Manx

Altered from Maniske, from assumed Old Norse *manskr, an adjectival form of Mǫn (“Isle of Man”), from Old Irish Mana; compare with Norwegian Bokmål mansk.
Also influenced by Manx Manninagh, an adjectival form of Mannin (“Isle of Man”), Isle of Man; cf Scottish Gaelic Manainneach and Irish Manannach.

(uncountable) A Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man.

մեներեն

a Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man

the long-haired version of the Manx cat breed


Maya

Borrowed from Spanish maya, from Yucatec Maya mayab (“flat”), a self-designation of the northern Maya for themselves, in the form maya’ found in compounds and phrases e.g. maya’ wíinik (“Maya man”).


Maya

From Maria, ultimately from Hebrew, and from Maia, from Latin.

When her little friends asked her what her name was, her father replied that it was Conchita - his diminutive for Maria de la Concepción. "Con-what?" they would ask again, aware, apparently, that con in French is a fool, an idiot. So her parents started calling her Maria, which from the little girl's lips soon began to sound like Maya. "Maya!" exclaimed her father. "It's perfect. It means the greatest illusion on earth." So Maya it was from then on - Maya Walter.

1988, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, Picasso, Creator and Destroyer, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 240:

A female given name from Hebrew of modern usage.


Maya

Transliteration of Sanskrit माया (māyā).

Eventually, Pran and Savita decided by correspondence on Maya. Its two simple syllables meant, among other things: the goddess Lakshmi, illusion, fascination, art, the goddess Durga, kindness, and the name of the mother of Buddha. It also meant: ignorance, delusion, fraud, guile, and hypocrisy; but no one who named their daughter Maya ever paid any attention to those pejorative possibilities.
- - - 'Why ever not, Ma?' said Meenakshi.'It's a very Bengali name, a very nice name.'

1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, Phoenix House, →ISBN, page 891:

A female given name from Sanskrit used in India.


Papago

Borrowed from Spanish Pápago, itself from O'odham Ba꞉bawĭkoʼa (“they eat tepary beans”).

der

In the valley of the Gila and on its tributaries from the northeast are the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos.

1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 24:

(historical) A Uto-Aztecan people of southern Arizona and Sonora in northern Mexico. Today they are known as the Tohono O'odham ("the Desert People").


Papiamento

From Papiamentu Papiamento. Compare Portuguese papeamento (“chatter”).

A Creole language spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire.


Mohican

From their self-designation in Mahican [Term?] (literally “people of the estuary”).

bor

The Mohican are an Algonquian-speaking people.

An indigenous people of New England; the Mohicans.


Mohican

(British) A hairstyle where both sides are shaved, with the hair in the centre kept long and made to stand on end.


Romansch

Borrowed from Romansch romansch, romontsch, rumantsch et al., from Medieval Latin rōmānicē, from Vulgar Latin rōmānicē (“in the Roman manner; in a Romance language”, adverb), from Latin rōmānicus. Perhaps influenced by the Germanic suffix seen in English as -ish (German -isch, -sch). Doublet of romance.

der

(strict sense) A Rhaeto-Romance language (or dialect continuum) spoken in the Graubünden/Grisons canton of Switzerland; it is one of the four official languages of Switzerland.


Romany

Alternative form of Romani (“the Indo-Aryan language of this people”).


Sepedi

a dialect of the Northern Sotho language.


Serbo-Croatian

/ˌsɜː(ɹ)bəʊkɹəʊˈeɪʃən/

The South Slavic language of which Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are literary standards.


Sotho

From Sotho, from Sotho -sotho, from Sotho motho.

A group of closely related Bantu lects spoken in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, and Zambia.

(specifically) Sesotho (“the language”) (Southern Sotho).


Sranan

Sranan Tongo, the English-based creole of Suriname.


Tswana

From Tswana Tswana, the stem of Motswana/Batswana/Setswana. See Botswana for more.

The Bantu language of these people; Setswana.


Xhosa

en-noun

Xhosa (countable and uncountable, plural Xhosas or Xhosa)

Borrowed from Xhosa (ísí)Xhosa (“Xhosa language”) and (úḿ)Xhosa (“Xhosa person”), where the sequence xh denotes a click (/ˈǁʰoːsa/):
*
 Audio: (file)

bor+

Xhosa - English & English - Xhosa Translator at Albion College

(uncountable) The language of these people, a Bantu language related to Zulu.


Apache

From American Spanish apache, most likely from Zuni ˀa˙paču (“Navajos”), or possibly from the Yavapai word ʔpačə, meaning "people". The web server software was named to honor the Apache people, although much has been made of the fact that its design was "patchy" (constructed by assembling software patches). See Apache HTTP Server § Name.

The group of languages used by any of several Athabascan-speaking peoples of the American southwest excluding Navajo, i.e. Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Plains Apache, or Western Apache.

Apache, a town in Oklahoma, United States.


Apache

Away up at the sources of the Gila, where the pines and cedars stand and where creeks and valleys are found, is a part of the Apache land.

Any of several Athabascan-speaking peoples of the American southwest excluding Navajo, i.e., Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Plains Apache, or Western Apache.


hiragana

en-noun

hiragana (countable and uncountable, plural hiraganas or hiragana)

/ˌhɪ.ɹəˈɡæ.nə/

/ˌhɪ.ɹəˈɡɑː.nə/

(uncountable) The main syllabary for the Japanese language, used to represent native Japanese words, including particles, and when kanji is used, to represent verb and adjective endings.


Piemontese

Language spoken in Piedmont, region in the Northwest of Italy.


Ecclesiastical Latin

The Latin language as spoken, written, and used in the Christian church and in church services.


Vulgar Latin

(linguistics, historical) The Latin language as spoken by the Roman people, as opposed to Classical Latin as written in formal literature. Developed into Proto-Romance and descendant languages in the Early Middle Ages.


Lingua Franca Nova

Coined by Dr. C. George Boeree, the inventor of the language.

constructed language
constructed language

A constructed language created by C. George Boeree based on French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan using either Latin or Cyrillic alphabets with grammar based on that of Romance Creoles.


Scottish Gaelic

The Gaelic language of Scotland, spoken primarily in the northern and western parts of the country.


Galego

A language spoken in the region of Galicia in the Northwestern corner of the Spanish peninsula and which is related to Portuguese. It is believed to be the parent language of Portuguese and shares many similarities with it, but typically uses Spanish orthography.


Alsatian

The Germanic lect (language or dialect) spoken in Alsace.


Brithenig

/bɾɪθɛˈniːɡ/

Compare with Breton brezhoneg and Welsh Brythoneg.

An invented language created by Andrew Smith in 1996, based on the premise of Latin being influenced by Old Celtic.


Zazaki

From Zazaki Zazakî, from Zaza, the name of the people who speak the language.

Zazaki has three sub-dialects: Northern, Central, and Southern Zazaki.

The language spoken by the Zaza people of eastern Turkey.


Yale

Ultimately borrowed from Welsh Iâl, from iâl (“clearing, cultivated upland”). The surname is habitational. The university is named for Elihu Yale, a notable early benefactor.

A university in the eastern United States.

A romanisation scheme originating from Yale University.

A romanisation scheme designed for Mandarin.

Coordinate term: Jyutping

A romanisation scheme designed for Cantonese.

A romanisation scheme designed for Japanese.

A romanisation scheme designed for Korean.

A surname transferred from the place name.


Bosnian

Bosnian (countable and uncountable, plural Bosnians)

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina

(uncountable) The standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken primarily by Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

gjuha boshnjake

the standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian


Latino sine Flexione

An artificial language based on a simplified version of Latin without inflections; also known as Interlingua


Faroese

/ˌfɛəɹəʊˈiːz/

From Faroe + -ese, from Faroese Føroyar.

Of or pertaining to the Faroe Islands, Faroese people or language.

ֆարերյան

of or pertaining to the Faroe Islands, Faroese people or language


Faroese

/ˌfɛəɹəʊˈiːz/

The language of the Faroe Islands, closely related to Icelandic, and more distantly to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.


Faroese

/ˌfɛəɹəʊˈiːz/

(chiefly in the plural) A person from the Faroe Islands; a Faroe Islander.


Kashmiri

The Dardic Indo-Aryan language spoken in Kashmir.


shinjitai

Transliteration from Japanese 新(しん)字(じ)体(たい) (shinjitai).

Coordinate term: kyūjitai

However, when a traditional “correct” radical has been obscured by the postwar adoption of a simplified form (shinjitai), that radical is simply ignored.

1992, The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, volume 26, issue 1, page 47:

The simplified form of Japanese kanji used after 1947.


Chumash

From Ineseño čʰumaš (“the Santa Barbara Channel Island people”).

bor

The colonial given language name of this tribe.


Tajiki

The dialect of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.


Tigrinya

/tɪˈɡɹiːnjə/

From Tigrinya ትግርኛ (təgrəñña). The spelling Tigrigna came via Italian.

A Semitic language of Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is written in the Ge'ez alphabet.

提格利尼亞語 /提格利尼亚语

tígélìníyàyǔ


Chechen

From Russian чечен- (čečen-), the root in чече́нец (čečénec, “a Chechen man”) or чече́нский (čečénskij, “Chechen (adjective)”).

The language of the Chechens, a member of the Nakh family.


Mozarabic

/məʊˈzæɹəbɪk/

A continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim-dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the development of the Romance language in Iberia.


Moabite

An extinct Canaanite Semitic language, spoken in Moab (modern-day northwestern Jordan). Extinct since 5th century BCE.


Old English

(linguistics, history) The ancestor language of Modern English, also called Anglo-Saxon, spoken in most of Britain from about 400 to 1100.


Arab

From Arabic عَرَب (ʕarab, “Arabs”) or back-formation from Arabic.

a. 1892, Charles Spurgeon, a sermon
You Christian people often see the little gutter children — the poor little arabs in the street — and you feel much pity for them, as well you may.

The other day I heard you complaining of the nuisance that small ragged street-boys are to you whenever you go out. […] You wished that some one would do something to clear away these little Arabs, as you are pleased to call them, so that a fine old English gentleman—as you are pleased to think yourself—might take his exercise in peace.


Scots

Borrowed from Scots Scots, from Middle Scots Scottis, from Old English Scottysċ, a late variant of earlier Scyttisċ (“Scottish”). Doublet of Scottish.

A Germanic language closely related to English and descended from northern dialects of Middle English, spoken in parts of Scotland, now especially in the northeastern and southern regions of the country.


Anglo-Saxon

/ˌæŋ.ɡləʊˈsæk.sən/

From Anglo- + Saxon, from Latin Anglosaxones (Anglo-Saxones), Latin Angli Saxones (literally “the English Saxons”), as distinguished from the Continental Saxons.

der

Meronyms: Anglian, Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian, West Saxon

(now rare) Synonym of Old English (language).


Karelian

A language closely related to Finnish, spoken in Karelia, Russia and Finland.


Middle English

The ancient or older language of Modern English, spoken in England and parts of Scotland (where it became Lowland Scots) from about 1100 AD to 1500 AD.


Miriam

From Hebrew מִרְיָם (Miryam), possibly from Aramaic מרים (Maryām, “bitter”), from a root מר (m-r) meaning "to be bitter". The meaning of this name which is the Old Testament equivalent of Mary has been debated for centuries. Some other explanations are mutiny / rebellion / disobedience from a root מרי (m-r-y).


