Modern Languages

Language belonging to the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European language family, widely spoken on six continents. The primary language of the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and various Caribbean and Pacific island nations, it is also an official language of India, the Philippines, and many sub-Saharan African countries. It is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world (approximately 1.5 billion speakers), the mother tongue of more than 350 million people, and the most widely taught foreign language. English relies mainly on word order (usually subject-verb-object) to indicate relationships between words (see syntax). Written in the Latin alphabet, it is most closely related to Frisian, German, and Dutch. Its history began with the migration of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons from Germany and Denmark to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought many French words into English. Greek and Latin words began to enter it in the 15th century, and Modern English is usually dated from 1500. English easily borrows words from other languages and has coined many new words to reflect advances in technology. English language, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that is closely related to the Frisian, German, and Dutch (in Belgium called Flemish) languages. English originated in England and is the dominant language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and various island nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is also an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. English is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries of the world, and it is that status that has given it the position of a global lingua franca. It is estimated that about a third of the world’s population, some two billion persons, now use English.

Romance language spoken in Spain and in large parts of the New World. It has more than 358 million speakers, including more than 85 million in Mexico, more than 40 million in Colombia, more than 35 million in Argentina, and more than 31 million in the U.S. Its earliest written materials date from the 10th century, its first literary works from c. 1150. The Castilian dialect, the source of modern standard Spanish, arose in the 9th century in north-central Spain (Old Castile) and had spread to central Spain (New Castile) by the 11th century. In the late 15th century the kingdoms of Castile, León, and Aragon merged, and Castilian became the official language of all of Spain, with Catalan and Galician (effectively a dialect of Portuguese) becoming regional languages and Aragonese and Leonese reduced to a fraction of their original speech areas. Latin American regional dialects are derived from Castilian but differ from it in phonology. Spanish language, Spanish Español, Romance language (Indo-European family) spoken as a first language by some 360 million people worldwide. In the early 21st century, Mexico had the greatest number of speakers (more than 85 million), followed by Colombia (more than 40 million), Argentina (more than 35 million), the United States (more than 31 million), and Spain (more than 30 million). Spanish is the (or an) official language of 18 American countries.

Romance language spoken as a first language by about 72 million people in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (mainly Quebec), and many other countries and regions formerly governed by France. French is an official language of more than 25 countries. Its earliest written materials date from the 9th century. Numerous regional dialects were eventually pushed aside by Francien, the dialect of Paris, adopted as the standard language in the mid-16th century. This largely replaced the dialects of northern and central France, known as the langue d’oïl (from oïl, the northern word for “yes”), and greatly reduced the use of the Occitan language of southern France, known as langue d’oc (from oc, Occitan for “yes”). Regional dialects survive mostly in uneducated rural speech. French grammar has been greatly simplified from Latin. Nouns do not have cases, and masculine and feminine gender are marked not in the noun but in its article or adjective. The verb is conjugated for three persons and for singular and plural; though spelled differently, several of these forms are pronounced identically. French language, French français, probably the most internationally significant Romance language in the world. At the beginning of the 21st century, French was an official language of more than 25 countries. In France and Corsica about 60 million individuals use it as their first language, in Canada more than 7.3 million, in Belgium more than 3.9 million, in Switzerland (cantons of Neuchâtel, Vaud, Genève, Valais, Fribourg) more than 1.8 million, in Monaco some 80,000, in Italy some 100,000, and in the United States (especially Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) some 1.3 million. Furthermore, more than 49 million Africans—in such countries as Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia—use French as a first or second language, and millions of inhabitants of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia use it as their principal international language. Many creole French speakers too use standard French in formal situations.

