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Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, sieur

(Encyclopedia)Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, sieur shärl dü frĕn syör dü käNzh [key], 1610–88, French medieval historian and philologist. He is principally known for his Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitat...

international language

(Encyclopedia)international language, sometimes called universal language, a language intended to be used by people of different linguistic backgrounds to facilitate communication among them and to reduce the misun...

Indo-European Family of Languages, The (table)

(Encyclopedia)The Indo-European Family of Languages * Asterisk indicates a dead language. ...

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall

(Encyclopedia)Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 1806–63, English statesman and man of letters. Entering Parliament as a Liberal in 1847, he served as chancellor of exchequer (1855–58), home secretary (1859–61), an...

Bayard, horse, in chivalric romance

(Encyclopedia)Bayard bäyärˈdō [key], in chivalric romance, a bay horse, remarkable for his spirit and for his unique ability to fit his size to his rider. He appears in the 12th-century French epic Renaud de Mo...

Ibn Tufayl

(Encyclopedia)Ibn Tufayl ĭˈbən to͞ofālˈ [key], d. 1185/86?, 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher and physician, b. near Granada. His chief work was a philosophical romance, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, describing the de...

Uralic and Altaic languages

(Encyclopedia)Uralic and Altaic languages yo͝orălˈĭk, ăltāˈĭk [key], two groups of related languages thought by many scholars to form a single Ural-Altaic linguistic family. However, other authorities hold ...

Portuguese language

(Encyclopedia)CEE Portuguese language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). It is the mother tongue of about 170 million people, c...

Mandeville, Sir John

(Encyclopedia)Mandeville, Sir John, 14th-century English author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Originally written in Norman French, the work became enormously popular and was translated into English, Latin,...

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

(Encyclopedia)Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807–82, American poet, b. Portland, Maine, grad. Bowdoin College, 1825. He wrote some of the most popular poems in American literature, in which he created a new body o...