Livonian

A Finno-Ugric language spoken in Latvia.


Old Church Slavonic

The first literary and liturgical Slavic language.

Ou Kerkslawies

the first literary and liturgical Slavic language

古代教会スラヴ語

こだいきょうかいスラブご

Old Slavonic

may also refer to Old East Slavonic or Proto-Slavic


Ladin

From Ladin ladin, itself from Latin latīnus. Doublet of Latin and Ladino.

A Rhaeto-Romance language (or dialect continuum), spoken primarily in the Italian portion of Tyrol and the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy.


Ladin

A person speaking Ladin as a mother tongue.


Moksha

From Moksha мокша (mokša, “a Moksha person”).

A language of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family.

мăкшă чĕлхи

măkšă čĕlh̬i


Sorbian

A group of Slavic languages spoken by a minority in eastern Germany.


ǃKung

The ǃ in the word ǃKung is an orthographic symbol denoting a "click" sound. The ǃKung language, aside from sharing many of the same sounds found in all languages, has four distinct clicks […]

1973, The Second Wave, volume 3, page 17:

Harpending spoke ǃKung because of his previous fieldwork in the area, […]

1994, The Aging Experience: diversity and commonality across cultures (Jennie Keith), page 24

None of the ideologues spoke ǃKung, […]

2007, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, page 286:

In Epembe, Oonduda and Uusilo very few people could understand and even fewer could speak ǃKung. They expressed their sorrow at this loss.

2002, New horizons for the San: participatory action research with San communities in Northern Namibia (Dhyani J. Berger, Elke Zimprich), page 22

A Khoisan language spoken in Namibia, Angola, and South Africa, famous for its click consonants.


Aramaic

/ˌæ.ɹəˈmeɪ.ɪk/

/ˌæɹ.əˈmeɪ.ɪk/

/ˌɛɹ.əˈmeɪ.ɪk/

From Aram, the place settled by Aramaeans; from the Aramaic ארם, ܐܪܡ (ʾarām).

ܐܪܡܝܐ

ʾārāmāyā, ʾărammāyā

A subfamily of languages in the Northwest Semitic language group, including, but not limited to:

The language of the administration in the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires from the seventh to fourth centuries BC: often called Imperial Aramaic or Official Aramaic.

The language of portions of the Hebrew Bible, mainly the books of Ezra and Daniel: often called Biblical Aramaic.

The liturgical language of various Christian churches: often called Syriac.

The liturgical language of the Mandaeans: usually called Mandaic.

Any language of this family today called Neo-Aramaic, and separated by religion also Judeo-Aramaic and Syriac


Revised Romanization of Korean

The official South Korean romanization standard for Korean.

文化觀光部２０００年式 /文化观光部２０００年式

Wénhuà Guānguāngbù Èrlínglínglíng nián shì

文化観光部２０００年式

ぶんかかんこうぶにせんねんしき


Nepali

an Indo-Aryan language used primarily by the people of Nepal


te reo

Borrowed from Maori te reo (“Māori”, literally “the language”).

bor+

Currently, many Kiwis are learning te reo.


Ngan'gityemerri

(linguistics) An Aboriginal language spoken in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory of Australia of the Southern Daly language family.


Igbo

Surprised by her switch to Igbo, he did not speak.

2019, Chigozie Obioma, An Orchestra of Minorities, Abacus (2019), page 180:

The language spoken by the Igbo people and elsewhere in southern Nigeria.


Dyirbal

An ergative Australian Aboriginal language of the Dyirbalic branch of the Pama-Nyungan family, spoken in the region of Cairns and the Atherton Tableland, Queensland.


Sindarin

Developed by J. R. R. Tolkien as a language in his fantasy works, in which the word Sindarin itself is not of Sindarin origin: it is a term in Quenya (another of Tolkien's constructed languages), derived from Sindar, the Quenya name for the people who spoke it, which in turn is derived from sinda (“grey”).

A constructed language, partly inspired by Welsh, spoken by certain elves and others in J. R. R. Tolkien's works.


Kashubian

/kəˈʃuːbɪən/

A Slavic language spoken in the Pomeranian region of Poland.


ǃXóõ

The ǃXóõ language is spoken by widely scattered groups of San living in southwestern Botswana and a small area of eastern Namibia.

1985, Anthony Traill, Phonetic and Phonological Studies of ǃXÓÕ Bushman, page 1

[…] which studied category formation of ǃXóõ clicks by speakers of a language that has no clicks (American English) and two other unrelated African languages that have clicks, but fewer of them […]

2008, Keith Elwin Johnson, Second Language Acquisition of the Spanish Multiple Vibrant Consonant, page 49:

However, the phonotactic patterning of 'uvular' clicks in ǃXóõ does not comply with the predicted patterns given in this analysis.

2010, “Amana L. Miller, Tongue body and tongue root shape differences in Nǀuu clicks correlate with phonotactic patterns”, in Turbulent Sounds: An Interdisciplinary Guide, page 258:

Speakers of ǃXóõ (also known as Taa), gathered together for a storytelling competition at Pos 17, Namibia […]

2011, Nicholas Evans, Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us, page 53:

The most phonologically diverse language may be ǃXóõ, spoken by about 4,000 people in Botswana and Namibia, which has somewhere between 84 and 159 consonants.

2011, Michael C. Corballis, The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization, page 76:

[…] and the ǃXóõ language spoken in Botswana and Namibia […]

2011, Intercultural Communication: A New Approach to International Relations and Global Challenges (Houman A. Sadri, Madelyn Flammia), page 129

A Khoisan language, known for its large phonemic inventory including complex click consonants.


Fijian

/fɪˈd͡ʒiːən/

an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken on Fiji. It has 650,000 speakers, including second language users.


ǃXũ

A Northern Khoisan language of Namibia, Angola, and Botswana. This language has about 5,000 speakers in the Kalahari Desert.


Yoruba

In the parlour, she could hear Aunty Biola attempting to teach her father Yoruba, collapsing into helpless giggles whenever he mispronounced his vowels, giving them the flat English sound instead of lifting them upwards with the slight outward puff of breath that was required.

2005, Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl, Bloomsbury, page 48:

A sub-Saharan language. It belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family, and has nearly 40 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Sierra Leone, as well as communities in The United States, Brazil and Cuba.


Kabyle

From Arabic قَبَائِل (qabāʔil, “tribes”), plural of قَبِيلَة (qabīla, “tribe”).

A Northern Berber language of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic language family, spoken by over 3,000,000 people in Algeria; native name Taqbaylit.


Ojibwe

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Ojibwe.wav

First attested in English around 1700 (and attested in early French as Outchibouec), from the Ojibwe name of an individual band of Ojibwe, of unclear origin. The most widely accepted theory connects it to Ojibwe ojibwaakide (“it shrivels, it puckers in the fire”), in reference to the puckering or tightening of moccasins at their seams or near fire. Alternatively, Helen Tanner and Edmund Danzinger connect it to the Ojibwe practice of writing on birch bark or making pictographs, respectively; compare ozhibii' (“write (someone's name) down”).
Other, less credible theories:
Other, less likely suggestions include: Henry Schoolcraft derived it from a word *bwe "pertaining to voice" ((compare bedowe (“have a soft voice”)), and like George Belcourt, believed it referred to a peculiarity of the tribe's (language's) pronunciation. Some other works connect it to the word for puckering the lips, which however is bajiishkidooneni (“she or he puckers the lips”), or assert that it refers to roasting captives until their flesh puckered, but this was not a common practice and is improbable as a self-designation.

m+

The language spoken by the native Algonquin people of central Canada, one of a closely related group of languages and dialects of the Algonquian branch of the Algic language family.


Kalanga

A Bantu language spoken in Botswana and Zimbabwe.


Yup'ik

Borrowed from Yup'ik Yup'ik (“real person”), from Proto-Eskimo *iŋuɣpiɣ, from *iŋuɣ (“human, person”).

(linguistics) A language of the Eskimo-Aleut family.

jupikki

(linguistics) A subbranch of the Eskimo-Aleut family of languages. This is the only language family known to straddle both North America and Asia. It is centered squarely in Alaska and is thought to have migrated across to Siberia a few hundred years ago.


Cocoliche

Indeed, cocoliche might in some respects be seen as another example of dialectal influence upon Italian – except that in this case the ‘dialect’ is another Romance ‘language’, and not an Italo-Romance variety.

1995, Martin Maiden, A Linguistic History of Italian, Longman, published 2003, page 269:

A pidgin or language continuum formed from Italian and Spanish, spoken in parts of the River Plate region of South America in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


Oriya

Odia, the language spoken in the state of Odisha, India.


Erse

From Scots Erse (“Irish”), from earlier Ersche, Ersch, a contraction of Erisch, Erische (“Irish”), from Middle English Erische, Irische, Irisch (“Irish”). Doublet of Irish. Compare also Scots Irisch.

Two points which appeal to the writer are that the stations of origin and of destination are printed (in Erse and English) once only and then are summarised at the foot, [...]. [...] Clar Chloinne Mhuiris is the Erse original of Claremorris, and Dublin appears as Baile Atha Cliath.

1940 May, G. W. J. Potter, “Tickets of the Great Southern Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 292:

Now he's just sung in his mother tongue, the ancient Irish Erse, and cleared the pub completely by the forty-second verse!

1993, “Plastic Paddy”, in Mirrors, performed by Eric Bogle:

Either of the Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland.


Germanization

en-noun

Germanization (countable and uncountable, plural Germanizations)

The adoption of German customs or culture.

(historical) The policy, in Nazi Germany, of the expansion of the German language and culture.


Algonquin

From Canadian French algonquin, from earlier algoumequin, from either Maliseet elakómkwik ("these are our relatives") or Mi'kmaq algoomeaking (“at the place of spearing fish and eels”).

der

The language spoken by the Algonquins, a transitional language between Ojibwe and Abenaki.

United Counties of Leeds and Grenville#English

A community of Augusta township, United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, Ontario, Canada.

A village in McHenry County and Kane County, Illinois.

A place name:
A place in the United States:
A township in McHenry County, Illinois.

A neighbourhood of Louisville, Kentucky.

census-designated place
census-designated place

Dorchester County
Dorchester County#English

A census-designated place in Dorchester County, Maryland.

Ontonagon County
Ontonagon County#English

An unincorporated community in Bohemia Township, Ontonagon County, Michigan.


AAVE

Initialism of African-American Vernacular English.


O'odham

From O'odham o'odham (“person, man, human being”).

The indigenous Uto-Aztecan language of the O'Odham.


Gullah

Gola people
Gullah
Gullah#Etymology
folk etymology

First attested in 1739 as a male black slave's proper name, of unclear origin. Traditionally linked by folk etymology to an apheresis of Angola (where many African slaves were carried from), or an apparent West African ethno-tribal group called the Gola people.
See more at the Wikipedia article Gullah, including other theories.

Gullah has been spoken continuously since before the Civil War.

A creole of English and various African languages spoken on a group of islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia in the Southern United States.

The culture surrounding this language and geography.


