Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Himyaritic

(Encyclopedia)Himyaritic hĭmˌyərĭtˈĭk [key], another name for Old South Arabian. See Arabic languages; Afroasiatic languages. ...

Urdu

(Encyclopedia)Urdu o͞orˈdo͞o [key], language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The official tongue of Pakistan, Urdu is also one of the 15 langu...

International Prize for Arabic Fiction

(Encyclopedia)International Prize for Arabic Fiction: see Arabic literature. ...

Erpenius, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Erpenius, Thomas ûrpēˈnēəs [key], 1584–1624, Dutch Orientalist, whose name in Dutch was Van Erpe. Erpenius was one of the most celebrated scholars of his day and wrote several grammars of Middl...

Finno-Ugric languages

(Encyclopedia)Finno-Ugric languages fĭnˈō-o͞oˈgrĭk [key], also called Finno-Ugrian languages, group of languages forming a subdivision of the Uralic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Urali...

Hamito-Semitic languages

(Encyclopedia)Hamito-Semitic languages: see Afroasiatic languages. ...

American Indian languages

(Encyclopedia)American Indian languages: see Native American languages. ...

Mon-Khmer languages

(Encyclopedia)Mon-Khmer languages mōn-kəmârˈ [key], group of languages frequently considered as a subfamily of the Southeast Asian family of languages. See Southeast Asian languages. ...

Native American languages

(Encyclopedia)Native American languages, languages of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their descendants. A number of the Native American languages that were spoken at the time of the European arriv...

Tibeto-Burman languages

(Encyclopedia)Tibeto-Burman languages, subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. See Sino-Tibetan languages; Burmese; Tibetan language. ...