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Topic Review
Shabo Language
Shabo (or preferably Chabu; also called Mikeyir) is an endangered language and likely language isolate spoken by about 400 former hunter-gatherers in southwestern Ethiopia, in the westernmost part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region. Its classification is uncertain, though it appears to be a Nilo-Saharan language (Anbessa & Unseth 1989, Fleming 1991, Blench 2010). It was first reported to be a separate language by Lionel Bender in 1977, based on data gathered by missionary Harvey Hoekstra. A grammar was published in 2015 (Kibebe 2015).
  • 344
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Sirenik Eskimo Language
Sirenik Yupik, Sireniki Yupik (also Old Sirenik or Vuteen), Sirenik, or Sirenikskiy is an extinct Eskimo–Aleut language. It was spoken in and around the village of Sireniki (Сиреники) in Chukotka Peninsula, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia . The language shift has been a long process, ending in total language death. In January 1997, the last native speaker of the language, a woman named Vyjye (Valentina Wye) (Russian: Выйе), died. Ever since that point, the language has been extinct; nowadays, all Sirenik Eskimos speak Siberian Yupik or Russian. Сиӷы́ных [siˈʁənəx] is the endonym for the eponymous settlement of Sireniki. The endonym for the people itself is сиӷы́ныгмы̄́ӷий [siˈʁənəɣˈməːʁij] "Sirenikites"; the singular form is сиӷы́ныгмы̄́ӷа [siˈʁənəɣˈməːʁa]). This article is based on Menovschikov (1964), with cited examples transliterated from Cyrillic transcription to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
  • 518
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Trique Language
The Triqui (/ˈtriːki/), or Trique, languages are Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico spoken by the Trique people of the state of Oaxaca and the state of Baja California (due to recent population movements). They belong to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.
  • 1.2K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Min Chinese
Min (simplified Chinese: 闽语; traditional Chinese: 閩語; pinyin: Mǐn yǔ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân gú; BUC: Mìng ngṳ̄) is a broad group of Sinitic languages spoken by about 30 million people in Fujian province as well as by the descendants of Min speaking colonists on Leizhou peninsula and Hainan, or assimilated natives of Chaoshan, parts of Zhongshan, three counties in southern Wenzhou, Zhoushan archipelago, and Taiwan. The name is derived from the Min River in Fujian, which is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min varieties are not mutually intelligible with each other or with any other variety of Chinese. There are many Min speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The most widely spoken variety of Min outside Fujian is Southern Min (Min Nan), also known as Hokkien-Taiwanese (which includes Taiwanese and Amoy). Many Min languages have retained notable features of the Old Chinese language, and there is linguistic evidence that not all Min varieties are directly descended from Middle Chinese of the Sui–Tang dynasties. Min languages are believed to have a significant linguistic substrate from the languages of the inhabitants of the region prior to its sinicization.
  • 1.1K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Old Aramaic Language
Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, considered to give way to Middle Aramaic by the 3rd century (a conventional date is the rise of the Sasanian Empire in 224 AD). Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramaic was adopted as a lingua franca, and in this role was inherited for official use by the Achaemenid Empire during classical antiquity. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, local vernaculars became increasingly prominent, fanning the divergence of an Aramaic dialect continuum and the development of differing written standards.
  • 5.1K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Pomeranian Language
The Pomeranian language (Polish: pomorszczyzna or język pomorski, German: Pomoranisch or die pomoranische Sprache) is in the Pomeranian group of Lechitic languages (Polish: grupa pomorska języków lechickich, German: die pomoranische Gruppe der lechischen Sprachen) within the West Slavic languages. In medieval contexts, it refers to the dialects spoken by the Slavic Pomeranians. In modern contexts, the term is sometimes used synonymously with "Kashubian" and may also include extinct Slovincian. The name Pomerania comes from Slavic po more, which means "[land] by the sea".
  • 651
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Sona Language (Artificial)
Sona is an international auxiliary language created by Kenneth Searight and described in a book he published in 1935. The word Sona in the language itself means "auxiliary neutral thing", but the name was also chosen to echo "sonority" or "sound". Searight created Sona as a response to the Eurocentricity of other artificial auxiliary languages of his time, such as Esperanto and Ido. At the same time, Searight intended his language to be more practical than most a priori languages like Solresol or Ro, which were intended to be unbiased by any particular group of natural languages. Thus, Sona sacrificed familiarity of grammar and lexicon for some measure of "universality", while at the same time preserving basic notions common to grammars around the world such as compounding as a method of word formation. Searight used inspiration from many diverse languages, including English, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese, to create his eclectic yet regular and logical language. Searight specifically chose only sounds that speakers of many languages could say, therefore making it a true universal. He hoped that in a perfect world, Sona would be taught to young children everywhere. Sona is an agglutinative language with a strong tendency towards being an isolating language. The language has 360 radicals or root words whose meanings are based on the categories in Roget's original thesaurus, plus an additional 15 particles. Ideas and sentences are formed by juxtaposing the radicals. Thus, ra "male" plus ko "child" makes rako "boy". Searight's book, Sona; an auxiliary neutral language (London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1935, LCCN: 35016722) is the only published example of this language. There is a small community on the Internet interested in reviving and using Sona.
  • 356
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Lingua Franca
A lingua franca is any language widely used beyond the population of its native speakers. The de facto status of lingua franca is usually "awarded" by the masses to the language of the most influential nation(s) of the time. Any given language normally becomes a lingua franca primarily by being used for international commerce, but can be accepted in other cultural exchanges, especially diplomacy. Occasionally the term "lingua franca" is applied to a fully established formal language; thus formerly it was said that French was the lingua franca of diplomacy. The term "lingua franca" was originally used by Arabs to name all Romance languages, and especially Italian (Arabs used the name 'Franks' for all peoples in Western Europe). Then, it meant a language with a Romance lexicon (most words derived from Latin which then evolved into early forms of Spanish and Italian) and a very simple grammar, that till the end of the 19th century was used by mariners in the Mediterranean Sea, particularly in the Middle East and Northern Africa. A related concept is that of a “vehicular language.” It is defined as a basic linguistic structure for proposed “international auxiliary languages,” for example, the use of an Indo-European language, or Indo-European itself, in the development of Esperanto.
  • 3.6K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Proto-Timor–Alor–Pantar
The Timor–Alor–Pantar (TAP) languages are a family of Papuan (non-Austronesian) languages spoken in Timor, Kisar, and the Alor archipelago in Southern Indonesia. Holton and Klamer (2018) classify Timor–Alor–Pantar as an independent language family, since they find links with Trans-New Guinea too unconvincing.
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  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Proto-Tai
Proto-Tai is the reconstructed proto-language (common ancestor) of all the Tai languages, including modern Lao, Shan, Tai Lü, Tai Dam, Ahom, Northern Thai, Standard Thai, Bouyei, and Zhuang. The Proto-Tai language is not directly attested by any surviving texts, but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. It was reconstructed in 1977 by Li Fang-Kuei and by Pittayawat Pittayaporn in 2009.
  • 448
  • 19 Oct 2022
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