Languages of the Indo-European family used by those settled in eastern Iran and Afghanistan, probably in the 3rd millennium BC. Some of these people, who called themselves Aryans, seem to have gradually worked their way into the Indian world. In the first millennium BC these groups of Indo-Aryans...
A single, original language, hypothesized to have been spoken by the first modern humans in Africa, from which all modern languages may have evolved. It has been suggested that linguistic traces of this language have survived into the present.
The overall manner of speaking that reflects general shared speech patterns. It is a system of conventional spoken or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, communicate. Ancient Egyptian is probably the second oldest written l...
A language family within the subdivision of the Ural-Altaic. It includes Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese. These language are distributed in an arc across northern Eurasia.
The particular dialect of Greek spoken and written in classical Athens, especially in the 5th century BC. This dialect was originally only one of a number of differing regional forms, but has come to be regarded as standard classical Greek. Attic is the language of dialogue in tragedy. Thucydides...
A Sanskrit language inscription of c 5th century AD in western Malaysia, due to trade by Buddhists of Southeast Asia. Related inscriptions have been found in Borneo and Brunei.
Prehistoric Andean province and the language by its Inca empire people; it became official Inca language. Several dialects are still spoken in Peru and Bolivia and it was used for government and all communications between provinces under Inca rule. The term Quechua also refers to the Andean ecozo...
The name of the combined cultures, the Angles and the Saxons, who left their North Sea coastal homelands in the 5th century AD and moved to eastern England after the breakdown of Roman Rule. The name derives from two specific groups --- the Angles of Jutland and the Saxons from northern Germany. ...
A branch of the confederacy of Semite tribes who moved out of the Syrian desert and who conquered the Canaanites and established themselves in their own series city-states in c 16-12 BC. The foremost of these states was Aram of Damascus, a large region of northern Syria, which was occupied betwee...
A group of languages from which most modern European languages are derived, as well as Indian Sanskrit and the Farsi language of Iran. It is assumed that the dispersal of these languages must have occurred through large-scale migrations of people. Attempts have been made to identify the carriers ...
The study of the human use of language and how it is both developed by and culture and helps to develop meaning within culture.
A syllabic script used in Elam for inscriptions c. 2200 BC. The earliest Elamite writings are in a figurative or pictographic script and date from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Documents from the second period, which lasted from the 16th to the 8th century BC, are written in cuneiform; the...
Term used for the ethnic groups speaking related languages in eastern Europe during the second half of the 1st millennium AD. They inhabited an area concentrated in modern Poland, and by the early Middle Ages they were considered a distinct cultural group. The origins of the Slavs are obscure, th...
A group of languages including Akkadian, Eblaite, Canaanite, Amorite, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, widely spoken throughout the Near East.
An extinct Indo-European language primarily of the western and southern part of ancient Asia Minor of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, especially important to Arzawa. It was closely related to Hittite, Palaic, and Lydian and was a forerunner of the Lycian language. Knowledge of Luwian comes from cun...
An early INDO-EUROPEAN language, still used in India for religious purposes. The RIGVEDA, the oldest religious document of India, is written in an archaic form of Sanskrit. The discovery in the late 18th century that this language was related to Greek and Latin and many other European languages l...
MÖ. 1400'lerden 1150'lere değin Yunan dilinin yazılmasında kullanılan hece yazısı. Bu yazıyla yazılan Yunanca, genellikle Miken Yunancası olarak adlandırılır. Lineer B yazısının bulunduğu örneklerin çoğu kil tabletler halinde Knossos'ta, Mikenai'de ve Messina'daki Pylos'ta ele geçmiştir. Sayıları...
Script used by the Mycenaeans after c1500 or 1450 BC and found on clay tablets in the palaces of both Crete and the Greek mainland. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, who demonstrated that it was an early form of Greek. It is probable that when the Mycenaeans overran the Minoans ...
Girit'te MÖ. 2000-1500 arasında kullanılmış ve henüz çözülememiş yazı. Daha erken dönemlerde kullanılan ideogram ya da hiyeroglif yazısının yerini alan Lineer A'nın soldan sağa doğru yazıldığı sanılmaktadır. Hangi dil için kullanıldığı henüz anlaşılmamakla birlikte, uzmanlar bunun Minos ya da Yun...
Script used by the Minoan population of Crete in the period 2000-1500 BC. The signs are inscribed on clay tablets and appear to represent a syllabary. Linear A has not yet been deciphered, but it seems to have developed out of the earlier hieroglypic script of the island. After c1500 BC Linear A ...
A Nahua language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken by the AZTECS and perhaps also the TOLTECS; a related language, Nahuat, was spoken in Veracruz, Mexico.
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