Also called Northern Chinese, Chinese (Pinyin) Guanhua (“Officials’ Language”), or (Wade-Giles romanization) Kuan-hua, the most widely spoken form of Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is spoken in all of China north of the Yangtze River and in much of the rest of the country and is the native language of two-thirds of the population. Mandarin Chinese is often divided into four subgroups: Northern Mandarin, centering on Beijing and spoken in northern China and the Northeast provinces (Manchuria); Northwestern Mandarin, extending northward from the city of Baoji and through most of northwestern China; Southwestern Mandarin, centering on the area around Chongqing and spoken in Sichuan and adjoining parts of southwestern China; and Southern, or Lower Yangtze, Mandarin, in an area centered on Nanjing. Mandarin Chinese in the form spoken in and around Beijing forms the basis for Modern Standard Chinese—Guoyu, “National Language,” usually called putonghua “common language” by the Chinese. Modern Standard Chinese is also spoken officially on Taiwan.

John DeFrancis worked at Seton Hall University in the Department of Asian Studies’ Chinese Studies program, authoring textbooks for Mandarin Chinese in the early 1960s. John DeFrancis was hired by Prof. John B. Tsu, Ph.D., the founding chair of the Department of Asian Studies. At that time, the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, which was founded in 1951, acted as a leader in the US with respect to teaching Asian Studies and conducting research on the topics in the field. Over 100 hours of audio material were produced at Seton Hall University in Fahy Hall on reel-to-reel tapes. Between 2008-2010, as the condition of the tapes began to deteriorate, the reel-to-reel tapes were digitized to help preserve the audio materials. As such, there may be some audible background noise, clicks and other auditory imperfections in the recordings.

Official language of Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland, used by more than 100 million speakers. It belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. German has four noun cases and masculine, feminine, and neuter genders. Its many dialects belong to either the High German (Hochdeutsch) or Low German (Plattdeutsch) groups. Modern High German, spoken in the central and southern highlands of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is now standard written German, used in administration, higher education, literature, and the mass media in both High and Low German speech areas. German language, German Deutsch, official language of both Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland. German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family, along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish). The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers’ first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century BCE. At that time and for several centuries thereafter, there was only a single “Germanic” language, with little more than minor dialect differences. Only after about the 6th century CE can one speak of a “German” (i.e., High German) language.

Semitic language spoken in a large area including North Africa, most of the Arabian Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East. (See also Afro-Asiatic languages). Scholars have struggled to define Arabic as a language. On the one hand, one can point to the language of the Qurʾān (or Koran, the sacred book of Islam) as the ideal archetype (or al-lughah al-fuṣḥah, “the most eloquent language”). Classical Arabic, in which most pre-modern literary works were composed, closely approaches that language. Modern Standard Arabic, which differs minutely from Classical Arabic in stylistic and lexical considerations, is used in most publications ranging from newspapers to novels and in formal broadcasts such as news programs and political speeches. This article primarily describes these standard varieties. On the other hand, spoken varieties of Arabic—some of which are mutually unintelligible—differ significantly. Such variation may in fact precede the written language by centuries. While these varieties tend to exhibit a number of common features, including the definite article *al- and the paradigmatic mafʿūl passive participle, these features are problematic in defining Arabic either because they are not found uniformly throughout all varieties of the language or because they can be found in other languages. In modern times the chief dialect groups are those of Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.

