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel. This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgarias, E. g. млеко – milk, хлеб – bread. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have ya, or an open e sound. The literary language norm, which is based on the Eastern dialects
5.
Macedonian language
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It is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia and a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Romania and Serbia. Standard Macedonian was implemented as the language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1945 and has since developed a modern literature. Most of the codification was formalized during the same period, Macedonian dialects form a continuum with Bulgarian dialects, they in turn form a broader continuum with Serbo-Croatian through the transitional Torlakian dialects. The name of the Macedonian language is a matter of controversy in Greece. Macedonians closest relative is Bulgarian, with which it has a degree of mutual intelligibility. The next closest relative is Serbo-Croatian, all South Slavic languages, including Macedonian, form a dialect continuum. Its other principal members are Romanian, Greek and Albanian, all of which belong to different genetic branches of the Indo-European family and they are also the only Slavic languages with any definite articles. Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only Indo-European languages that use of the narrative mood. Prior to the codification of the language, Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian. Similarly, Torlakian was also regarded as Bulgarian. On the other hand, many Macedonian intellectuals maintained that their language was neither a dialect of Serbian nor of Bulgarian, but the core of its standard was not formed out of dialects or variants that had ever been covered by the Bulgarian standard. Consequently, its autonomy could not have resulted from a conscious distancing of a variant of a pluricentric language, like the other South Slavic standards, the Macedonian standard was based on dialects which had never before been covered by a standard. Modern questions of classification are largely shaped by political and social factors, likewise, this view does not take into account the fact that a Macedonian koiné language was already in existence. The codifiers ultimately chose the dialects, but did so because they were most widespread. The population of the Republic of Macedonia was 2,022,547 in 2002, outside of the Republic, there are Macedonians living in other parts of the geographical area of Macedonia. There are ethnic Macedonian minorities in neighbouring Albania, in Bulgaria, in Greece, according to the official Albanian census of 1989,4,697 ethnic Macedonians reside in Albania. A large number of Macedonians live outside the traditional Balkan Macedonian region, with Australia, Canada, according to a 1964 estimate, approximately 580,000 Macedonians live outside of the Macedonian Republic, nearly 30% of the total population. The Macedonian language has the status of official language only in the Republic of Macedonia, and is a minority and official language in parts of Albania, Romania
6.
Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones
7.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
8.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
9.
Old Latin
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Old Latin, also known as Early Latin or Archaic Latin, refers to the Latin language in the period before 75 BC, before the age of Classical Latin. In New and Contemporary Latin, it is called prisca Latinitas rather than vetus Latina, the use of old, early and archaic has been standard in publications of Old Latin writings since at least the 18th century. The definition is not arbitrary, but the terms refer to writings with spelling conventions and this article presents some of the major differences. The earliest known specimen of the Latin language is from the Praeneste fibula, a new analysis performed in 2011 declared it to be genuine beyond any reasonable doubt and dating from the Orientalizing period, in the first half of the seventh century BC. The concept of Old Latin is as old as the concept of Classical Latin, viri prisci, old-time men, were the population of Latium before the founding of Rome. In the Late Latin period, when Classical Latin was behind them, Isidore of Seville reports a classification scheme that had come into existence in or before his time, the four Latins. The scheme persisted with little change for some years after Isidore. Although the differences are striking and can be identified by Latin readers. Latin speakers of the empire had no reported trouble understanding Old Latin, except for the few texts that must date from the time of the kings, mainly songs. Thus, the laws of the Twelve Tables from the early Republic were comprehensible, there is no sharp distinction between Old Latin, as it was spoken for most of the Republic, and Classical Latin, but the earlier grades into the later. The end of the republic was too late a termination for compilers after Wordsworth, Charles Edwin Bennett said, bell, De locativi in prisca Latinitate vi et usu, Breslau,1889, sets the later limit at 75 BC. A definite date is impossible, since archaic Latin does not terminate abruptly. Bennetts own date of 100 BC did not prevail but rather Bells 75 BC became the standard as expressed in the four-volume Loeb Library and other major compendia. Over the 377 years from 452 to 75 BC, Old Latin evolved from being partially comprehensible by classicists with study to being read by scholars. Old Latin authored works began in the 3rd century BC and these are complete or nearly complete works under their own name surviving as manuscripts copied from other manuscripts in whatever script was current at the time. In addition are fragments of works quoted in other authors, numerous inscriptions placed by various methods on their original media survive just as they were except for the ravages of time. Some of these were copied from other inscriptions, no inscription can be earlier than the introduction of the Greek alphabet into Italy but none survive from that early date. The imprecision of archaeological dating makes it impossible to assign a year to any one inscription, some texts, however, that survive as fragments in the works of classical authors, had to have been composed earlier than the republic, in the time of the monarchy
10.
