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Topic Review
Gaulish Language
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul (modern-day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine). In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish. Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, Gaulish helps form the geographic group of Continental Celtic languages. The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages, are uncertain and a matter of ongoing debate because of their sparse attestation. Gaulish is found in some 800 (often fragmentary) inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. Gaulish texts were first written in the Greek alphabet in southern France and in a variety of the Old Italic script in northern Italy. After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to the use of the Latin alphabet. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar reported that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in the Greek script, and all Gaulish coins used the Greek script until about 50 BC. Gaulish in Western Europe was supplanted by Vulgar Latin and various Germanic languages from around the 5th century AD onwards. It is thought to have gone extinct some time around the late 6th century.
  • 4.1K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Ge'ez
Ge'ez (/ˈɡiːɛz/; ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz Template:IPA-gez; also transliterated Gi'iz) is an ancient South Semitic language of the Ethiosemitic branch. The language originates from the region encompassing northern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. Today, Ge'ez is used only as the main language of liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo churches, the Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic churches, and the Beta Israel Jewish community. However, in Ethiopia, Amharic or other local languages, and in Eritrea and Ethiopia's Tigray Region, Tigrinya may be used for sermons. Amharic, Tigrinya, and Tigre are closely related to Ge'ez. The closest living languages to Ge'ez are Tigre and Tigrinya with lexical similarity at 71% and 68%, respectively. Some linguists do not believe that Ge'ez constitutes a common ancestor of modern Ethiosemitic languages, but that Ge'ez became a separate language early on from another hypothetical unattested language, which can be seen as an extinct sister language of Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya. The foremost Ethiopian experts such as Amsalu Aklilu point to the vast proportion of inherited nouns that are unchanged, and even spelled identically in both Ge'ez and Amharic (and to a lesser degree, Tigrinya).
  • 5.3K
  • 17 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Gelao Language
Gelao (autonym: Kláo, Chinese: 仡佬 Gēlǎo, Vietnamese: Cờ Lao) is a dialect cluster of Kra languages in the Kra–Dai language family. It is spoken by the Gelao people in southern China and northern Vietnam. Despite an ethnic population of 580,000 (2000 census), only a few thousand still speak Gelao. Estimates run from 3,000 in China by Li in 1999, of which 500 are monolinguals, to 7,900 by Edmondson in 2008. Edmondson (2002) estimates that the three Gelao varieties of Vietnam have only about 350 speakers altogether. In 2009, a book allegedly written in a native Gelao script was found in Guizhou, China, but scholarship reveals it is certainly fake.
  • 845
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Gender Fair Language
Gender fair language (GFL) is language used with the intention of reducing gender bias in one's mental representation, or mental understanding of an idea. Gender fair language includes gender-neutral (English singular they) and gender-inclusive language (English he or she). Feminization strategies of gender fair language use gender-inclusive language. Neutralization strategies of gender fair language use gender-neutral language. Some languages however are genderless rendering such strategies superfluous. Gender fair language focuses on grammatical gender, where gender is marked grammatically in the language. Gender fair language does not interact with gender noun classes, in which some languages categorize nouns. Gender fair language concerns grammatical gender marking on nouns that reference humans, where the gender marking is in accordance with the gender of the human. Gender marking occurs the most in gendered languages, like German, Spanish, and French, where all nouns are grammatically gendered. In these languages, gender fair language generally applies to nouns, pronouns, role nouns (e.g. German der Lehrer "teacher; m."), and possessive pronouns. Grammatical gender is also marked to a lesser extent in natural gender languages, like English and Swedish, in which animate referents are grammatically gendered according to their intrinsic gender. In these languages, gender fair language generally applies only to pronouns and possessive pronouns. Every language has its own method for grammatical gender marking, and thus gender fair language applies differently to each language to match its need.
  • 16.1K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Great Scientific Oral Communication
Scientific oral communication is a dynamic medium through which researchers share their findings and insights. A great scientific oral presentation transcends the mere conveyance of information; it captivates, inspires, and connects with the audience. This comprehensive exploration uncovers the essential elements that define excellence in scientific oral communication. From the imperative of clear messaging and engaging delivery to the art of storytelling and the strategic use of visuals and interactivity, this research unveils the strategies and techniques that transform presentations into impactful experiences. Effective oral communication not only informs but also leaves an enduring imprint on the audience's understanding and appreciation of research.
  • 400
  • 08 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Indigenous Aryans
Indigenous Aryans, also known as the Out of India theory (OIT), is the idea that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. Reflecting traditional Indian views based on the Puranic chronology, the indigenist view proposes an older date than is generally accepted for the Vedic period, and argues that the Indus Valley Civilization was a Vedic civilization. In this view, "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE)." It is presented as an alternative to the established migration model, which proposes the Pontic steppe as the area of origin of the Indo-European languages. The proposal is based on traditional and religious views on Indian history and identity, and plays a signifcant role in Hindutva politics. Support for this idea mostly exists among Indian scholars of Hindu religion and the history and archaeology of India, and has no support in mainstream scholarship.