Gullah

The music of George Gershwin’s Porgie and Bess was inspired in part by Gullah "shouts".

Pertaining to the Gullah language and culture.


Babylonian

From Latin Babylōnius (“of Babylon, Babylonian”) (from Ancient Greek Βαβυλώνιος (Babulṓnios)) + -an; corresponding to Babylon + -ian.

A later form of Akkadian language spoken in Babylonia in 1950 BC – 100 AD.


Mancunian

]
From Latin Mancunium (appearing in a 4th-century manuscript of the Antonine Itinerary), an alternative name for or corruption of Mamucium (“name of the Roman fort at what is now Manchester”) + -an, probably modelled after Late Latin Mancuniensis (“related or pertaining to Mancunium”).

cog

The accent and dialect of English spoken in Manchester and some of its environs.


Bajan

A shortened form of Bar-Bajan, a phonetically spelled form of Barbadian.

A Creole language spoken on the island of Barbados.


Tupi

Any of the Tupian languages, especially Old Tupi or Nheengatu.


Jewish

en-adj

Jewish (comparative more Jewish, superlative most Jewish)

more Jewish (comparative)
most Jewish (superlative)

From Jew + -ish. Compare Middle English Judewissh (“Jewish”), Old English Iūdēisċ (“Jewish”), Dutch joodsch, joods (“Jewish”), German jüdisch (“Jewish”), Danish jødisk (“Jewish”), Swedish judisk (“Jewish”), Gothic 𐌾𐌿𐌳𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (judaiwisks, “Jewish”). See also Yiddish.

cog

The roots of American Jewry are not in the Middle East but in Europe—their Jewish style, their strong Jewish words, their strong nostalgia, their actual, weighable history, all this issues from their European origins. Grandpa did not hail from Haifa—he was a Jewish humanist, a spiritual, believing Jew, who complained not in an antique tongue called Hebrew but in colorful, rich, vernacular Yiddish.

1993, Philip Roth, Operation Shylock, page 47:

Although I did know that my Jewish name was Yiddish, the rabbi who first taught me Hebrew in the 1960s insisted that we all have Hebrew and not Yiddish names

2007, Laura Levitt, American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust, page 69:

2012, Aya Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany, Stanford University Press:


Jewish

The Statue of Liberty. A French gift with a poem made by a Jewish.

2022 November 26, ArgieSocDem, Twitter, archived from the original on 2022-12-09:

(non-native speakers' English, proscribed) A Jew.


Jewish

Joods

informal term for Yiddish — see also Yiddish

I can't speak Jewish; I can't even understand it.

quoted in 1947, William Lloyd Warner, Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (page 232)

(informal, proscribed) The Yiddish or Hebrew language.

We believe that although he speaks Jewish, he speaks Russian quite badly and pretentiously.

2005 November 17, John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855-1881, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 57:

After a day servicing commercial refrigeration through the five boroughs, Dad would bring home a story of a Chinese waiter on Second Avenue who “speaks Jewish like a Galitzianer,” or of a Mafioso in a Queens fruit market who “has such yiddisher taam, I call him Rabbi Zino.”

2009, Martin S. Jaffee, The End of Jewish Radar: Snapshots of a Postethnic American Judaism, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 115:

A Jew wearing a cap with a visor and a red scarf around his neck is answering a Jewish woman who has addressed him in Polish: “One speaks Jewish aboard the Jewish tram”. Another butts in: “What about in Hebrew?” “In Hebrew as well”.
[…] The Jews in Wereszczyn spoke Jewish amongst themselves, and Polish with us. They had their own Jewish accent, but they had a pretty good grasp of the Polish language.

2012 August 6, Ewa Kurek, Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945: Beyond the Limits of Solidarity, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 215:


McCune-Reischauer

Created in 1937 by George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer.

Revised Romanization of Korean
Revised Romanization of Korean

One of the three main systems of Romanization used for Korean (the others being Revised Romanization of Korean and Yale romanization).


Sanskrit

Learned borrowing from Sanskrit संस्कृत (saṃskṛtá, “perfected, prepared, constructed, refined”). First use appears c. 1617 in the publications of Samuel Purchas.

lbor

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps no longer exists...
- Sir William Jones, 2 February, 1786, at the Asiatick Society.

2004, Benjamin W. Fortson IV, “Introduction”, in Indo-European Language and Culture, page 8:

A classical Indo-European language of South Asia, which is the liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism.


kyūjitai

Transliteration from Japanese 旧(きゅう)字(じ)体(たい) (kyūjitai, literally “old character form”).

ja-r

Coordinate term: shinjitai

Although the kyūjitai kanji were not banned, the obsolete kyūjitai kanji have become unreadable to more and more readers over time, thus making texts including them difficult for modern readers, but at least there is a recognized mapping from new form to old form.

2020, Stewart Arneil, “Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names”, in Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, number 12, Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, →DOI, →ISSN:

The traditional form of Japanese kanji used before 1947.


Spanglish

Dunglish

mixture of English and Dutch in the Netherlands

Llanito

mixture of English and Spanish in Gibraltar

The Nobel laureate Octavio Paz is said to have had it that Spanglish is “neither good, nor bad, but abominable.”

2021 November 23, John McWhorter, “America Has More Than One Spanglish”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

A language blend of English and Spanish spoken by both Latinas, Latinos, and Anglo-Americans.


Engrish

From the mispronunciation of the word English common to Japanese speakers, who have difficulty distinguishing "L" and "R" sounds. The Japanese transliteration of the word "English", イングリッシュ (Ingurisshu) is often used for teaching purposes. In that word, /ɾ/ (romanised as "r") is pronounced instead of the English /l/.

'Why you not teach Engrish more? I must aspeak^([sic]) Engrish.' The Chelsea's resident mad painter was angry at the way Jeremy had been ignoring him.

2003, Bruce L. Russell, Channelling Henry, page 129:

(sometimes derogatory) Ungrammatical, unorthographical or nonsensical English, especially that which is found in East Asia, notably in Japan.


Hokkien

Borrowed from Hokkien 福建 (Hok-kiàn, “Fujian / Fukien”). Doublet of Fukien and Fujian.

bor

Almost 90 percent of Taiwan's 6 million occupants at the end of World War II spoke Hokkien.

2011, Shelley Rigger, Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, →ISBN, page 28:

Because Hokkien is the most widely spoken local language (after Mandarin) in both Taiwan and Kinmen, this national language policy – when implemented in Kinmen – resulted in a different perceived language policy.

2020, Tsung-lun Alan Wan, “Language Revitalization and Perceived Language Shift: A Case of Kinmenese Hokkien”, in Jens Damm, Hauke Neddermann, editors, Intercultural Dialogue across Borders: China between Tradition and Modernity, Zürich: LIT Verlag, →ISBN, page 106:

Under colonial rule, learning or speaking my grandma’s native Hokkien, along with dozens of indigenous languages, was illegal by law.

2022 June 22, Zoe Yu, “Endangered Languages Are Worth Saving”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-06-22, Student Editorial Contest Winner:

The awards celebrate not only Mandopop but also artists singing in Taiwanese - also known as Hokkien - Hakka and indigenous languages, a visible sign of the government's efforts to promote tongues other than Mandarin.

2023 July 2, Ben Blanchard, “Taiwan celebrates linguistic diversity at annual music awards”, in William Mallard, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 2023-07-03, Asia Pacific:

For quotations using this term, see Citations:Hokkien.

(chiefly Southeast Asia) A linguistic subgroup of the Southern Min (Min Nan) branch, of the Min branch, of the Sinitic (Chinese) branch, of the Sino-Tibetan language family which is mainly spoken in the south-eastern part of mainland China (Fujian province), Taiwan, and by overseas Chinese of Hoklo descent, such as in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern Vietnam, etc.

Teochew

Other branches of Southern Min (limited mutual intelligibility)


Iberian

An extinct language isolate that was spoken in the Iberian peninsula.


Romanche

From French romanche, which stems from Latin romanice.


Filipino

From Spanish filipino m, from Felipe + -ino, demonym to Spanish las Islas Filipinas (“The Philippine Islands (P.I.); The Philippines”), after Spanish El Rey Felipe II de España (“King Philip II of Spain”). The Spanish term formerly only referred to a male Philippine-born person of pure or majority Spanish descent, synonym to Spanish insular (“islander”) (plural insulares) in the Spanish Colonial Era of the Philippines, before it was applied as a nationality for every citizen of the Philippines from the First Philippine Republic during the Philippine Revolution.

der

(uncountable) The national language of the Philippines, based on Tagalog.

Filippyns

the national language of the Philippines


Bambara

A West Sudanic language spoken mainly in Mali by as many as six million people, and by smaller numbers of people in Senegal Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Gambia.


Kapampangan

A language of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family of languages; it is one of the major languages of the Philippines and the primary language in the province of Pampanga, as well as southern Tarlac.


Kapampangan

A native speaker of the Kapampangan language.


Kapampangan

Pertaining to the Kapampangan language or its speakers.

капампанганский

pertaining to Kapampangan or its speakers


Pali

A learned borrowing from Sanskrit पालि (pāli).

lbor

A Middle Indo-Aryan language of north India, closely related to Sanskrit; the sacred language of the Buddhist scriptures.


Old French

The French language as spoken or written from the 9th to the early 14th century.

ou frans

French language from 9th to the early 14th century


Classical Greek

The form of the Ancient Greek language used during the classical period of Greek literature: approximately 600 to 300 BCE.


Ancient Greek

Any of the various forms of the Greek language of classical antiquity, particularly the classical Attic dialect used in Athenian literature.


Balinese

en-noun

Balinese (countable and uncountable, plural Balinese)

Balinese (cat)
Balinese language
Balinese people


Syriac

From Ancient Greek συριακός (suriakós), an adjective pertaining to Συρία (Suría), the Greek name for Aram, and probably based on the name Assyria.

The language of the kingdom of Osroene.

The liturgical language of various churches with roots in the Middle East.

An Aramaic language, part of the Semitic language family, specifically:


Syriac

A speaker of the Syriac language (see above).

Syriac Orthodox Church
Syriac Orthodox Church


Syriac

Of, pertaining to, or being the Syriac language, its speakers, or their culture.


Alabama

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Alabama.wav

From Alabama Albaamaha, the name of a people native to the area.

A Muskogean language, spoken by the Alabama people.

ພາສາອາລາບາມາ

phā sāʼā lā bā mā


Mobilian

An informal Native American trade language used among the tribes of the US Southeast, primarily along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. May have originally been the language of one particular tribe.


Maricopa

Borrowed from Spanish, of uncertain origin.

In the valley of the Gila and on its tributaries from the northeast are the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos.

1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 24:

A member of a Native American people belonging to the Yuman linguistic stock, a part of the Hokan family. They originate in the Colorado River area, but following an exodus in the 1700s or 1800s, they live amongst the Pima in the vicinity of the Gila and Salt Rivers.


Maricopa

A city in Pinal County, Arizona, United States.