Marathi language
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Marathi is an Indian language spoken predominantly by the Marathi people of Maharashtra. It is the language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively. There were 73 million speakers in 2001, Marathi ranks 19th in the list of most spoken languages in the world, Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi, Bengali and Telugu in that order. Marathi has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, the major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. Malvani Konkani has been influenced by Marathi varieties. Marathi has several features that set it aside from most other Indian languages, Marathi distinguishes inclusive and exclusive forms of we and possesses a three-way gender system that features the neuter in addition to the masculine and the feminine. In its phonology it contrasts apico-alveolar with alveopalatal affricates and, in common with Gujarati, Marathi is primarily spoken in Maharashtra and parts of neighbouring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, union-territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The cities of Baroda, Surat, and Ahmedabad, Belgaum, Karwar, Nipani, Indore, Gwalior, Adoni, Hyderabad, Marathi is also spoken by Maharashtrian emigrants worldwide, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Mauritius, and Canada. Marathi is the language of Maharashtra and co-official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra. In Goa, Konkani is the official language, however. Marathi is included among the languages which stand a part of the Eight Schedule of the Constitution of India, the contemporary grammatical rules described by Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad and endorsed by the Government of Maharashtra are supposed to take precedence in standard written Marathi. Traditions of Marathi Linguistics and the rules give special status to tatsamas. This special status expects the rules for tatsamas to be followed as in Sanskrit and this practice provides Marathi with a large treasure of Sanskrit words to cope with demands of new technical words whenever needed. Jawaharlal Nehru University has announced plans to establish a department for Marathi. Marathi Day is celebrated on 27 February, the birthday of poet Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar, Indian languages, including Marathi, that belong to the Indo-Aryan language family are derived from early forms of Prakrit. Marathi is one of languages that further descend from Maharashtri Prakrit. Marathi literature began and grew owing to the rise of the Seuna dynasty of Devgiri, further growth and usage of the language was because of two religious sects – the Mahanubhava and Varkari panthans – who adopted Marathi as the medium for preaching their doctrines of devotion. Marathi had attained a place in court life by the time of the Seuna kings
11.
Classical Latin
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Classical Latin is the modern term used to describe the form of the Latin language recognized as standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. In some later periods, it was regarded as good Latin, the word Latin is now taken by default as meaning Classical Latin, so that, for example, modern Latin textbooks describe classical Latin. Latinitas was spoken as well as written, moreover, it was the language taught by the schools. Prescriptive rules therefore applied to it, and where a subject was concerned, such as poetry or rhetoric. No authors are noted for the type of rigidity evidenced by stylized art, except possibly the repetitious abbreviations, good Latin in philology is classical Latin literature. The term classicus was devised by the Romans themselves to translate Greek ἐγκριθέντες, select, before then, classis, in addition to being a naval fleet, was a social class in one of the diachronic divisions of Roman society according to property ownership by the Roman constitution. The word is a transliteration of Greek κλῆσις calling, used to rank army draftees by property from first to fifth class, classicus is anything primae classis, first class, such as the authors of the polished works of Latinitas, or sermo urbanus. It had nuances of the certified and the authentic, testis classicus and it was in this sense that Marcus Cornelius Fronto in the 2nd century AD used scriptores classici, first-class or reliable authors whose works could be relied upon as model of good Latin. This is the first known reference, possibly innovated at this time, aulus Gellius includes many authors, such as Plautus, who are currently considered writers of Old Latin and not strictly in the period of classical Latin. The classical Romans distinguished Old Latin as prisca Latinitas and not sermo vulgaris, each author in the Roman lists was considered equivalent to one in the Greek, for example Ennius was the Latin Homer, the Aeneid was a new Iliad, and so on. The lists of authors were as far as the Roman grammarians went in developing a philology. The Renaissance brought a revival of interest in restoring as much of Roman culture as could be restored and with it the return of the concept of classic, the best. Thomas Sébillet in 1548 referred to les bons et classiques poètes françois, meaning Jean de Meun and Alain Chartier, according to Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary, the term classical, from classicus, entered modern English in 1599, some 50 years after its re-introduction on the continent. In 1715 Laurence Echards Classical Geographical Dictionary was published, in 1736 Robert Ainsworths Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Compendarius turned English words and expressions into proper and classical Latin. In 1768 David Ruhnken recast the mold of the view of the classical by applying the word canon to the pinakes of orators, Ruhnken had a kind of secular catechism in mind. The practice and Teuffels classification, with modifications, are still in use and his work was translated into English as soon as published in German by Wilhelm Wagner, who corresponded with Teuffel. Wagner published the English translation in 1873, Teuffel divides the chronology of classical Latin authors into several periods according to political events, rather than by style. Regarding the style of the literary Latin of those periods he had, Teuffel was to go on with other editions of his history, but meanwhile it had come out in English almost as soon as it did in German and found immediate favorable reception
12.
Sicily
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Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous Region of Italy, along with surrounding minor islands, Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, the island has a typical Mediterranean climate. The earliest archaeological evidence of activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. It became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region after the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine. It is also home to important archaeological and ancient sites, such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples, Sicily has a roughly triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria. To the east, it is separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, about 3 km wide in the north, and about 16 km wide in the southern part. The northern and southern coasts are each about 280 km long measured as a line, while the eastern coast measures around 180 km. The total area of the island is 25,711 km2, the terrain of inland Sicily is mostly hilly and is intensively cultivated wherever possible. Along the northern coast, the ranges of Madonie,2,000 m, Nebrodi,1,800 m. The cone of Mount Etna dominates the eastern coast, in the southeast lie the lower Hyblaean Mountains,1,000 m. The mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta districts were part of a leading sulphur-producing area throughout the 19th century, Sicily and its surrounding small islands have some highly active volcanoes. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still casts black ash over the island with its ever-present eruptions and it currently stands 3,329 metres high, though this varies with summit eruptions, the mountain is 21 m lower now than it was in 1981. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps, Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 with a basal circumference of 140 km. This makes it by far the largest of the three volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under the mountain by Zeus, Mount Etna is widely regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily. The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily form a volcanic complex, the three volcanoes of Vulcano, Vulcanello and Lipari are also currently active, although the latter is usually dormant
13.
