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Francis Xavier, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Francis Xavier, Saint, 1506–52, Basque Jesuit missionary, called the Apostle to the Indies, b. Spanish Navarre, of noble parents. He studied in Paris (1525–34), where he became an associate of St....

Akkadian

(Encyclopedia)Akkadian əkāˈdēən [key], extinct language belonging to the East Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). Also called Assyro...

Alabama, indigenous people of North America

(Encyclopedia)Alabama ăləbămˈə [key], indigenous people of North America whose language belongs to the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They lived in S Ala...

Lee, Ang

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Ang äng [key], 1954–, Taiwanese filmmaker. Lee is one of the few directors who have achieved commercial and critical success in Asia and the United States, and is also unusual in the wide rang...

Gros Ventre

(Encyclopedia)Gros Ventre grō văNˈtrə [key] [Fr.,=big belly], name used by the French for two quite distinct Native North American groups. One was the Atsina, a detached band of the Arapaho, whose language belo...

Indo-European

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Indo-European, family of languages having more speakers than any other language family. It is estimated that approximately half the world's population speaks an Indo-European tongue as a first ...

Nahuatlan

(Encyclopedia)Nahuatlan näˈwŏtˌlən [key], group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock of North and Central America. A Nahuatlan language of great historical importance is ...

Mead, George Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Mead, George Herbert mēd [key], 1863–1931, American philosopher and psychologist, b. South Hadley, Mass., grad. Oberlin, 1883, and Harvard, 1888, and studied in Leipzig and Berlin. He taught at the...

langue d'oc and langue d'oïl

(Encyclopedia)langue d'oc dôēlˈ [key], names of the two principal groups of medieval French dialects. Langue d'oc (literally, “language of yes”) was spoken south of a line running, roughly, from Bordeaux to ...

Ugarit

(Encyclopedia)Ugarit o͞ogərētˈ [key], ancient city, capital of the Ugarit kingdom, W Syria, on the Mediterranean coast N of modern Latakia. Although the name of this city was known from Egyptian and Hittite sou...