Norfolk

Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Howard, 7th Duke of Norfolk
James Cook
Mary Howard, Duchess of Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk (disambiguation)
William Ambrosia Cowley

From Middle English Northfolk, from Old English Norþfolc (literally “northern people”), from norþ (“north, northern”) + folc (“folk, people, race, nation”). As an Ecuadorian island, clipping of Duke of Norfolk's Island, bestowed by William Ambrosia Cowley in 1684 honor of Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk; his son Henry, the 7th duke; or both. As an Australian island and territory, bestowed by James Cook in 1774 in honor of Mary Howard, wife of the 9th duke.

der

Litchfield County
Litchfield County#English

A town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States.

An independent city in Virginia, United States; the largest naval base in the world, situated there.


Gurage

Any of the Semitic languages of these people.


Waray-Waray

Borrowed from Waray-Waray Waray-Waray, from Waray.

(linguistics) A central Philippine Visayan language from the islands of Samar, Biliran, and northeast Leyte.


Upper Sorbian

a Slavic language spoken in part of Saxony


Lower Sorbian

a highly endangered West Slavic language spoken in parts of southern Brandenburg

الصُورْبِيَّة السُّفْلَى

a Slavic language spoken in part of Brandenburg

Upper Sorbian

more lively sister language spoken in Saxony


Wolof

Jolof Empire
Jolof Kingdom
Wolof language
Wolof people
jollof rice

‘But come on: haven’t you learnt even a little bit of Wolof yet?’

2016, Zadie Smith, Swing Time, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 221:

The language traditionally spoken by those people.


Etruscan

From Latin Etruscus (which see for more) + -an.

The extinct language of Etruria, which has no known relation to any other language.

伊特魯里亞語 /伊特鲁里亚语

Yītèlǔlǐyàyǔ


Goran

A language spoken in the Djurab Desert region of Chad by the Daza people, part of the Nilo-Saharan language family.

A language spoken in southeastern parts of Kurdistan by Kurdish people, part of the Gorani-Zaza language family. This language has no relation with the Goran language spoken by the Daza people.


Bislama

Borrowed from Bislama Bislama, from French bêche-de-mer (“sea cucumber”). In the mid-nineteenth century, sea cucumbers were harvested and dried at the same time that sandalwood was gathered. The name came to be associated with the kind of pidgin speech that was used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers.

A creole language spoken on the South Pacific island-nation of Vanuatu, derived from Indo-European (mainly from English) and Oceanic languages.

բիսլամա

a creole spoken on the South Pacific island-nation of Vanuatu

比斯拉馬語 /比斯拉马语

Bǐ sī lā mǎ yǔ


Kurmanji

The Kurdish language with the largest number of speakers, spoken in Turkey, Syria, northernmost Iraq, and parts of Iran and Central Asia.


Latinize

en-verb

Latinize (third-person singular simple present Latinizes, present participle Latinizing, simple past and past participle Latinized)

Latinizes (present singular third-person)
Latinizing (participle present)
Latinized (participle past)
Latinized (past)

From Latin latīnizō. By surface analysis, Latin + -ize.

Guglielmus is a Latinized form of William.

(transitive) To translate something into the Latin language; or make a word similar in appearance or form to a Latin word.

latinalaistaa

to make a word similar in appearance or form to a Latin word


TEFL

Acronym of teaching (of) English as a foreign language.

acronym

(education) Teaching of English as a foreign language.


Dzongkha

Borrowed from Dzongkha རྫོང་ཁ (rdzong kha), from རྫོང (rdzong, “jong”) + ཁ (kha, “language”).

com

The national language of Bhutan; Bhutanese.


Chuvash

An agglutinative language of the Bolgar branch of the Turkic language family and is spoken west of the Ural mountains in central Russia. Chuvash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia. It is spoken by about two million people.

чӑваш чӗлхи

čăvaš čĕlh̬i


Mbabaram

An extinct ergative Australian aboriginal language of the Southern Pama branch of the large Pama-Nyungan family of languages.


Tatar

An agglutinative language belonging to the Altai group of Turkic languages. It is an official language of Tatarstan. There are some eight million speakers spread across Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia.


Mingo

A polysynthetic language of the Northern Iroquoian language family, once spoken across eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, now spoken fluently by fewer than five fluent people, but in the process of being revitalized.


flapping

en-noun

flapping (countable and uncountable, plural flappings)

(phonology) A phonological process found in many dialects of English, especially American English and Canadian English, by which intervocalic /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar flap [ɾ] before an unstressed syllable, so that words such as "metal" and "medal" are pronounced similarly or identically.


Australian English

Prior to the 1980s, Australian English had been widely deprecated by Australians themselves, principally as a result of a sense of inferiority known as "cultural cringe".

2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 295:

The form of the English language used in Australia.


Koine

Borrowed from Ancient Greek Κοινή (Koinḗ), from ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος (hē koinḕ diálektos, “the common dialect”), from κοινός (koinós, “shared, common, public, general, ordinary, usual”).

bor+

The “common” Greek language that developed and flourished between 300 B.C.E. and 300 C.E. (the time of the Roman Empire), and from which Modern Greek descended. It was based on the Attic and Ionian dialects of Ancient Greek.


Navajo

From Spanish navajo, from Tewa navahu (“field adjoining an arroyo”).

der

An Apachean (Southern Athabaskan) language of the Athabascan language family belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. It is spoken by 149,000 people in the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado).


Voynichese

From Voynich + -ese, named after Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich (Polish Wojnicz).

named-after

The language in which the Voynich manuscript is ostensibly written.


Miami

Miami
Miami (disambiguation)
en:Lake Okeechobee
en:Mayaimi
en:Miami River (Florida)

From Mayaimi, one of only ten words recorded from the language of the now-extinct Mayaimi people, meaning "big water", referring to the large lake on whose shores they lived, alternately called Lake Miami, Lake Mayimi, Lake Maymi, Lake Maimi; now called Lake Okeechobee. The Florida city is named for the Miami River. The river is named for its source, Lake Miami.

Miami-Dade County
Miami-Dade County#English

A city, the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Ellipsis of Miami River.; A river in Miami-Dade County, Florida, a river flowing past the city of Miami, Dade.


Akkadian

Of or pertaining to the Akkadian language of ancient Mesopotamia.

Of or pertaining to the Akkadian Empire.


Akkadian

The now extinct Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia, formerly used as an international language of diplomacy.


Akkadian

A Semitic inhabitant of the region of Mesopotamia near the city of Akkad.


Avestan

An ancient Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta.


Irish Gaelic

/ˌaɪɹɪʃ ˈɡeɪlɪk/

the Gaelic language indigenous to Ireland, commonly called Gaeilge or Irish


Urartian

The extinct language spoken by the inhabitants of Urartu. Related to Hurrian.


Early Modern English

The form of the English language written and spoken from the end of the 15th century to the mid-17th century.


Chinese character

en-noun

Chinese character (plural Chinese characters)

There are no Publick Schools in all China (though ſome Writers have erroneouſly ſet forth the contrary) but every perſon chuſes his own Maſter, by whom he is taught in his Houſe, at his own charge. And in regard of the great difficulty in teaching the Chineſe Characters, in reſpect of their vaſt number and variety, it is impoſſible for one to teach many ſeveral perſons ; and therefore every Maſter of a Family takes an Intſructer into his Houſe for his Children, of whom if there be two or three to learn, they are as many as one Tutor can well teach.

1669, John Nievhoff, translated by John Ogilby, An Embassy from the Eaſt-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China, London: John Macock, page 163:

Had it not been for the casual discovery in the year 1625 of a deeply buried black marble tablet near Hsi-an containing nearly 1,700 Chinese characters, and a long list of names of priests in Syriac, the fact that such a sect rooted itself in the Celestial Empire would never have been believed, as indeed after the tablet was unearthed it was for a long time discredited.

1912, Arthur Henderson Smith, “Uplifting Leaders”, in The Uplift of China, →OCLC, page 117:

Any character used in the written form of several languages of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

кита́йская гра́мота

can also be derogatory, "something unreadable"


Lusophone

From Portuguese lusófono (“Portuguese-speaking”), from Lusitania (“the Roman province in what is now Portugal”), in the form of Luso- + -phone.


Swiss-German

en-adj

Swiss-German (comparative more Swiss-German, superlative most Swiss-German)

more Swiss-German (comparative)
most Swiss-German (superlative)


first language

She was born and raised in France, although her first language is Portuguese because her parents are from Brazil.

Vocabulary is a vital component of educational success in both first and second language contexts.

2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 105:

The first language one is taught to speak; one's native language.


Cockney

First attested in Samuel Rowland's 1600 The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine as "a Bowe-bell Cockney", from Middle English cokenay (“a spoiled child; a milksop, an effeminate man”), used in the 16th c. by English country folk as a term of disparagement for city dwellers, of uncertain etymology. Possibly from Middle English cokeney (“a small, misshapen egg”), from coken (“cocks'”) + ey (“egg”) or from Cockney and Cocknay, variants of Cockaigne, a mythical land of luxury (first attested in 1305) eventually used as a humorous epithet of London. Compare cocker (“to spoil a child”).

der

(UK) From the East End of London, or London generally.


Yumpla Tok

From yumpla a plural personal pronoun in the creole, and tok meaning talk or speech.

a creole of the Torres Strait in Australia.


Nuu-chah-nulth

/nuːˈtʃɑːnʊlθ/

From Nootka nuučaan̓uł (“all along the mountains”).

uder

The polysynthetic Nuu-chah-nulth language, Nootka, which belongs to the Wakashan language group and is still spoken by about 500 people.


Cheyenne

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Cheyenne.wav

Borrowed from French Cheyenne, from Dakota šahíyena, from Dakota šaia (“to speak incoherently”), from Dakota ša (“red”) and Dakota ya (“to speak”).

A female or male given name of modern American usage.


split infinitive

en-noun

split infinitive (plural split infinitives)

Yeah, Ronnie! (or, the Split Infinitive of the Year, possibly the Century) – on being asked if the New York Times report was true that the 1983 deficit will be $124 billion, rather than the $91.5 billion in the Reagan budget … A: 'I couldn't answer until we have to, by law, shortly, in a couple of weeks, present an updated project.'

1982 April 4, Nick Clarke, quoting Alistair Cooke, “Keeping in Touch”, in Alistair Cooke: A Biography, 1st U.S. edition, New York, N.Y.: Arcade Publishing, published 2000, →ISBN, page 487:

The split infinitive was regrettable, but the writers of Star Trek came up with the phrase to capture the essential idea brought to mind at the mention of the words "frontier" and "pioneer": "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

1994, Patricia Nelson Limerick, “The Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century”, in James R. Grossman, editor, The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994 – January 7, 1995, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 89:

Such fetishes as insisting on It's I, not ending sentences with prepositions, and avoiding split infinitives are all dismissed as the nonsense they are.

2001, R[obert] L[awrence] Trask, “Introduction”, in Mind the Gaffe: The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English (Penguin Reference Books), London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 17:

(grammar) An infinitive with one or more modifiers inserted between the to and the verb.

disigita infinitivo

an infinitive with one or more modifiers inserted between the to and the verb


Hmong

The lect spoken by these people, which is a cluster of a large number of lects which are sometimes considered dialects and sometimes separate languages.


Hindustani

Borrowed from Hindustani ہِنْدُوسْتانی (hindūstānī) / हिंदुस्तानी (hindustānī), from Classical Persian هِنْدُوسْتَانِی (hindūstānī), from هِنْدُو (hindū, “Hindu, Indian”) + ـسْتَان (-stān, “land”) + adjective suffix ـِی (-ī). Equivalent to Hindustan + -i.

der

هِنْدُوسْتَانِی

Swerg, in the Hinduſtànì language, means Heaven.