Sardinia
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Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and an autonomous region of Italy. It is located in the Western Mediterranean, just south of the French island of Corsica, the regions official name is Regione Autonoma della Sardegna / Regione Autònoma de Sardigna, and its capital and largest city is Cagliari. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city and its indigenous language and the other minority languages spoken by the Sardinians enjoy equal dignity with Italian under regional law. The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *srd-, later romanised as sardus and it makes its first appearance on the Nora Stone, where the word Šrdn testifies to the names existence when the Phoenician merchants first arrived. According to Timaeus, one of Platos dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well might have named after Sardò. There has also been speculation that identifies the ancient Nuragic Sards with the Sherden, in Classical antiquity, Sardinia was called Ichnusa, Σανδάλιον Sandal, Sardinia and Sardó. Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 24,100 square kilometres and it is situated between 38°51 and 41°18 latitude north and 8°8 and 9°50 east longitude. To the west of Sardinia is the Sea of Sardinia, a unit of the Mediterranean Sea, to Sardinias east is the Tyrrhenian Sea, the nearest land masses are the island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia, the Balearic Islands, and Provence. The Tyrrhenian Sea portion of the Mediterranean Sea is directly to the east of Sardinia between the Sardinian east coast and the west coast of the Italian mainland peninsula, the Strait of Bonifacio is directly north of Sardinia and separates Sardinia from the French island of Corsica. The island has an ancient geoformation and, unlike Sicily and mainland Italy, is not earthquake-prone and its rocks date in fact from the Palaeozoic Era. Due to long erosion processes, the highlands, formed of granite, schist, trachyte, basalt, sandstone and dolomite limestone. The highest peak is Punta La Marmora, part of the Gennargentu Ranges in the centre of the island. The islands ranges and plateaux are separated by wide valleys and flatlands. Sardinia has few rivers, the largest being the Tirso,151 km long, which flows into the Sea of Sardinia, the Coghinas. There are 54 artificial lakes and dams that supply water and electricity, the main ones are Lake Omodeo and Lake Coghinas. The only natural lake is Lago di Baratz. A number of large, shallow, salt-water lagoons and pools are located along the 1,850 km of the coastline, the climate of the island is variable from area to area, due to several factors including the extension in latitude and the elevation. During the year there is a concentration of rainfall in the winter and autumn, some heavy showers in the spring
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Corsica
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Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 13 regions of France. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, southeast of the French mainland, a single chain of mountains make up two-thirds of the island. While being part of France, Corsica is also designated as a territorial collectivity by law, as a territorial collectivity, Corsica enjoys a greater degree of autonomy than other French regions, for example, the Corsican Assembly is able to exercise limited executive powers. The island formed a single department until it was split in 1975 into two departments, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud, with its capital in Ajaccio, the prefecture city of Corse-du-Sud. Bastia, the city of Haute-Corse, is the second-largest settlement in Corsica. After being ruled by the Republic of Genoa since 1284, Corsica was briefly an independent Corsican Republic from 1755 until it was conquered by France in 1769. Due to Corsicas historical ties with the Italian peninsula, the island retains to this day many elements of the culture of Italy, the native Corsican language, whose northern variant is closely related to the Italian language, is recognised as a regional language by the French government. This Mediterranean island was ruled by various nations over the course of history but had several periods of independence. Napoleon was born in 1769 in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio and his ancestral home, Maison Bonaparte, is today used as a museum. The origin of the name Corsica is subject to much debate, to the Ancient Greeks it was known as Kalliste, Corsis, Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné. Of these Cyrnos, Cernealis, or Cirné derive from a corruption of the most ancient Greek name of the island, Σειρηνούσσαι, the claim that latter Greek names are based on the Phoenician word for peninsula are highly unlikely. Corsica has been occupied continuously since the Mesolithic era and it acquired an indigenous population that was influential in the Mediterranean during its long prehistory. The Romans, who built a colony in Aléria, considered Corsica as one of the most backward regions of the Roman world, the island produced sheep, honey, resin and wax, and exported many slaves, not well considered because of their fierce and rebellious character. Moreover, it was known for its wines, exported to Rome. Administratively, the island was divided in pagi, which in the Middle Ages became the pievi, Corsica was integrated by Emperor Diocletian in Roman Italy. In the 5th century, the half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and the island was invaded by the Vandals. Briefly recovered by the Byzantines, it became part of the Kingdom of the Lombards—this made it a dependency of the March of Tuscany. Pepin the Short, king of the Franks and Charlemagnes father, expelled the Lombards, in the first quarter of the 11th century, Pisa and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion
15.
Crete
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Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, 88th-largest island in the world and the fifth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete and a number of surrounding islands and islets constitute the region of Crete, the capital and the largest city is Heraklion. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065, Crete forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece, while retaining its own local cultural traits. It was once the centre of the Minoan civilization, which is regarded as the earliest recorded civilization in Europe. The island is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari dating from the 18th century BC, repeated later in Neo-Assyrian records and it was also known in ancient Egyptian as Keftiu, strongly suggesting a similar Minoan name for the island. The current name of Crete is thought to be first attested in Mycenaean Greek texts written in Linear B, through the words
16.
