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noun

(Encyclopedia)noun [Lat.,=name], in English, part of speech of vast semantic range. It can be used to name a person, place, thing, idea, or time. It generally functions as subject, object, or indirect object of the...

Burmese

(Encyclopedia)Burmese, language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages). It is spoken by about 30 million people in Myanmar, where it is both th...

Cherokee, Native American language

(Encyclopedia)Cherokee, language belonging to the Iroquoian branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic family. See Native American languages. ...

lingua franca

(Encyclopedia)lingua franca lĭngˈgwə frăngˈkə [key], an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutua...

Indo-Aryan

(Encyclopedia)Indo-Aryan, variant name for Indic languages. Broader uses referring to racial stocks are now obsolete. See Indo-Iranian. ...

linguistics

(Encyclopedia)linguistics, scientific study of language, covering the structure (morphology and syntax; see grammar), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics), as well as the history of the relations of language...

Apuleius, Lucius

(Encyclopedia)Apuleius, Lucius ăˌpyo͝olēˈəs [key], c.124–c.170, Latin writer, satirist, rhetorician, b. Hippo (now Bône, Algeria). His narrative romance The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses is the only Latin wo...

McKay, Claude

(Encyclopedia)McKay, Claude məkāˈ [key], 1889–1948, American poet and novelist, b. Jamaica as Festus Claudius McKay, studied at Tuskegee and the Univ. of Kansas. A major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay...

Dacia

(Encyclopedia)Dacia dāˈshə [key], ancient name of the European region corresponding roughly to modern Romania (including Transylvania). It was inhabited before the Christian era by a people who were called Getae...

Amadis of Gaul

(Encyclopedia)Amadis of Gaul ämädēsˈ də gōl [key], famous prose romance of chivalry, first composed in Spain or Portugal and probably based on French sources. Entirely fictional, it dates from the 13th or 14t...