Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Dionne, Narcisse Eutrope

(Encyclopedia)Dionne, Narcisse Eutrope närsēsˈ ötrôpˈ dyôn [key], 1848–1917, French Canadian historian. He was a prolific writer and produced biographies in French of Samuel de Champlain, Jacques Cartier, ...

Himyaritic

(Encyclopedia)Himyaritic hĭmˌyərĭtˈĭk [key], another name for Old South Arabian. See Arabic languages; Afroasiatic languages. ...

Yuman

(Encyclopedia)Yuman yo͞oˈmən [key], branch of Native American languages belonging to the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock, or family, of North America (including Mexico) and Central America. See Native American lan...

Bopp, Franz

(Encyclopedia)Bopp, Franz fränts bôp [key], 1791–1867, German philologist. A professor at the Univ. of Berlin from 1821 to 1864, he did research in many languages and earned a great reputation as a scholar by d...

Uto-Aztecan

(Encyclopedia)Uto-Aztecan yo͞oˈtō-ăztĕkˈən [key], branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock. The languages belonging to this stock are spoken in North and Central America. See Native American languages. ...

Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm

(Encyclopedia)Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm vĭlˈhĕlm mīˈər-lüpˈkə [key], 1861–1936, Swiss philologist. Meyer-Lübke taught at the universities of Jena, Vienna, and Bonn. He was the author of many works on Romanc...

Fürst, Julius

(Encyclopedia)Fürst, Julius yo͞oˈlyo͝os fürst [key], 1805–73, German Orientalist. Fürst was a distinguished scholar of Semitic languages and literature of his time. During his years as chairman of the depar...

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 ...

Browse by Subject