Cyprus
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Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean and the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. It is located south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, north of Egypt, the earliest known human activity on the island dates to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains from this include the well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia. Cyprus was settled by Mycenaean Greeks in two waves in the 2nd millennium BC, Cyprus was placed under British administration based on Cyprus Convention in 1878 and formally annexed by Britain in 1914. While Turkish Cypriots made up 18% of the population, the partition of Cyprus and creation of a Turkish state in the north became a policy of Turkish Cypriot leaders, following nationalist violence in the 1950s, Cyprus was granted independence in 1960. On 15 July 1974, a coup détat was staged by Greek Cypriot nationalists and elements of the Greek military junta in an attempt at enosis and these events and the resulting political situation are matters of a continuing dispute. The Cyprus Republic has de jure sovereignty over the island of Cyprus, as well as its territorial sea and exclusive economic area, another nearly 4% of the islands area is covered by the UN buffer zone. The international community considers the part of the island as territory of the Republic of Cyprus occupied by Turkish forces. The occupation is viewed as illegal under law, amounting to illegal occupation of EU territory since Cyprus became a member of the European Union. Cyprus is a major tourist destination in the Mediterranean, on 1 January 2008, the Republic of Cyprus joined the eurozone. The earliest attested reference to Cyprus is the 15th century BC Mycenaean Greek
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Britannia
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It is a term still used to refer to the island today. In AD43 the Roman Empire began its conquest of the island, establishing a province they called Britannia, in the 2nd century, Roman Britannia came to be personified as a goddess, armed with a trident and shield and wearing a Corinthian helmet. After centuries of declining use, the Latin form was revived during the English Renaissance as an evocation of a British national identity. A British cultural icon, she was featured on all modern British coinage series until the redesign in 2008, in 2015 a new definitive £2 coin was issued, with a new image of Britannia. She is also depicted in the Brit Awards statuette, the British Phonographic Industrys annual music awards, the first writer to use a form of the name was the Greek explorer and geographer Pytheas in the 4th century BC. Pytheas referred to Prettanike or Brettaniai, a group of islands off the coast of North-Western Europe, in the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus referred to Pretannia, a rendering of the indigenous name for the Pretani people whom the Greeks believed to inhabit the British Isles. Following the Greek usage, the Romans referred to the Insulae Britannicae in the plural, consisting of Albion, Hibernia, Thule, over time, Albion specifically came to be known as Britannia, and the name for the group was subsequently dropped. The Roman conquest of the began in AD43, leading to the establishment of the Roman province known in Latin as Britannia. A southern part of what is now Scotland was occupied by the Romans for about 20 years in the mid-2nd century AD, people living in the Roman province of Britannia were called Britanni, or Britons. Ireland, inhabited by the Scoti, was never invaded and was called Hibernia, Thule, an island six days sail north of Britain, and near the frozen sea, possibly Iceland, was also never invaded by the Romans. She appeared on coins issued under Hadrian, as a more regal-looking female figure, Britannia was soon personified as a goddess, looking fairly similar to the goddess Minerva. Early portraits of the goddess depict Britannia as a young woman, wearing the helmet of a centurion. She is usually seated on a rock, holding a spear. Sometimes she holds a standard and leans on the shield, on another range of coinage, she is seated on a globe above waves, Britain at the edge of the world. Similar coin types were issued under Antoninus Pius. After the Roman withdrawal, the term Britannia remained in use in Britain, Latin was ubiquitous amongst native Brythonic writers and the term continued in the Welsh tradition that developed from it. Following the migration of Brythonic Celts, The term Britannia also came to refer to the Armorican peninsula. )The modern English, French, Breton and Gallo names for the area, all derive from a literal use of Britannia meaning land of the Britons. The two Britannias gave rise to the term Grande Bretagne to distinguish the island of Britain from the continental peninsula
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Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
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Proto-Germanic language
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Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The end of the Common Germanic period is reached with the beginning of the Migration Period in the fourth century, the Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any coherent surviving texts, it has been reconstructed using the comparative method. Fragmentary direct attestation exists of Common Germanic in early runic inscriptions, the Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia, the Urheimat of the Germanic tribes. Proto-Germanic developed out of pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe, Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. Early Germanic expansion in the Pre-Roman Iron Age placed Proto-Germanic speakers in contact with the Continental Celtic La Tène horizon, a number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic have been identified. By the 1st century AD, Germanic expansion reaches the Danube and the Upper Rhine in the south, at about the same time, extending east of the Vistula, Germanic speakers come into contact with early Slavic cultures, as reflected in early Germanic loans in Proto-Slavic. By the 3rd century, LPGmc speakers had expanded over significant distance, the period marks the breakup of Late Proto-Germanic and the beginning of the Germanic migrations. The earliest coherent text in Proto-Norse become available c.400 in runic inscriptions, the delineation of Late Common Germanic from Proto-Norse about then is largely a matter of convention. Early West Germanic becomes available in the 5th century with the Frankish Bergakker inscription, between the two points, many sound changes occurred. Phylogeny as applied to historical linguistics involves the descent of languages. The Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, borrowing of lexical items from contact languages makes the relative position of the Germanic branch within Indo-European less clear than the positions of the other branches of Indo-European. In the course of the development of linguistics, various solutions have been proposed, none certain. In the evolutionary history of a family, philologists consider a genetic tree model appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. The internal diversification of West Germanic developed in an especially non-treelike manner, Proto-Germanic is generally agreed to have begun about 500 BC. Its hypothetical ancestor between the end of Proto-Indo-European and 500 BC is termed Pre-Proto-Germanic, whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic is a matter of usage. The fixation of the led to sound changes in unstressed syllables. For Lehmann, the boundary was the dropping of final -a or -e in unstressed syllables, for example, post-PIE *wóyd-e > Gothic wait. Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the boundary but later found runic evidence that the -a was not dropped, ékwakraz … wraita, I, Wakraz
20.