1792, Sir William Jones, Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature, of Asia, page 150:

Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word…

1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter XI, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC:

Cambridge University Press
w:Cambridge University Press

The pluricentric language of Hindi-Urdu, of which Hindi and Urdu are literary standards; the language from which Hindi and Urdu are derived.

Hindustani, or Urdu (i.e., camp language), is a dialect of Hindi, differing from it in its large admixture of Persian words, and in that it is usually printed in Persian or Arabic characters, while Hindi is commonly printed in Sanskrit letters.

1895, Harlan Page Beach, The Cross in the Land of the Trident, page 59:

(historical) The language which is now known as Urdu.

Of the several languages derived from the Sanskrit, none exercises so general and wide-spread an influence over India as the Hindi, or Sir George's Common Hindustani.

1873, Haris Chandra's magazine, page 119, column 1:

But Mr. Lyall, in an article that is all too short, shows that Hindustani, or Hindi (for there is no essential difference between the two) possesses a continuous body of literature which represents intellectual life in Northern India during the past six centuries.

1880, The Pall Mall Budget: Being a Weekly Collection of Articles Printed in the Pall Mall Gazette from Day to Day, with a Summary of News, page 977, column 2:

(historical) The language which is now known as Hindi.


American Sign Language

American Sign Language: 𝣷𝪜 𝤃𝪜 𝣜𝪜 (from ASL)

United States of America
United States of America

A sign language used primarily in the United States of America and Canada.

American Sign Language
Stokoe notation
Sutton SignWriting

language that uses hands, facial expressions, and other bodily behavior to communicate


ASL

American Sign Language
American Sign Language#English


Pitcairnese

(linguistics) A creole spoken in the Pitcairn Islands, formed from an eighteenth-century dialect of English and the Tahitian language.


Akan

The Niger-Congo language spoken by these people.


Middle French

A historical division of the French language, spoken roughly from 1340 to 1610, during which French became established as the official language of France.


Fula

* From Manding languages, ultimately from Fula root ful- (pul-)

A member of a largely pastoral Muslim people of West Africa.

Fulani

from Hausa; ultimately from Fula root ful- [pul-]

Peul

French equivalent; ultimately from Fula root ful- [pul-] via Wolof


Maria

From Latin Maria, from Ancient Greek Μαρία (María), Μαριάμ (Mariám), from Aramaic מרים (Maryām), corresponding to the Hebrew מרים (Miryām). Doublet of Mary, Marie, and Miriam.

Yet herein they come short of the monks and friars in their conceits of the word Maria; they have so tossed it and turned it, so anagrammatized and transposed it, that never were five poor letters so worried since time did put them into the alphabet.

1629, Thomas Adams, Meditations upon Creed, The Works of Thomas Adams, James Nichol (1862), volume 3, page 211

By their dresses, their names, and the airs of quality they give themselves, I am rendered ridiculous among all my acquaintance. My wife, who is a very plain good woman, and whose name is Amey, has been new-christened, and is called Amelia; and my little daughter, a child of a year old, is no longer Polly, but Maria.

1776, Adam Fitz-Adam: The World of Adam Fitz-Adam. Edinburgh, Apollo Press 1776: Numb. 187. Thursday, July 29, 1756

I've just kissed a girl named Maria / And suddenly I found how wonderful a sound can be! / Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing / Say it soft and it's almost like praying

1957, “Maria”, in Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Leonard Bernstein (music), West Side Story:


Rohingya

/ɹoʊˈhɪŋ.jə/

/ɹoʊˈhɪŋ.d͡ʒə/

/ɹoʊˈhɪŋ.ɡə/

/ɹoʊˈhɪn.d͡ʒə/

/ˈɹəʊhɪŋ.jə/

/ˈɹəʊhɪŋ.d͡ʒə/

/ɹəʊˈhɪŋ.jə/

/ɹəʊˈhɪŋ.d͡ʒə/

/ɹəʊˈhɪŋ.ɡə/

/ɹəʊˈhɪn.d͡ʒə/

Borrowed from Rohingya ruáingga, from Rohingya Rohang + ya (“the people of Rohing”). Rohang is the old kingdom name of Arakan in present-day Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).

The Indo-European language spoken in Arakan, Myanmar, closely related to Chittagonian.


Passamaquoddy

From Malecite-Passamaquoddy Peskotomuhkat (“those who spear pollock / those who live where there are pollock”).

uder

The Algonquian language of these people, a dialect of Malecite-Passamaquoddy, still spoken in Maine and New Brunswick.


British English

Coordinate term: (symbols) AmE

We shall not say that this is British English; but we willingly confess that it is not American English.

1861, “The Shakespeare Mystery”, in The Atlantic Monthly, v 8, n 47, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, p 258 (note)

Some noticeable and general differences between American and British English may be explained by the fact, that considerable bodies of Englishmen sometimes emigrated from the same vicinity, and that in their new home they and their multiplied descendants have kept together and continued to employ dialect peculiarities of their native speech, or retained words of general usage which elsewhere perished.

1863, George Perkins Marsh, “The English Language in America”, in Lectures on the English Language, 4th edition, New York: Charles Scribner, page 667:

Now, according to my observation, no man whom the Dean of Canterbury, or the Public Orator of Cambridge, would accept as a speaker of pure English, says, with thick utterance, “a gloss of ayull;” and yet thousands of their countrymen do speak thus, and this peculiarity of British English passes very gradually away as social and mental culture increase, until among the best-bred and best-educated people it vanishes, and is heard no more than it or a nasal twang is heard among similar people here.

1867, Richard Grant White, “Words and their Uses: British English and American English”, in The Galaxy, volume 4, New York, page 102:

Commonwealth of Nations
Commonwealth of Nations

The English language as written and spoken in the United Kingdom; (often) that which is spoken in both the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations, considered as a single variety.

اَلْإِنْجِلِيزِيَّة اَلْبِرِيطَانِيَّة

English language as in Britain, especially in England


Ache

A language spoken by the Yi people of South-Western China.


Ana

From various languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Macedonian, all derived—sometimes via Late Latin Anna in the Vulgate—from Koine Greek Ἄννα (Ánna, “Anna”), chiefly in reference to St Anne the apocryphal mother of Mary mother of Jesus but appearing in the New Testament in reference to Anna the Prophetess, from Hebrew חַנָּה (Ḥanâ, “Hannah”), from חַנָּה (ḥanâ, “grace, gracious, graced with child”). As an Oregonian river, named for Ana Byars, daughter of the surveyor W.H. Byars. Doublet of Ann, Anne, Anna, and Hannah.

A female given name, equivalent to English Anna or Hannah.


Anal

The Northern Kukish (Sino-Tibetan) language spoken by these people, sometimes called Namfau after the two largest villages it is spoken in.


Anus

An Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia.


Au

A language spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea.


Äynu

A language of China with elements of Turkic grammar and Iranian vocabulary, usually classified as Turkic.


Bari

Borrowed from Italian Bari, ultimately from Latin Barium.


Bari

Synonym of Motilon (“a people of Colombia”)


Bari

A tribe of Karo, Nilotic people inhabiting South Sudan, who speak the Bari language.


Batak

The Palawan Batak language (not closely related to the above).


Bavarian

/bəˈvɛəɹɪən/

A German dialect spoken in Bavaria (a state of southern West Germany) and Austria, which varies considerably across different regions.


Bit

An Austroasiatic language spoken in China and Laos.


Bobo

A barangay of Piagapo, Lanao del Sur, Philippines.


Bokmål

Borrowed from Norwegian bokmål (literally “book language”). The equivalent Old Norse bókamál was used in this sense as a name for Latin, as it was the primary language used for writing of biblical work in much of the Middle Ages. The modern Icelandic name for Norwegian Bokmål is bókmál. When dialect research in western Norway was pioneered by Ivar Aasen in the 1850s, bogmaal took on the meaning of written standard language, as opposed to spoken dialects and Aasen's synthesized landsmaal. The two Norwegian languages, standardized in 1907, changed names in 1929 from landsmål to nynorsk, and from riksmål to bokmål.

bor

One of the two major written standards of Norwegian, literally meaning “book language”.


Cantonese

en-noun

Cantonese (countable and uncountable, plural Cantonese)

廣東話 /广东话

Kńg-tang-ōe / Kúiⁿ-tang-ōa / Kńg-tang-ōa

As a mainland China national, the counter for our trial was fluent in English, Putonghua, and the Sichuan dialect, and was familiar with a number of other major Chinese languages such as Cantonese and Hakka.

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

(uncountable) A Sinitic language mainly spoken in the south-eastern part of Mainland China, Guangdong (Canton), Hong Kong, Macau, by the Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia and by many overseas Chinese worldwide.

(uncountable) A dialect of the Cantonese language, spoken in Guangzhou (Canton), Hong Kong, Macau, and treated as the standard dialect of the Cantonese language.

Cantonese dialect

the dialect of Cantonese language treated as standard

Hoisanese/Toisanese/Taishanese

the Cantonese subdialect spoken in the Greater Hoi San area, with subsubdialects

Hong Kong Cantonese

the dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Macau


Car

The most widespread of the Nicobarese languages spoken in the Nicobar Islands of India (ISO 839-3 code "caq").


Cree

⇒ Irish: Craís

From a phonetic rendering of Canadian French Cris, short for Christinaux, from either Algonquin Kirishtinó, or Cree Kenisteniwuik.

The Algonquian language or dialect continuum spoken by this people.

кры

Algonquian language spoken by this people


Creek

* As an English surname, from Creake in Norfolk, a variant of the noun crag (“steep rugged cliff”).
* Also as an English surname, from the archaic noun cratch (“crib, manger”).
* As a German surname, Americanized from Krieg (“war, warfare”), Krück, Kruck (see Krug (“jug”) and Krücke (“crutch”)), Krick.
* As a Dutch surname, Americanized from Kreek (from the noun kreek (“creek”), see creek) and Kriek (from kriek (“cherry”)).
* The Native American tribe name is likely shortened from Ocheese Creek.

One of a Native American tribe from the Southeastern United States, also known as the Muscogee.


Creek

The Muskogean language of the Creek tribe.


Crow

From French gens de corbeaux, calque of Dakota apsáaloke (“crow people”). Compare Crow Apsáalooke.

calque

(linguistics) The Siouan language of this tribe.


Dari

Borrowed from Classical Persian دری (darī), of disputed origin, probably from دربار (darbār, “royal court”). The term was adopted by the government of Afghanistan in 1964 as the official name of the varieties of Persian spoken in the country, which has become the most common usage of the term since.

bor+

The variety of the Persian language that is chiefly used in Afghanistan, contrasted with varieties spoken elsewhere such as Iranian Persian or Tajik.

دَرِيَّة

variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan

(historical, now less common) A variety of Middle Persian which served as the court language of the late Sasanian Empire.

A language primarily spoken in the Yazd and Kerman areas of Iran.


Darling

The Australian aboriginal language Baagandji, spoken along this river in New South Wales.


