Portal:Language

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Introduction

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.

Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille. In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.

Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Critical examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the relationships between language and thought, how words represent experience, etc., have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greek civilization. Thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have argued that language originated from emotions, while others like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and logical thought. Twentieth century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) argued that philosophy is really the study of language itself. Major figures in contemporary linguistics of these times include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky. (Full article...)

Outline of linguistics • Index of language articles

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected language - show another

Nahua man from the Florentine Codex. The speech scrolls indicate speech or song.

Nahuatl (English: /ˈnɑːwɑːtəl/ NAH-wah-təl; Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwat͡ɬ] ^ⓘ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.

Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE. It was the language of the Mexica, who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. During the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Aztecs had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico. Their influence caused the variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Mesoamerica. (Full article...)

List of selected language articles

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Oey Kim Tiang was one of two "men with no name" to translate Jin Yong's Condor Trilogy into vernacular Malay?
... that the Ocoee salamander from Tennessee is named after the Cherokee word for Passiflora incarnata (passionflower)?
... that Chow Leung started a language school for children in Chicago before writing Chinese Fables and Folk Stories with Mary Hayes Davis?
... that at age 12, Shaylee Mansfield became the first deaf actor to be credited alongside the voice actors for a signed performance in an animated production?
... that Lamar Johnson learned American Sign Language for his role in the fifth episode of The Last of Us?
... that the programming language Acorn System BASIC was so non-standard that one commenter suggested that using it on the BBC Micro would be a disaster?

edit

More did you know - show different entries

...that most of the 8,000 speakers of the Niuean language live outside the borders of Niue?
...that hundreds of words still in use today, including accident, cinnamon, desk, scissors, vacation, and Valentine, first appear in manuscripts written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s?
...that the Jru' language, an indigenous language of Laos, was once written in a secret script?
...that during the filming of The Linguists in the Andes, the cast coped with altitude sickness by drinking coca leaf tea?

More Did you know

edit

Related portals

Selected topic - show another

Hindustani, the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan, has two standardised registers: Hindi and Urdu. Grammatical differences between the two standards are minor but each uses its own script: Hindi uses Devanagari while Urdu uses an extended form of the Perso-Arabic script, typically in the Nastaʿlīq style.

On this grammar page, Hindustani is written in the transcription outlined in Masica (1991). Being "primarily a system of transliteration from the Indian scripts, [and] based in turn upon Sanskrit" (cf. IAST), these are its salient features: subscript dots for retroflex consonants; macrons for etymologically, contrastively long vowels; h for aspirated plosives; and tildes for nasalised vowels. (Full article...)

List of selected topics

edit

Selected picture - show another

Credit: Luca

The Phoenician alphabet was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Aramaic alphabet, a modified form of Phoenician, was the ancestor of modern Arabic script, while Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin, the Cyrillic and the Coptic), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to represent vowels.

More selected pictures

More...

edit

Language News

22 November 2024 – Censorship in Belarus

In a speech at Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko threatens to shut down the Internet in his country if there are mass protests before the upcoming presidential election after the previous election saw mass protests. (Rferl)

20 August 2024 – Germany–Iran relations

Following the ordered closure of the Islamic Centre Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany, Iran orders the closure of two branches of a German language school in Tehran for "breaching Iranian law, committing various illegal actions and extensive financial violations." In response, Germany summons the Iranian ambassador. (DW)

19 July 2024 –