East Slavic languages
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The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups, the existing East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, Rusyn is considered to be either a separate language or a dialect of Ukrainian. The East Slavic languages descend from a predecessor, the language of the medieval Kievan Rus. All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications, the East Slavic territory shows a definite linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages, East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on the one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, central or Middle Russian, the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original, as well, existing several centuries within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Belarusian and Ukrainian share many common elements, lexical and grammatical above all. Therefore, a crucial differentiation has to be made between the history of the East Slavic dialects and that of the literary languages employed by the Eastern Slavs. In both cases one has to keep in mind that the history of the East Slavic languages is of course a history of written texts and we do not know how the writers of the preserved texts would have spoken in everyday life. After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, the Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form. Church Slavonic was a factor in the evolution of modern Russian. All of these languages are today separate in their own right, in the Russian Empire the official view was that the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian languages were dialects of one common Russian language. In the course of the 20th century, Great Russian came to be known as Russian proper, Little Russian as Ukrainian, comrie, Bernard, Corbett, Greville G, eds. Media related to East Slavic languages at Wikimedia Commons
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West Slavic languages
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The West Slavic languages are a subdivision of the Slavic language group that includes Czech, Polish, Slovak, Silesian, Kashubian, Lower Sorbian and Upper Sorbian. The West Slavic languages are all written using Latin script, in contrast to the Cyrillic-using East Slavic branch, the early Slavic expansion reached Central Europe in c. the 7th century, and the West Slavic dialects diverged from Common Slavic over the following centuries. West Slavic polities of the 9th century include the Principality of Nitra, the West Slavic tribes settled on the eastern fringes of the Carolingian Empire, along the Limes Saxoniae. The Obotrites were given territories by Charlemagne in exchange for their support in his war against the Saxons, in the high medieval period, the West Slavic tribes were again pushed to the east by the incipient German Ostsiedlung, decisively so following the Wendish Crusade in the 11th century. The Sorbs and other Polabian Slavs like Obodrites and Veleti came under the domination of the Holy Roman Empire and were strongly Germanized. The central Polish tribe of the Polans established their own state – the Duchy of Poland – in the 10th century under Duke Mieszko I, the Bohemians established the Duchy of Bohemia in the 9th century, which was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire in the early 11th century. At the end of the 12th century the duchy was raised to the status of kingdom, lusatia, the homeland of the remaining Sorbs, became a crown land of Bohemia in the 11th century, and Silesia followed suit in 1335. The Slovaks, on the hand, never became part of the Holy Roman Empire. Hungary fell under Habsburg rule alongside Austria and Bohemia in the 16th century, thus uniting the Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, West Slavs Comparison of Czech and Slovak
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South Slavic languages
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The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans and these are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written was the variety spoken in Thessalonica, now called Old Church Slavonic and it is retained as a liturgical language in some South Slavic Orthodox churches in the form of various local Church Slavonic traditions. The South Slavic languages constitute a dialect continuum, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin constitute a single dialect within this continuum. Eastern Macedonian – Bulgarian – Old Church Slavonic – Western Slovene Serbo-Croatian and that view, however, has been challenged in recent decades. Some innovations encompassing all South Slavic languages are shared with the Eastern Slavic group and they are prevalently phonological in character, whereas morphological and syntactical isoglosses are much fewer in number. This development was identical to the loss of yer after a liquid consonant, hardening of palatals and dental affricates, e. g. š > š, č > č, c > c. South Slavic form of liquid metathesis Most of these are not exclusive in character, however, furthermore, Matasović argues, there was never a period of cultural or political unity in which Proto-South-Slavic could have existed during which Common South Slavic innovations could have occurred. The South Slavic dialects form a dialectal continuum stretching from todays southern Austria to southeast Bulgaria, standard Slovene, Bulgarian, and Macedonian are based on distinct dialects. The Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are based on the same dialect, thus, in most cases national and ethnic borders do not coincide with dialectal boundaries. Note, Due to the political status of languages/dialects and different historical contexts. Torlakian is thought to fit together with Bulgarian and Macedonian into the Balkan sprachbund, because of that some researchers tend to classify it as Eastern South Slavic. Each of these primary and secondary dialectal units breaks down into subdialects, in the past, it was not uncommon for individual villages to have their own words and phrases. However, during the 20th century the local dialects have been influenced by Štokavian standards through mass media and public education, with the breakup of Yugoslavia, a rise in national awareness has caused individuals to modify their speech according to newly established standard-language guidelines. The wars have caused large migrations, changing the picture of some areas—especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In some areas, it is unclear whether location or ethnicity is the dominant factor in the dialect of the speaker. Because of this the speech patterns of some communities and regions are in a state of flux, further research over the next few decades will be necessary to determine the changes made in the dialectical distribution of this language group. The Slavomolisano dialect is spoken in three villages of the Italian region of Molise by the descendants of South Slavs who migrated from the eastern Adriatic coast during the 15th century
23.