Deutsch

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Deutsch.wav

PIE word
 *tewtéh₂
Borrowed from German Deutsch (“German”). Doublet of Dutch and Doitsu.

Riley's father, Reuben, spoke Deutsch in his boyhood home and did not learn to speak English until after his childhood even though he came from Irish roots. Riley's ancestors kept alive many of the old folktales and stories of their lives. Few of these Deutsch tales survive.

1997, Thomas E. Q. Williams, James Whitcomb Riley: the poet as flying islands of the night, page 76:

This letter had to be written in Deutsch because neither Paul nor Harriet knew Danish.

2002, Richard Braden, Escape from Europe, page 102:

“We sing our Sunday hymns a cappella, too,” Sadie said. “But Amish songs are very different from yours. They're written in Deutsch, and there's no harmony.”

2012, Rosalind Lauer, A Simple Spring: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel, page 163:


Deutsch

en-adj

Deutsch (comparative more Deutsch, superlative most Deutsch)

more Deutsch (comparative)
most Deutsch (superlative)


Dia

A language spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea.


E

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 誒 /诶 (ê̄), from E ɛ⁵⁵.

A Tai-Chinese mixed language spoken primarily in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, Guangxi, China; Kjang E.

誒話 /诶话

a Tai-Chinese mixed language spoken primarily in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County


Edo

A state of Nigeria in the South South geopolitical zone. Capital and largest city: Benin City.


Elvish

These difficult runes are written in Elvish.


Estonian

en-noun

Estonian (countable and uncountable, plural Estonians)

(uncountable) The Uralic language that is the official language of Estonia.


Even

From Russian Эве́нский (Evénskij), from эвэн (evɛn), of Tungusic origin. Compare Evenki.

A Tungusic language spoken by the Evens in Siberia and the Russian Far East.


Ewe

Most Ewes are farmers or fishermen, although a growing number are urban dwellers living in Accra, Lomé, and other cities. The Ewes are a patrilineal people, with inheritance passing from father to son.

2002, James Minahan, “Ewes”, in Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups Around the World, volumes II (D–K), Westport, Conn., London: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 590:

A person from Ho, like all Ewes, attaches great importance to a friendly greeting.

2011, Jakob Spieth, “[The HO – Tribe] Economic Life”, in Emmanuel F. Tsaku, Marcellinus Edorh, Raphael Avornyo, Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, transl., edited by Komla Amoaku, The Ewe People: A Study of the Ewe People in German Togo, Legon, Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers, →ISBN, page 289:

Among the Ewes, and equally among other language and ethnic groups in Ghana, names form an integral part of people’s identity.

2018, Elvis Yevudey, “The representation of African languages and cultures on social media: a case of Ewe in Ghana”, in Augustine Agwuele, Adams Bodomo, editors, The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics, Routledge, →ISBN, part IV (Language and society: theory and practice):

An ethnic group who inhabit southeastern Ghana, Togo, and Benin.


Ewe

The Niger-Congo language, belonging to the Gbe family, spoken by these people.


Ewe

Of or pertaining to the Ewe people or language.


Ewondo

The language spoken by the Beti tribe from Cameroun, Yaounde area.


Fanagalo

A pidgin language based primarily on Zulu, spoken in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.


Fang

The dominant Bantu language of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, spoken by 1.3 million people, also called Pahouin.

Fang

the language of Guinea which is also called Pahouin

A Beboid language of Cameroon, spoken by only 2400 people, so called because it is spoken in the village of Fang.


Fang

The county sense is from Mandarin 房 (Fáng). The surname sense could be from Mandarin 方 (Fāng), 房 (Fáng), 芳 (Fāng), 仿 (Fǎng) or 放 (Fǎng).


Fante

She loved days like this one, where she could speak Fante as fast as she wanted.

2016, Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, Penguin Books (2017), page 24:

A language spoken in Ghana, a dialect of Akan.


Flathead

From flat + head, from the practice of compressing the skull in infancy by artificial means. However, the Salish tribe never practised this custom, the confusion arising from the fact that the early traders felt compelled to adopt the local Indian classification, which considered the prevailing compressed skull of the neighbouring tribes as pointed and the naturally shaped Salish skull by contrast as flat.


Ga

A Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana and Togo.


Gallo

en-proper noun

Gallo (countable and uncountable, plural Gallos or Galloes)

* As an Italian and Spanish surname, from the noun gallo (“rooster”).
* Also as an Italian surname, from the personal name Gallo, from Latin gallus (“a Gaul”). This is sometimes Americanized from Greek Γάλλος (Gállos). Compare Gallia.
* As a Breton surname, shortened from Le Gallo, a diminutive of Le Gall; compare Legall.
* (language): From Breton gall (“a Gaul or a foreigner”), from being a language found in eastern Brittany of the non-Celts, from Latin gallus.

A Romance language spoken in north-west France, see Gallo language.

gallaoueg

Romance language spoken in northwest France


Ge

A group of aboriginal languages of Brazil.


Gun

A Gbe language spoken in parts of Benin and Nigeria.


Han

The Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Han people, or Hän Hwëch'in, in Alaska and the Yukon.


Hanzi

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin 漢字 /汉字 (Hànzì). Doublet of kanji and hanja.

On May 21, 1957, the Jen min je pao published the text of the previous day’s discussions during which writers and scholars of various tendencies had examined before the Commission the proposed reform (which, in the opinion of certain “leftists,” entailed in fact the suppression of the han tzŭ, the Chinese characters).

[1959, Etiemble, “One China or Two?”, in Evergreen Review, volume 2, number 8, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 31:

Chinese character
Chinese character#English

Synonym of Chinese character (specifically in relation to Chinese)


Ho

A Munda language spoken in India and Bangladesh.


Ido

Borrowing from Ido Ido. Began as a pseudonym, probably directly from Esperanto ido (“offspring”).

A constructed language; a reform of Esperanto and Idiom Neutral.

إِيدُو

artificial language reformed from Esperanto


Javanese

An indigenous language spoken by Javanese people.


Koko

A Khoisan language of Namibia and Botswana.


Kuna

* As a Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian, Hungarian and Jewish surname, from Kuna, from kuna (“marten”), nickname for a quick-tempered or aggressive person.
* Also as a Czech surname, from the personal name Kuna, a pet form of Kunrat, medieval form of Konrad.


Ladino

From Ladino לאדינו (ladino) (or from Spanish ladino), from Latin Latīnus (“Latin”).

A Romance language mainly spoken by Sephardic Jews (Wikipedia), derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew.


Ladino

[A]lthough almost all Pedranos consider themselves fully Mayan, many have some European and Ladino ancestry, stemming especially from prior generations when Spanish authorities governed the town.

2011, Barbara Rogoff, Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 89:

A person in Latin America whose culture or ancestry is a mixture of European Spanish and Native American, especially one who speaks Spanish; a mestizo.


Ladino

Borrowed from Spanish Ladino. This surname is mostly found in Colombia.


Lai

A Tibeto-Burman language of India and Burma.


Latin

Jamaican Creole: Latn

From Middle English Latyn, Latyne, Latin, from Old French latin, latyn, from Latin latīnus, from Latium (“the region around Rome”) + -īnus (adjective suffix). Displaced or merged with Old English Lǣden. Doublet of Ladino.

Africa was the natural leader because there the number of Christians who were of Roman origin and Latin speech was probably far greater than in so cosmopolitan a city as Rome.

1948, L. E. Elliott-Binns, The Beginnings of Western Christendom, page 257:

Of or relating to Latin: the language spoken in ancient Rome and other cities of Latium.

The Serbo-Croatian incunabula printed in Latin letters are indubitably the products of a very modest establishment.

1968, Mladen Bošnjak, A Study of Slavic Incunabula, page 62:

Of or relating to the script of the language spoken in ancient Rome and many modern alphabets.


Latin

Latin (countable and uncountable, plural Latins)

From Middle English Latin, Latyn, from Old English Lǣden, from Vulgar Latin *ladinum (“Latin”) and Old French latin (“Latin”); all from Latin Latinus (“belonging to Latium”). Later influenced in form by the Latin word. Compare Dutch Latijn (“Latin”), German Latein (“Latin”), Swedish Latin (“Latin”).

Supper being over, the lawyer took his leave, and the doctor began to ſound the learned clerk reſpecting his proficiency in the dead languages. "As to dead languages," replied the ſchoolmafter, "I was once a vaſt pretty ſcholar indeed, but want of exercise has made me main ſlack—I can't get over my ground as I uſed to do. Then as to the t'other dead fellow, I could never greek it at all, that's flat. And, Lord bleſs you! my Latin is of no more uſe to me here than—than—" Here he ſtuck for want of a ſimile; when Mr. Le Dupe helped him out by ſaying, "that it is to a young man at college, where it is conſidered a pedantic inſult, and an unpardonable bore, to utter a Latin ſentence."

1799, Edward Dubois, A Piece of Family Biography, volume II, page 20:

To Hall [Robert A. Hall, Jr.], the development would be something as follows: Latin > Proto-Romance (dated late Republic and Early Empire) > Proto-Continental Romance > Proto-Italo-Western Romance (to which Hall would limit the term "Vulgar Latin") > Proto-Western Romance > Proto-Gallo Romance, etc. Each of these main divisions splits off into further languages: Latin > Classical Latin; Proto-Romance > Proto-Southern Romance > Sardinian, Lucianian, Sicilian; Proto-Continental Romance > Proto-Eastern Romance > Proto-Balkan Romance, etc.

1999, Karl Strecker, transl. by Robert B. Palmer, Introduction to Medieval Latin: English Tranlation and Revision, 2nd ed. (2nd reprint of the ed. Dublin/Zürich 1971 (Berlin 1957)), Weidmann: Zürich & Hildesheim, p. 29

When the Christian Church rose in stature in the Dark Ages, its adoption of Latin as the official language assured its eternal life.

2003, Natalie Harwood, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Latin, 2nd edition, page 13:

Like Copernicus and Galileo, Johannes Kepler was a renowned astronomer who wrote in Latin.

2010, Elizabeth Heimbach, A Roman Map Workbook, page 134:

(uncountable) The language of the ancient Romans, other Latins and of the Roman Catholic church, especially Classical Latin.

ܠܸܫܵܢܵܐ ܠܵܛܝܼܢܵܝܵܐ

liššānā lāṭīnāyā

Anglo-Latin

(varieties of Latin) Latin; Biblical Latin, Classical Latin, Church Latin / Ecclesiastical Latin, Late Latin, Low Latin, Medieval Latin / Middle Latin, New Latin / Neo-Latin, Old Latin, Recent Latin / Contemporary Latin, Renaissance Latin, Vulgar Latin


Limburgish

A Germanic language or dialect continuum spoken near the common border between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Limburgisch

Dutch and Belgian dialects; sometimes the whole group


Lu

Clipping of Lucy, Lucille., and similar names.

"Why?" said Lucy in amazement, "haven't you all been wondering where I was?" "So you've been hiding, have you?" Peter said. "Poor old Lu, hiding and nobody noticed!

1950, C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Fontana Lions, published 1980, →ISBN, page 27:

A diminutive of the female given name Lucy and related names.


