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Bahasa Indonesia

(Encyclopedia)Bahasa Indonesia bähäˈsä [key], another name for Indonesian, one of the Malayo-Polynesian languages. ...

Castrén, Matthias Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Castrén, Matthias Alexander mätēˈäs älĕksänˈdər kästrānˈ [key], 1813–52, Finnish philologist, one of the first scholars to study the Finno-Ugric languages. Castrén was long a professor...

Czech language

(Encyclopedia)Czech language chĕk [key], in the past sometimes also called Bohemian, member of the West Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). The off...

Italian language

(Encyclopedia)CEE Italian language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). The official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of...

Icelandic language

(Encyclopedia)Icelandic language, member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Spoken chiefly in Iceland, where it is the official languag...

Erpenius, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Erpenius, Thomas ûrpēˈnēəs [key], 1584–1624, Dutch Orientalist, whose name in Dutch was Van Erpe. Erpenius was one of the most celebrated scholars of his day and wrote several grammars of Middl...

Penutian

(Encyclopedia)Penutian pəno͞oˈshən [key], linguistic family, or stock, of Native Americans of North and Central America. See Native American languages. ...

creole language

(Encyclopedia)creole language krēōlˈ [key], any language that began as a pidgin but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the original mother tongue or tongues. Examples are the Gullah o...

glossolalia

(Encyclopedia)glossolalia glŏsˌəlāˈlēə [key] [Gr.,=speaking in tongues], ecstatic utterances usually of unintelligible sounds made by individuals in a state of religious excitement. Religious revivals are of...

Romanian language

(Encyclopedia)CEE Romanian language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). It is spoken by about 22 million people in Romania, wher...