Old Church Slavonic
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Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Church Slavic, was the first Slavic literary language. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica, as the oldest attested Slavic language, OCS provides important evidence for the features of Proto-Slavic, the reconstructed common ancestor of all Slavic languages. The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia in 863, the language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy and were used for government and religious documents and books between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia, in 885, the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by Pope Stephen V in favour of Latin. Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the First Bulgarian Empire, there it was taught at two literary schools, the Preslav Literary School and the Ohrid Literary School. The Glagolitic alphabet was used at both schools, though the Cyrillic script was developed early on at the Preslav Literary School where it superseded Glagolitic. The texts written during this era exhibit certain linguistic features of the vernaculars of the First Bulgarian Empire and these local varieties are collectively known as the Church Slavonic language. In Bosnia was preserved the local Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet, while in Croatia a variant of the Glagolitic alphabet was preserved, see Early Cyrillic alphabet for a detailed description of the script and information about the sounds it originally expressed. For Old Church Slavonic, the segments are reconstructible. The sounds are given in Slavic transliterated form rather than in IPA, as the realisation is uncertain. The letter щ denoted different sounds in different dialects and is not shown in the table, in Bulgaria, it represented the sequence /ʃt/, and it is normally transliterated as št for that reason. Farther west and north, it was probably /c/ or /tɕ/ like in modern Macedonian, Torlakian and Serbian/Croatian, /dz/ appears mostly in early texts, becoming /z/ later on. The distinction between l, n and r, on one hand, and palatal l, n and r, when it is, it is shown by a kamora diacritic over the letter. Accent is not indicated in writing and must be inferred from later languages, the pronunciation of yat ě differed by area. In Bulgaria it was an open vowel, commonly reconstructed as /æ/. The yer vowels ĭ and ŭ are often called ultrashort and were lower, more centralised and shorter than their counterparts i and they disappeared in most positions in the word, already sporadically in the earliest texts but more frequently later on. They also tended to merge with other vowels, particularly ĭ with e and ŭ with o, the exact articulation of the nasal vowels is unclear because different areas tend to merge them with different vowels. ę is occasionally seen to merge with e or ě in South Slavic, ǫ generally merges with u or o, but in Bulgaria, ǫ was apparently unrounded and eventually merged with ŭ
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Old East Slavic
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Old East Slavic, Old Ruthenian, Old Rusian was a language used in the 10th–15th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus and states which evolved after the collapse of Kievan Rus. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, in the area occupied by Belarus, central and northern Ukraine. Linguists from each of the three East Slavic countries tend to treat Old East Slavic as the predecessor of their own language. The Russian drevnerusskij jazyk means Old Rus’ian as well, Rusian is similarly used by some western scholars such as Horace Lunt. The language was a descendant of the Proto-Slavic language and faithfully retained many of its features, a striking innovation in the evolution of this language was the development of so-called pleophony, which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic dialects. For instance, Common Slavic *gordъ settlement, town was reflected as OESl. gorodъ, Common Slavic *melko milk > OESl. moloko, other Slavic dialects are differed by resolving the closed-syllable clusters *eRC and *aRC as liquid metathesis, or by no change at all. Since extant written records of the language are sparse, it is difficult to assess the level of its unity, in consideration of the number of tribes and clans that constituted Kievan Rus, it is probable that there were many dialects of Old East Slavonic. Nonetheless, by 1150 it had more unity than any other branch of Slavic, with time, it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages. The Ukrainian branch split away first, between 1200 and 1500, whereas Russian later separated from Belarusian by 1700, each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary. The Old Church Slavonic language was introduced, documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing, although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments, the spelling of the original excerpt has been partly modernized. The translations are best attempts at being literal, not literary,1110, from the Laurentian Codex,1377, Early language, fall of the yers in progress or arguably complete. South Slavic features include времѧньнъıх bygone, modern R прошлых, modern Ukr минулих, correct use of perfect and aorist, єсть пошла is/has come, нача began Note the style of punctuation. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, fifteenth cent, illustrates the sung epics, with typical use of metaphor and simile. The Old East Slavic language developed a certain literature of its own, though much of it was influenced as regards style, the earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic must be considered the written Slovo o zakone i blagodati, by Hilarion, metropolitan of Kiev. In this work there is a panegyric on Prince Vladimir of Kiev and this subtle and graceful oration admirably conforms to the precepts of the Byzantine eloquence. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk, from the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people
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Czech language
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Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. It is spoken by over 10 million people and is the language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of being intelligible to a very high degree. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the written standard was codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, the Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are mostly also counted as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. The Czech phoneme inventory is moderate in size, comprising five vowels, words may contain uncommon consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the grapheme ř, or lack vowels altogether. Czech orthography is simple, and has used as a model by phonologists. Czech is classified as a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and this branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is by far the closest genetic neighbor of Czech, the West Slavic languages are spoken in an area classified as part of Central Europe. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries, the Bohemian language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century, the first complete Bible translation also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well, literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century, the publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620 and this emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, the modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. Changes include the shift of í to ej and é to í and the merging of í