Mamba

a dialect of the Zimba language spoken in the Congo


Mandarin

Calque from Chinese 官話／官话 (Guānhuà, “spoken language of the mandarins”). An extension of mandarin (“bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire”) to the language used by the imperial court and sometimes by imperial officials elsewhere. As such, it was adopted as a synonym for Modern Standard Chinese in the 20th century. The term became ambiguous, however, as its use was extended to the various Northern dialects of Chinese.

zh-l

[...]and though the ſame word hath one ſignification in the Mandorines Language, and a contrary in Japan and other places, yet knowing one Speech and their Character, you may Travel not only through the Empire of China, but the adjacent Kingdoms.

[1669, John Nievhoff, “Athanasius Kircher Description of China”, in John Ogilby, transl., An Embassy from the Eaſt-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China, London: John Macock, →OCLC, page 106:

Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I'd been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn't read an address either. Most ignored or didn't know the Chinese names given to the streets anyway.

2014, David Eimer, The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China, Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 75:

Owner David Yeh says his Little-One bar -- a homophone to Lithuania's Mandarin name "Litaowan" -- started getting more attention last year after Vilnius became the first EU government to donate vaccines.

2022 March 9, “'Lithuania mania' sweeps Taiwan as China spat sizzles”, in France 24, archived from the original on 2022-03-09:

Standard Mandarin, an official language of China and Taiwan, and one of four official languages in Singapore; Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu.

標準中国語

ひょうじゅんちゅうごくご


Mari

Our colleague, Mari Takahashi Parker (1993), compared schools in the United States and in Japan. She found that in the United States, principals tended to feel the weight of just about everything on their shoulders.

2010 March 9, Lee G. Bolman, Terrence E. Deal, Reframing the Path to School Leadership: A Guide for Teachers and Principals, Corwin Press, →ISBN:

He hopped across and went to lift Mari, but she shook her head and jumped over [by] herself.

2018, Emiko Jean, Empress of All Seasons, HMH Books For Young Readers, →ISBN, page 40:


Mato

A Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Papua New Guinea.


Meri

A diminutive of the female given name Merida.


Mien

A group of related languages spoken by the Yao people.


Mon

A member of a people living primarily in the Mon State of Myanmar (also known as Burma), and in Thailand.


Mon

The language of this people, in the Austroasiatic language family.


Mon

Phoebe: Oh, hey, Mon, do you still have your like... old blouses and dresses from high school? Monica: Yeah, I think I have some around here somewhere. Why?

2009, Paulo Quaglio, Television Dialogue: The sitcom Friends vs. natural conversation, page 19:

A diminutive of the female given name Monica.


More

From French mooré, from Moore moore (“Moore language”), from moaaga (“Mossi person”) + -re (suffix for names of languages).

suffix

The Volta-Congo language of the Mossi people, mainly spoken in part of Burkina Faso.


Moro

A Heiban language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan, Sudan.


Motu

An Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea.


Nasal

An Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia


Ndebele

And look, that’s you a few years later, holding up a package at a prize-giving ceremony — throughout primary you always came first in English and Ndebele class.

2022, NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory, Chatto & Windus, page 191:

Any of the languages spoken by these two peoples: Northern Ndebele and the not closely related Southern Ndebele.


Nynorsk

From Norwegian nynorsk (“Modern Norwegian”, literally “New Norwegian”).

While 85-90% of Norwegians today use Bokmål as their written standard, Nynorsk is only used by about 10-15% of the population. Fosse’s English translator Damion Searls says many Nynorsk speakers see him “as a kind of national hero” for his championing of the language.

2023 October 5, Philip Oltermann, “Jon Fosse’s Nobel prize announces his overdue arrival on the global stage”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

One of the two major written standards (language variants) of Norwegian.

նոր նորվեգերեն

one of the two major Norwegian (written) languages


Occidental

Occidental
Occidental language
Occidental, California

An artificial language, created by Edgar de Wahl later renamed Interlingue shortly before the publication of Interlingua

A census-designated place in Sonoma County, California, United States.


Pijin

Borrowed from Pijin Pijin, from English pidgin, from a Chinese Pidgin English pronunciation of business.

In full Solomon Islands Pijin, Solomon Pijin, or Solomons Pijin: a language spoken on the Solomon Islands, which is a form of Melanesian Pidgin.


Pinyin

20th c., from Mandarin Chinese 拼音 (pīnyīn, literally “spelled sounds”).

The Chinese government began using the new system Jan. 1 in all its foreign language publications, including the English-language service of the New China News Agency. This is an important source for American journalists writing about China. The United Nations and U.S. government agencies have adopted the new spellings called by the Chinese "Pinyin" meaning "phonetic spelling."[…]
The old spelling system, named the Wade-Giles system after the two 19th century Britons who developed it, made correct pronunciation unnecessarily difficult. It used apostrophes to distinguish aspirated consonants, such as p'ai pronounced with a "p" sound, from unaspirated, such as pai pronounced with a "b" sound. The new Pinyin system eliminates this distinction, which most newspapers ignored anyway. "Beijing" is much closer to the Chinese pronunciation that "Peking", and Vice Premier "Deng" is better rendering than "Teng." But the new system uses some letters in ways that still confuse English speakers. Thers difficult letters are: "c" which should be prounced in this system like the "ts" in "its"; "q" which should be pronounced like the "ch" in "cheek"; "x" which should be pronounced like the "sh" in "she"; and "zh" which should be pronounced like the "j" in "jump".[…]
Reading the alphabetized words still presents problems for the Chinese, however, because the spellings do not distinguish the flur separate tones in the Chinese language that can significantly change meaning. The word "ma" can mean "mother", "horse", or "scold", depending on what tone is used. Under the Pinyin system, two neighboring provinces of northern China are both spelled "Shanxi". In this special case, one of the provinces is now spelled "Shaanzi", to indicate a different tone in the first syllable.

1979 March 5, Jay Mathews, “China Is China, But Hangchow Is Hangzhou”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-12-29:

People’s Republic of China
People's Republic of China

A system of romanization for Standard Mandarin, used in the People’s Republic of China, and more recently in other Mandarin Chinese-speaking areas as well.


Pinyin

For quotations using this term, see Citations:Pinyin.

People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China

A phonetic script or romanization system for various languages spoken in the People's Republic of China, e.g. Tibetan


Pinyin

A Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon.


Putonghua

/ˌpuːtɒŋˈhwɑː/

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation for 普通話／普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà, literally “common speech”).

zh-l

As a mainland China national, the counter for our trial was fluent in English, Putonghua, and the Sichuan dialect, and was familiar with a number of other major Chinese languages such as Cantonese and Hakka.

2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10:

Standard Mandarin, the official language of the People's Republic of China; the state-designated national speech of the Han nationality using Beijing pronunciation as the standard pronunciation, Beijing speech as the basic dialect, and the model writing of the modern vernacular prose as the norm for grammar.

普通話 /普通话

the official language of the People's Republic of China — see also Mandarin


San

As a synonym of Bushmen introduced into ethnology from the 1960s, from Khoekhoe saan (singular saa) "foragers; people without wealth", via back-formation from Khoisan. Occasional citation as the Nama term for "Bushmen" from the 1880s.

(regionally, offensive, ethnic slur) Any of the foraging non-Bantu ethnic groups of southwestern Africa.


Sango

Central African Republic
Central African Republic

The primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it has 5 million second-language speakers, but only 400,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns.


Sicilian

From Latin Sicilia + -an. By surface analysis, Sicily + -an.


Svan

A South Caucasian language of Caucasian Georgia, related to Georgian, Laz, and Mingrelian.


Tat

Ultimately from Proto-Turkic *tāt (“alien, stranger, pagan”).

der

A southwestern Iranian language spoken by the Tat people.


Tewa

Borrowed from Spanish Tegua, Tehua, from Tewa Tewa or Hopi Teewa.

A member of an indigenous people of New Mexico and Arizona.


Tewa

The traditional language of the Tewa people.


Tewa

A Trans-New Guinea language of Indonesia.


Tigre

A Semitic language of northern Eritrea, closely related to Tigrinya.


Udmurt

From Russian удму́рт (udmúrt), from Udmurt удмурт (udmurt).

A Finnic language spoken in Udmurtia, a republic of Russia.

烏德穆爾特語 /乌德穆尔特语

Wūdémùěrtèyǔ


Yay

A branch of the Tai language family, spoken by the Bouyei and Giáy people.


Yi

Any of a family of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by this people.


Yi

Borrowed from Korean 이 (I) (based on the South Korean spelling), hanja: 李, also spelled 리 (Ri), especially in North Korea.

A surname from Korean. Equivalent to Chinese 李 (Lǐ)


Yuki

Probably from Wintu yu·keh (“enemies; Yuki”)


Zia

(Arabic name): Borrowed from Arabic ضِيَاء (ḍiyāʔ, “light”) via Spanish.

A male given name from Arabic popular among Muslims.


Zo

A language spoken in Myanmar and India, especially in Chin State, Mizoram and Manipur, and adjoining parts of Bangladesh.


Adele

Borrowed from French Adèle, equivalent of Adela, from a Germanic root meaning “noble”. Compare athel, German edel, Old English æþele.

The beauty and simplicity of names are altogether arbitrary: Mary and Elizabeth, and Judith, may suit a taste formed on the Puritan model, that is to say, an English and Scottish taste: the French consider Victoire, Adele, Adriane, or any other such “fanciful and romantic” names, quite as simple, and perhaps as beautiful, as Mr. Stuart does Mary and Jane.

1833, E. Littell, “On Grand Christian Names”, in The New Monthly Magazine, volume 1, page 211:

A female given name from the Germanic languages.


Samaritan

/səˈmæɹɪtən/

/səˈmɛɹɪtən/

From Latin Samarītānus, from Ancient Greek Σαμαρείτης (Samareítēs), from Σαμαρεία (Samareía, “Samaria”), derived from Biblical Hebrew שֹׁמְרוֹנִים (Šōmərôním) and שֹׁמְרוֹן (Šōmərôn) respectively. Attested in Old English.

Many of these despised people built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim in the central Palestinian territory known as Samaria, and hence they were called Samaritans (a word of contempt to Jews); in very reduced numbers, they still live round their sacred mountain now.

2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 62:

A native, or inhabitant of Samaria; especially one practising certain ethnoreligious traditions indigenous to that region.

A charitable person, one who helps others (from the Bible story in Luke 10:30–37).

(UK) A person who works for the Samaritans telephone helpline, taking calls from suicidal members of the public.


Samaritan

/səˈmæɹɪtən/

/səˈmɛɹɪtən/

The ancient language of Samaria: a dialect of Hebrew.


Estuary English

received pronunciation
received pronunciation

(British) A variety of English accent, spreading out from London into the area of the Thames estuary, containing features of received pronunciation, Cockney and other regional accents.

Estuaryn murre (no established translation)


hangul

[Alt: 한글 ㅎ=h ㅏ=a ㄴ=n ㄱ=g ㅡ=eu ㄹ=l]
From Korean 한글 (han'geul, “Korean script”).

The phonetic alphabet used to write the Korean language.


Kapingamarangi

The Austronesian language spoken in the Federated States of Micronesia, especially by the inhabitants of Kapingamarangi.


