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Akan

(Encyclopedia)Akan əkänˈ, äkˈən [key], people of W Africa, primarily in Ghana, where they number over 7.5 million, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo. They speak languages of the Twi branch of the Kwa subfamily. Althou...

Angell, James Burrill

(Encyclopedia)Angell, James Burrill jāmz bûrˈəl ānˈjəl [key], 1829–1916, American educator, editor, and diplomat, b. Scituate, R.I., grad. Brown, 1849, and studied abroad. He became professor of modern lan...

Gatschet, Albert Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Gatschet, Albert Samuel găˈchĭt [key], 1832–1907, American ethnologist, b. Switzerland. He was trained as a linguist in the universities of Bern and Berlin, and after his arrival in the United St...

Manasseh ben Israel

(Encyclopedia)Manasseh ben Israel, 1604–57, Jewish scholar and communal leader, b. Portugal. Early in his life he settled in Amsterdam, where he became a rabbi and started (1627) the first Hebrew press there. He ...

Merle d'Aubigné, Jean Henri

(Encyclopedia)Merle d'Aubigné, Jean Henri zhäN äNrēˈ mĕrl dōbēnyāˈ [key], 1794–1872, Swiss ecclesiastical historian and Protestant preacher. After studying theology at Geneva and in Berlin, he was pasto...

Klallam

(Encyclopedia)Klallam klălˈəm [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Salishan branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They formerly occupied the s...

Abulcasis

(Encyclopedia)Abulcasis äˈbo͞o käˈsĭm [key], Arab physician, d. c.1013, b. near Córdoba, Spain. His chief work, a detailed account of surgery and medicine, was for many years the leading surgical textbook. K...

Burritt, Elihu

(Encyclopedia)Burritt, Elihu, 1810–79, American reformer, b. New Britain, Conn. A blacksmith, he studied mathematics, languages, and geography and became known as “the learned blacksmith.” Profoundly idealist...

accent

(Encyclopedia)accent, in speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length. In English each word has at least one p...

tense

(Encyclopedia)tense [O.Fr., from Lat.,=time], in the grammar of many languages, a category of time distinctions expressed by any conjugated form of a verb. In Latin inflection the tense of a verb is indicated by a ...