26.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
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Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
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Bytom
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Bytom is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. It lies in the district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million. Bytom is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Bytomka river, the city has belonged to the Silesian Voivodeship since its formation in 1999. Previously it was in Katowice Voivodeship, Bytom is one of the cities within the conurbation of the Katowice urban area as well as within a greater Silesian metropolitan area populated by about 5,294,000 people. The population of the city is 183,251, Bytom is located on the range Bytom-Katowice, in the Upland of Miechowice, which is in turn a central part of the Silesian Upland. The city straddles between north latitudes 50°19′ i 50°26′ and east longitudes 18°47′ i 18°58′, the city itself is not placed exclusively in the Upland of Miechowice, where only the central part of the town stands. The rest of the city reaches as far as the valleys of Drama and Szarlejka to the north, Brynica to the north and east, the bedrock of the Upland of Miechowice consists primarily of sandstones and slates. The rocks are punctuated with abundant natural resources of coal and iron ore from the Carboniferous period. In the north part of the upland, in the Bytom basin lays the broad range of the rocks, from sandstones to limestones, with rich ore, zinc. The upper layer is composed of clay, sand and gravel, one half of the coat of arms of Bytom depicts a miner mining coal, while the other half presents a yellow eagle on the blue field – the symbol of Upper Silesia. Bytom is one of the oldest cities of Upper Silesia, originally recorded as Bitom in 1136 and it received city rights from prince Władysław in 1254 with its first centrally located market square. The city of Bytom benefited economically from its location on a route linking Kraków with Silesia from east to west. The first Roman Catholic Church of the Virgin Mary was built in 1231, in 1259 Bytom was raided by the Mongols. The Duchy of Opole was split and in 1281 Bitom became a duchy, since 1289 under overlordship. Due to German settlers coming to the area, the city was Germanized and it came under control of the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in 1526, which increased the influence of the German language. The city became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1742 during the Silesian Wars, in the 19th and the first part of the 20th centuries, the city rapidly grew and industrialized. Before 1939, the town, along with Gleiwitz, was at the tip of German Silesia. The Bytom Synagogue was burned down by Nazi German SS and SA troopers during the Kristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938, during World War II, the Beuthen Jewish community was liquidated via the first ever Holocaust transport to be exterminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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Preposition
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Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions, are a class of words that express spatial or temporal relations or mark various semantic roles. A preposition or postposition typically combines with a noun or pronoun, or more generally a noun phrase, a preposition comes before its complement, a postposition comes after its complement. Some languages, which use a different word order, have postpositions instead, the phrase formed by a preposition or postposition together with its complement is called a prepositional phrase – such phrases usually play an adverbial role in a sentence. A less common type of adposition is the circumposition, which consists of two parts that appear on side of the complement. Other terms sometimes used for types of adposition include ambiposition, inposition and interposition. Some linguists use the preposition in place of adposition regardless of the applicable word order. The word preposition comes from Latin, prae and Latin, ponere and this refers to the situation in Latin and Greek, where such words are placed before their complement, and are hence pre-positioned. In some languages, including Sindhi, Urdu, Turkish, Hindi, Korean, and Japanese, to indicate this, they are called postpositions. There are also cases where the function is performed by two parts coming before and after the complement, this is called a circumposition. Prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions are collectively known as adpositions, however, some linguists prefer to use the well-known and longer established term preposition in place of adposition, irrespective of position relative to the complement. An adposition typically combines with exactly one complement, most often a noun phrase, in English, this is generally a noun, together with its specifier and modifiers such as articles, adjectives, etc. The complement is called the object of the adposition. The resulting phrase, formed by the adposition together with its complement, is called a phrase or prepositional phrase. An adposition establishes a relationship that links its complement to another word or phrase in the context. It also generally establishes a relationship, which may be spatial, temporal. Some examples of the use of English prepositions are given below, in each case, the prepositional phrase appears in italics, and the preposition within it appears in bold. The word to which the phrase expresses a relation – that is, in some of the examples, the same word has two prepositional phrases as adjuncts. As an adjunct to a noun, the weather in March cheese from France with live bacteria As a predicative expression The key is under the stone, prepositional phrases themselves are sometimes nominalized, In the cellar was chosen as the best place to hide the bodies
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Soft sign
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The soft sign also known as the front yer or front er, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel, as with its companion, the back yer ⟨ъ⟩, the vowel phoneme that it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels. In the modern Slavic Cyrillic writing systems, it does not represent an individual sound and it was also used in the Soviet Union in the Latinized Karelian alphabet, made official in 1931 and used until re-Cyrillicization of Karelian in 1937. The soft sign is written after a consonant and indicates its softening. Less commonly, the sign just has a grammatically determined usage with no phonetic meaning. The Cyrillic alphabet of Serbo-Croatian has had no sign as a distinct letter since the mid-19th century. The modern Macedonian writing system, based on the Serbian variant, has had no soft sign since its creation, between a consonant and a vowel, the soft sign bears also a function of iotation sign, in Russian, vowels after the soft sign are iotated. The feature, quite consistent with Russian orthography, promulgated a confusion between palatalization and iotation, especially because ⟨ь⟩ usually precedes so-called soft vowels. The latter case, though, is used in Russian and can be seen as a replacement of phonetically identical ⟨ьё⟩. In Ukrainian and Bulgarian, the spelling ⟨ьо⟩ indicates palatalization, not iotation, ⟨ъ⟩, an unpalatalization sign, also denotes iotation, as in the case of ⟨ъя⟩, ⟨ъе⟩, ⟨ъё⟩ and ⟨ъю⟩ in Russian. Similarly, the sign may denote iotation in Belarusian and Ukrainian. Ukrainian uses a different repertoire of vowel letters from those of Russian and Belarusian. Among Slavic languages, the sign has the most limited use in Bulgarian, since 1945. In Slavistic transcription, Ь and Ъ are used to denote Proto-Slavic extra-short sounds /ĭ/ and /ŭ/ respectively, similarly, the ⟨оь⟩ digraph was introduced for or, and ⟨уь⟩ for, plus iotated forms such as ⟨юь⟩ and ⟨яь⟩ as required. There were proposals to use the same for Turkic languages, as a replacement to Cyrillic Schwa for or /æ/. Unlike Schwa, which is not represented in many Cyrillic character repertoires such as Windows-1251, under normal orthographic rules, it has no uppercase form, as no word begins with the letter. However, Cyrillic type fonts normally provide a form for setting type in all caps or for using it as an element of various serial numbers. In the romanization of Cyrillic words, soft signs are replaced with the prime symbol ′
