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Diez, Friedrich Christian

(Encyclopedia)Diez, Friedrich Christian frēˈdrĭkh krĭsˈtyän dēts [key], 1794–1876, German philologist. A professor at Bonn, Diez is noted as one of the founders of the science of Romanic philology. His gre...

preposition

(Encyclopedia)preposition, in English, the part of speech embracing a small number of words used before nouns and pronouns to connect them to the preceding material, e.g., of, in, and about. Prepositions are a clas...

Frisian language

(Encyclopedia)Frisian language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). It has a number of dialects and is spoken by more than ...

Amharic

(Encyclopedia)Amharic ămhârˈĭk [key], language of Ethiopia belonging to the South Ethiopic group of South Semitic languages, which, in turn, belong to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of language...

Tungus

(Encyclopedia)Tungus to͝onko͝ozˈ [key], Siberian ethnic group, numbering perhaps 30,000. They are subdivided into the Evenki, who live in the area from the Yenisei and Ob river basins to the Pacific Ocean and fr...

conjunction, part of speech

(Encyclopedia)conjunction, in English, part of speech serving to connect words or constructions, e.g., and, but, and or. Most languages have connective particles similar to English conjunctions. In some languages w...

Bengali

(Encyclopedia)Bengali bängˈlä [key], language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Indo-Iranian languages. ...

Pashto

(Encyclopedia)Pashto –to͞o [key], or Afghan, language belonging to the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Indo-Iranian languages. ...

Eskimo-Aleut

(Encyclopedia)Eskimo-Aleut, family of Native American languages consisting of Aleut (spoken on the Aleutian Islands and the Kodiak Peninsula) and Eskimo or Inuktitut (spoken in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberi...

Turkish language

(Encyclopedia)Turkish language, member of the Turkic subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages). Turkish is the official language of Turkey and one ...