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The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. [1] Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic ...
The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, [1] involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. [2]Language use was first systematically documented in Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd Millennia BCE, offering glossaries on Sumerian cuneiform usage and meaning, and phonetical vocabularies of foreign languages.
One of the most relevant linguistic groups in Brazil, and one which likely spread in a large scale over Brazilian territory before 1500, is the Tupi group. The main language family within this larger group is the Tupi-Guaraní. These peoples may have first inhabited the headwaters of the Madeira, Tapajós and Xingu rivers.
The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. The Romance languages have more than 700 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas , Europe , and Africa , as well as in many smaller regions scattered through the world.
Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil, [5] being widely spoken by nearly all of its population. Brazil is the most populous Portuguese-speaking country in the world, with its lands comprising the majority of Portugal's former colonial holdings in the Americas.
The term General Language (Portuguese: língua geral) refers to lingua francas that emerged in South America during the 16th and 17th centuries, [1] the two most prominent being the Paulista General Language, which was spoken in the region of Paulistania but is now extinct, and the Amazonian General Language, whose modern descendant is Nheengatu.