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Slovak language
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Slovak /ˈsloʊvæk, -vɑːk/ is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages. Slovak is the language of Slovakia where it is spoken by approximately 5.51 million people. Slovak uses the Latin script with modifications that include the four diacritics placed above certain letters The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the principle, forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of principle is the assimilation rule. In addition, the rules are present, When a voiced consonant is at the end of a word before a pause. For example, pohyb is pronounced /poɦip/ and prípad is pronounced /priːpat/, the assimilation rule, Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, otázka is pronounced /otaːska/ and vzchopiť sa is pronounced /fsxopitsːa/ and this rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, prísť domov /priːzɟ domou̯/ and viac jahôd /vi̯adz jaɦu̯ot/, the voiced counterpart of ch /x/ is /ɣ/, and the unvoiced counterpart of h /ɦ/ is /x/. Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time, for example, weekend is spelled víkend, software – softvér, gay – gej, and quality is spelled kvalita. Personal and geographical names from languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists. Slovak features some heterophonic homographs, the most common examples being krásne /ˈkraːsne/ versus krásne /ˈkraːsɲe/, Some examples include the following, Speváčka spieva. My speváčky spievame. and so forth, adjectives, pronouns and numerals agree in person, gender and case with the noun to which they refer. Botanic or zoological terms are exceptions as is the naming of Holy Spirit in a majority of churches, word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic, Some examples are as follows, Ten veľký muž tam dnes otvára obchod. = That big man opens a store there today, – The word order does not emphasize any specific detail, just general information. Ten veľký muž dnes otvára obchod tam, = That big man is today opening a store there. – This word order emphasizes the place, dnes tam otvára obchod ten veľký muž
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Russian Language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
33.
Velar consonant
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Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth. They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a front vowel, and retracted. Palatalised velars are sometimes referred to as palatovelars, many languages also have labialized velars, such as, in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial-velar consonants, which are articulated at the velum and at the lips. This distinction disappears with the approximant since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, a velar trill or tap is not possible, see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants. The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are, The velar consonant is the most common consonant in human languages, the only languages recorded to lack velars may be Xavante, Tahitian, Wutung, Vanimo, Nori, and Waimiri-Atroarí. An areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k became palatalized in many languages, likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become, there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming /kʲ/ in Ubykh, in both regions the languages retain a labiovelar series as well as uvular consonants. In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar, perhaps to make them distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization, a similar system, contrasting *kʲ with *kʷ and leaving *k marginal at best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Apart from the stop, no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the. Of course, there can be no phoneme /ɡ/ in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have /p b t d k/ are missing /ɡ/. Pirahã has both a and a phonetically, however, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically /hi/, leaving Pirahã with only /ɡ/ as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish from, ⟨k⟩ tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before, since Hawaiian has no, and ⟨w⟩ varies between and, it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants. Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants, khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀhoan velars are rare even in initial position. Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar, The dorsum of the rises to contact the velum of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with the articulation, The velum lowers to contact the tongue. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, velarization Place of articulation List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian
34.
Glottal consonant
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Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. However, glottal consonants behave as consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root C-C-C consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as /CaːCiC/ or /maCCuːC/. The glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like normal consonants such as /k/ or /n/, glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet, In many languages, the fricatives are not true fricatives. This is a usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis without a place of articulation. Is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as, the glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a stop, for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as the ‘okina ‘, because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced. So-called voiced glottal stops are not full stops, but rather creaky voiced glottal approximants that may be transcribed and they occur as the intervocalic allophone of glottal stop in many languages. Gimi contrasts /ʔ/ and /ʔ̞/, corresponding to /k/ and /ɡ/ in related languages, glottalic consonant Glottalization Place of articulation Index of phonetics articles Guttural Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian. The Sounds of the Worlds Languages
35.
Armenian language
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The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
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Turkic languages
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The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
