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Various definitions of the term world language have been proposed; there is no general consensus about which one to use. [4] [5]One definition proffered by Congolese linguist Salikoko Mufwene is "languages spoken as vernaculars or as lingua francas outside their homelands and by populations other than those ethnically or nationally associated with them".
These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, that is, at the level of syllable, word or phrase. These include prosody , pitch, length , stress , intensity, tone and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech. [ 72 ]
The global language system is the "ingenious pattern of connections between language groups". [1] Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan developed this theory in 2001 in his book Words of the World: The Global Language System and according to him, "the multilingual connections between language groups do not occur haphazardly, but, on the contrary, they constitute a surprisingly strong and efficient ...
Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features. The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the languages in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying ...
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's languages, only those about which stand-alone articles exist in this encyclopedia.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. [1] [2] [3] The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics ...
The official languages of the United Nations are the six languages used in United Nations (UN) meetings and in which the UN writes all its official documents. [1]Five languages were chosen in 1946 as official languages around when the United Nations was founded: Chinese, [2] English (British English with Oxford spelling), [3] French, Russian, and Spanish.
Researchers accept that there are multiple categories of language, even as they often disagree on the explicit number of those categories. De Swaan's analysis of the world language system, which is arguably the most common analysis, distinguishes between five different types of languages, one of which is "English as global lingua franca. [2]"