  • 6.0K
  • 13 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Italic Languages
The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages) as well as a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, South Picene, and possibly Venetic and Sicel. With over 800 million native speakers, the Italic languages are the second most widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after the Indo-Iranian languages. In the past, various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed. This article uses the classification presented by the Linguist List: Italic includes the Latin subgroup (Latin and the Romance languages) as well as the ancient Italic languages (Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian and two unclassified Italic languages, Aequian and Vestinian). Venetic (the language of the ancient Veneti), as revealed by its inscriptions, shared some similarities with the Italic languages and is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it also shares similarities with other Western Indo-European branches (particularly Celtic languages), some linguists prefer to consider it as an independent Indo-European language. In the extreme view, Italic did not exist, but the different groups descended directly from Indo-European and converged because of geographic contiguity. That view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory. In the intermediate view, the Italic languages are one of the ten or eleven major subgroups of the Indo-European language family and might therefore have had an ancestor, Common Italic or Proto-Italic from which its daughter languages descended. Moreover, there are similarities between major groups, but how the similarities are to be interpreted is one of the major debated issues in the historical linguistics of Indo-European. The linguist Calvert Watkins went so far as to suggest, among the ten major groups, a four-way division of East, West, North and South Indo-European. He considered them to be "dialectical divisions within Proto-Indo-European which go back to a period long before the speakers arrived in their historical areas of attestation". It is not to be considered a nodular grouping; in other words, there was not necessarily any common west Indo-European serving as a node from which the subgroups branched but a hypothesised similarity between the dialects of Proto-Indo-European that developed into the recognised families. Although generally regarded as a single branch that diversified from a Common or Proto-Italic stage, after the Proto-Indo-European period, some authors doubt this common affiliation. All the Italic languages share a number of common isoglosses; thus, all of them are centum languages that do not present palatalization of the Indo-European (palatal) velars /*k, *kʷ, *g, *gʰ, *gʰʷ/. The Romance languages present a later palatalization of Latin phonemes /k, g/, although only before phonemes /ɛ, e, i/.
  • 2.4K
  • 17 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Itza’ Language
Itza' (also known as Itza or Itzaj) is a critically endangered Mayan language spoken by the Itza people near Lake Peten Itza in north-central Guatemala. The language has only 25 fluent speakers and 60 nonfluent speakers. Itza' was the language of administration across much of the Yucatán Peninsula prior to 1697, when the Itza people controlled the last significant Mayan nation in Mesoamerica. During this time, the Itza people resettled their ancestral home in the Petén Basin. The subjugation of the Itza capital by the Spanish forced the Itza people to flee or live amongst the Spaniards, such as in San Jose, Guatemala, where the only modern speakers of the language live. The modern Itza people are the last of the Lowland Maya to be able to directly trace their heritage back to the pre-Columbian era. The Itza' language reflects this history in its nomenclature for the natural world: Itza' words referring to agriculture and agricultural practices remain unchanged since first being recorded. Additionally, Itza' possesses a rich vocabulary for crops and animals that encodes specific information about different varietals and individuals of the species.
  • 511
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Ivilyuat
Ivilyuat (ʔívil̃uʔat or Ivil̃uɂat IPA: [ʔivɪʎʊʔat] or Cahuilla /kəˈwiːə/), is an endangered Uto-Aztecan language, spoken by the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the Coachella Valley, San Gorgonio Pass and San Jacinto Mountains region of Southern California . Cahuilla call themselves ʔívil̃uwenetem or Iviatam–speakers of Ivilyuat (Ivi'a)–or táxliswet meaning "person." A 1990 census revealed 35 speakers in an ethnic population of 800. With such a decline, Ivilyuat is classified as "critically endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger as most speakers are middle-aged or older with limited transmission rates to children. Three dialects are known to exist: Desert, Mountain and Pass, as well as some other sub-dialects.
  • 588
  • 10 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Kalaw Lagaw Ya
Kalau Lagau Ya, Kalaw Lagaw Ya, Kala Lagaw Ya (Template:IPA-aus), or the Western Torres Strait language (also several other names, see below), is the language indigenous to the central and western Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia . On some islands, it has now largely been replaced by Torres Strait Creole. Before colonisation in the 1870s–1880s, the language was the major lingua franca of the Torres Strait cultural area of Northern Cape York Australia, Torres Strait and along the coast of the Western Province/Papua New Guinea. It is still fairly widely spoken by neighbouring Papuans and by some Aboriginal Australians. How many non-first language speakers it has is unknown. It also has a 'light' (simplified/foreigner) form, as well as a pidginised form. The simplified form is fairly prevalent on Badu and neighbouring Moa.
  • 438
  • 24 Nov 2022
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