Mi'kmaq

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Mi'kmaq.wav

The polysynthetic Eastern Algonquian language spoken by this people, closely related to Maliseet and Passamaquoddy.


MSA

Modern South Arabian
Modern South Arabian#English


Gen

Hal. Oh, don't fuss, Gen. I'll do my part all right. Mamma's 'structed me, you know.
Genevieve. Instructed, Hal.

“Gen? Listen, I'm so sorry I did that, Gen. You gotta believe me. I'm not like this and you know it.” “Listen...Kyle, I...I don't think I want to see you anymore.” Genevieve's voice cracked. “Gen!”

2017, Emma G Prince, The Silent Life of Genevieve, →ISBN:

A female given name, a short form of Genevieve.


Harari

The Ethiosemitic language of these people.


Phoenician

Attested as a noun in Middle English as phenicienes (only plural); from Ancient Greek Φοῖνιξ (Phoînix, “Phoenician”).

The Semitic language spoken by the inhabitants of Phoenicia.


Bicolano

/bɪkəˈlɑːnəʊ/

A language spoken in the Bicol Region, Philippines.


Belauan

A language spoken in the Pacific, in the Republic of Palau. It is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, and is considered to be one of two languages in Micronesia belonging to the Western Austronesian group, all others considered to be members of the Oceanic subgroup.


Ari

אֲרִי ארי#Hebrew

לייב לייב#Yiddish

A male given name from Hebrew, of Jewish usage, variant of Arieh (also transcribed as Aryeh, Arye). Ari derives directly from Hebrew: אֲרִי (arí, “lion”); compare Yiddish: לייב (leyb, “Leib”), English: Leo, Leon, French: Léo, Léon, Czech: Lev, Polish: Lew, Russian: Лев (Lev), and Ukrainian: Лев (Lev).


Nihongo

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From Japanese Nihongo, the romaji of 日本語(にほんご) (nihongo).

(rare except in the Philippines; Japanism) Synonym of Japanese: the Japanese language.


Hausa

She tells me she’s been intensively studying Hausa these past weeks, that it’s such a unique and precise language, one that you write the way you speak it, very historical and more Arabian than she’d thought.

2023, Stephen Buoro, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, Bloomsbury Circus, page 191:

The Chadic language spoken by these people.


Proto-Uralic

The ancestor language of the Uralic language family, usually written with the UPA-transcription system.


Karen

From Danish Karen, a vernacular form of Catherine that arose in medieval Denmark. The sense "middle-aged woman" comes from the popularity of the name among baby boomers and Gen-Xers. The derogatory usage was popularized via African-American Vernacular English.

Left you a lover in that far land, / O Karen sad, that you pine so long! / Would I could unravel and understand / That sorrowful, sweet Norwegian song!

1878 Celia Thaxter, Drift-Weed, Houghton, Osgood,1878, page 28 ("Karen")

I was not called Karen after Hans Andersen's dancing girl, but after a Danish friend of my mother's who married an Englishman and was my godmother. So much for our family affairs.

1918 Cecily Ullman Sidgwick, Karen, W.Collins, 1918, page 12


Cayuse

Adapted from French cailloux, a pre-existing French word. The reason this word came to be used for the tribe is unknown; see the Wikipedia article for theories.


Norse

en-adj

Norse (comparative more Norse, superlative most Norse)

more Norse (comparative)
most Norse (superlative)

Partly from Dutch Noorsch (now Noors (“Norwegian”)), from noordsch (“northern; nordic”); and partly from Danish norsk (“Norwegian”). Both equivalent to north + -ish. Doublet of Norsk.

Of or relating to the people, language and culture of Scandinavia.

Of or relating to the North Germanic group of languages.


Norse

Speakers of any of the North Germanic languages.


Norse

(US printing, rare, dated) A size of type between Saxon and excelsior, 2+¹⁄₂-point type.


Ekavian

A dialect or group of dialects of Serbo-Croatian spoken primarily in Serbia and distinguished by reflecting the Common Slavic jat (Old Cyrillic: ѣ, Glagolitic: ⱑ, Latin transcription /ě/) sound as /e/.


Wanda

From Polish Wanda, possibly derived from an ethnic term for “a Wend”.

"Speaking of names, you're the first white Wanda I ever met."
Wanda peeled off two sweaters and a woolen scarf." Well, you're the fifth or sixth colored I've had to tell that Wanda is an old Polish name I inherited from my Polish great-grandmother on me sweet dead mother's side;

1998, Barbara Neely, Blanche Cleans Up, Penguin, published 1999, →ISBN, page 12:


Proto-Germanic

Hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language of all Germanic languages, including English.

прагерма́нская

hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language — see also Germanic


Old Frisian

a West Germanic language spoken on parts of the North Sea coast of modern Netherlands and Germany until the 16th century


Old Irish

The Irish language as attested from the sixth to the tenth centuries C.E., the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive texts (written in the Latin alphabet) are extant.


international auxiliary language

en-noun

international auxiliary language (plural international auxiliary languages)

international auxiliary languages (plural)

(linguistics) A language intended to be used by people who do not share a common language.


Pech

An indigenous Amerindian language spoken in Honduras.


Venda

The language of the people of this area.


Norfuk

the language spoken on Norfolk Island; a blend of English and Tahitian


Low German

High Dutch

antonym(s) of “West Germanic languages that are not High German”

High German

includes numerous Upper German and Middle German/Central German dialects from which Standard High German mainly developed

→ German: American Low German

Because northern Germany (Low Germany), where it is spoken, is lower in elevation than southern Germany.

A West Germanic language spoken in Low (i.e. Northern) Germany and north-eastern parts of the Netherlands, and formerly also in large parts of eastern and north-eastern Europe, which developed out of Middle Low German from Old Saxon; often treated as a dialect group of German (or Dutch) for convenience, but widely recognized as a separate language.

Plautdietsch

often refers specifically to the Mennonite Low German variety


Plattdeutsch

/ˈplɑtˌdɔɪt͡ʃ/

/ˈplætˌdɔɪt͡ʃ/


Romance language

Romance language (plural Romance languages)

The five most widely-spoken Romance languages

in order of decreasing number of speakers: Spanish


Gilbertese

From Gilbert + -ese. See Gilbertese language § Name on Wikipedia.

An Austronesian language spoken in Kiribati.


Shawnee

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Ultimately from Shawnee Shawanwa (“Shawnee”) or shawanoki (“southerners”), a hypothetical intermediary term is sometimes supposed to have facilitated the entry into English, such as Munsee sawanow.

The girls from our year were mainly named some version of Shawn. There was Shawna, Dawna, Shawnee, Dawnali, Shalana, and just plain Dawn and Shawn.

2012, Louise Erdrich, The Round House, Corsair, published 2013, →ISBN, page 292:

A female given name, derived from the name of this tribe.


Coorg

A member of the Dravidian language family spoken by the aforementioned ethnic community.


BBC English

(British) A form of received pronunciation formerly used in British broadcasting.


glossolalia

From glosso- + -lalia, from Ancient Greek γλῶσσᾰ (glôssă, “tongue; language”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *glōgʰs) + λᾰλῐᾱ́ (lălĭā́, “talking; form of speech, dialect”) (from λᾰ́λος (lắlos, “talkative”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns)).

der

[Adolf Bernhard Christoph] Hilgenfeld, indeed, is mistaken in explaining the unintelligibility of the γλω̑σσαι, only by the transcendent nature of what they expressed to the merely human consciousness; but he observes with great truth, that that which is common to prophecy and to glossolalia consisted in the exaltation of the consciousness above the merely human sphere, but that which is distinct consisted in this: that he who was prophetically inspired was in the full possession of his reflecting spiritual powers; […] [W]e showed that there is a human πνευ̑μα in a narrower sense, a capacity of immediate perception and insght. As all ecstasy, so also glossolalia was perfected in this πνευ̑μα: it was a miraculous agency of the Spirit of God […]

1869, Franz Delitzsch, translated by Robert Ernest Wallis, A System of Biblical Psychology. … Translated from the German, (Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised and Enlarged,) … (Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, Fourth Series; XIII), 2nd English edition, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38, George Street; London: Hamilton and Co.; Dublin: John Robertson and Co., →OCLC, page 426:

The occurrence in Acts ii. is therefore to be recognised, according to its historical import, as the phenomenon of the glossolalia, (not as a higher stage of it, in which the foreign languages supervened, Olshausen), which emerged for the first time in the Christian church, and that immediately on the effusion of the Spirit at Pentecost,—a phenomenon which, in the sphere of the marvellous to which it belongs, was elaborated and embellished by legend into a speaking in foreign languages, and accordingly into an occurrence quite unique, not indeed as to substance, but as to mode[…], and far surpassing the subsequently frequent and well-known glossolalia, having in fact no parallel in the further history of the church.

1877, Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Paton J. Gloag, chapter II, in William P[urdie] Dickson, editor, Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Acts of the Apostles. … Translated from the Fourth Edition of the German … (Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; I), volume I (The Acts of the Apostles), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street, →OCLC, page 67:

But glossolalia by definition makes no such sense, because it consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.

1972 September, William J. Samarin, “Sociolinguistic vs. Neurophysiological Explanations for Glossolalia: Comment on Goodman’s Paper”, in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, volume 11, number 3, Blackwell, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, page 293:

Lorenzo is still kneeling at the box, once more Luisa wipes her eyes, Violeta is sobbing and rocking, her glossolalia now at the -sə-sə-sə-level of near exhaustion.

1982, Felicitas D. Goodman, Jeannette H. Henney, Esther Pressel, “Chronology of Events”, in Trance, Healing, and Hallucination: Three Field Studies in Religious Experience, Malabar, Fla.: Robert E. Krieger Pub. Co., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, page 301:

Everything was a labyrinthine amalgam of languages, a towering Babel of puns and glossolalia.

2012, Andy Martin, “Text Messenger”, in Literary Review, London: The Literary Review & Quarto, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 404:

Speaking a language one does not know, or speaking elaborate but apparently meaningless speech, while in a trance-like state (or, supposedly, under the influence of a deity or spirits); speaking in tongues.


Brazilian Portuguese

The Portuguese language as spoken and written in Brazil, particularly when it differs from other regional varieties of that language.


Zyrian

A Finnic language spoken by the Komi people.


cot-caught merger

en-noun

cot-caught merger (plural cot-caught mergers)

/ˈkɑt kɔt ˌmɝd͡ʒɚ/

/ˈkɑt kɑt ˌmɝd͡ʒɚ/

/ˈkɒt kɔːt ˌmɜːd͡ʒə/

[ˈkɔt koːt ˌməːd͡ʒə]

/ˈkɔt kɔt ˌmɛɾdʒəɾ/

/ˈkɔt koːt ˌmɵːd͡ʒɘ/

One was /au/-monophthongisation, described earlier in Chapter 2, while the second was the so-called low-back merger (LBM), also referred to as the cot–caught merger because words in these two classes are pronounced the same and speakers cannot hear any small differences in their pronunciation, even when they are present.

2011, Scott F Kiesling, Linguistic Variation and Change, page 81:

(phonology) A phonemic merger in some varieties of English (especially American and Canadian English) in which the vowels in words such as hot and doll (/ɒ/) and in words such as law and talk (/ɔː/) are pronounced identically, making the words cot and caught homophones.