Romance language spoken by about 170 million people in Portugal, Brazil, and other former Portuguese colonies. The first literary works in Portuguese date from the 13th–14th century. Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon. Dialectal variation in Portugal is limited, but the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are more extensive, including changes in phonology, verb conjugation, and syntax. The four major dialect groups are Northern (Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain), Central, Southern (including the Lisbon dialect), and Insular (including Brazilian and Madeiran) Portuguese. Portuguese language, Portuguese Português, Romance language that is spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and other Portuguese colonial and formerly colonial territories. Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain, is closely related to Portuguese. Portuguese owes its importance—as the second Romance language (after Spanish) in terms of numbers of speakers—largely to its position as the language of Brazil, where in the early 21st century some 187 million people spoke it. In Portugal, the language’s country of origin, there are more than 10 million speakers. It is estimated that there are also some 8 million Portuguese speakers in Africa (Angola, Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe). Portuguese is also spoken by about 678,000 people in the United States, with large communities of speakers in the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Language spoken by about 125 million people on the islands of Japan, including the Ryukyus. The only other language of the Japanese archipelago is Ainu (see Ainu), now spoken by only a handful of people on Hokkaido, though once much more widespread. Japanese is not closely related to any other language, though a distant genetic kinship to Korean is now thought probable by some scholars, and an even more remote relationship to the Altaic languages is possible. Japanese is first attested in the 8th century AD, when Middle Chinese characters were utilized solely for their phonetic value to write native Japanese words. Japanese retains a huge stock of loanwords from Middle Chinese, long adapted to native phonetics. A language isolate (i.e., a language unrelated to any other language) and one of the world’s major languages, with more than 127 million speakers in the early 21st century. It is primarily spoken throughout the Japanese archipelago; there are also some 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and their descendants living abroad, mainly in North and South America, who have varying degrees of proficiency in Japanese. Since the mid-20th century, no nation other than Japan has used Japanese as a first or a second language.

Indo-Aryan language of India, spoken or understood by more than 30% of the country’s population. Modern Standard Hindi is a lingua franca (as well as native language) of millions of people in North India and the official language of the Indian Union. It is effectively a continuation of Hindustani, which developed from Khari Boli, the speech of certain classes and districts in Delhi affiliated with the Mughal court in the 16th–18th centuries. A heavily Persianized variant of Khari Boli used by Muslim authors formed the basis for Urdu. Hindustani was codified by the British at Fort William College in Calcutta (now Kolkata). There Hindu intellectuals promoted a Sanskritized form of Hindustani (see Sanskrit language) written in the Devanagari script (see Indic writing systems) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; it became the progenitor of modern literary Hindi as used by Hindu authors. During the Indian independence movement, Hindustani was regarded as a national unifying factor, but after the partition in 1947 this attitude changed, and the name has practically dropped from use in favour of either Hindi or Urdu. Linguists, particularly George Abraham Grierson, have also used the term Hindi to refer collectively to all the dialects and regional literary languages of the northern Indian plain. Hindi has drastically simplified the complex grammar of Old Indo-Aryan while preserving certain phonetic features. Hindi language, member of the Indo-Aryan group within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the preferred official language of India, although much national business is also done in English and the other languages recognized in the Indian constitution. In India, Hindi is spoken as a first language by nearly 425 million people and as a second language by some 120 million more. Significant Hindi speech communities are also found in South Africa, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Uganda.

Russian Russki yazyk, principal state and cultural language of Russia. Together with Ukrainian and Belarusian, the Russian language makes up the eastern branch of the Slavic family of languages. Russian is the primary language of the overwhelming majority of people in Russia and is also used as a second language in other former republics of the Soviet Union. Russian was also taught extensively in those countries lying within the Soviet sphere of influence, especially in eastern Europe, in the second half of the 20th century. Russian dialects are divided into the Northern group (stretching from St. Petersburg eastward across Siberia), the Southern group (in most of central and southern Russia), and the Central group (between Northern and Southern). Modern literary Russian is based on the Central dialect of Moscow, having basically the consonant system of the Northern dialect and the vowel system of the Southern dialect. The differences between these three dialects are fewer than between the dialects of most other European languages, however.

Romance language spoken by some 66,000,000 persons, the vast majority of whom live in Italy (including Sicily and Sardinia). It is the official language of Italy, San Marino, and (together with Latin) Vatican City. Italian is also (with German, French, and Romansh) an official language of Switzerland, where it is spoken in Ticino and Graubünden (Grisons) cantons by some 666,000 individuals. Italian is also used as a common language in France (the Alps and Côte d’Azur) and in small communities in Croatia and Slovenia. On the island of Corsica a Tuscan variety of Italian is spoken, though Italian is not the language of culture. Overseas (e.g., in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina) speakers sometimes do not know the standard language and use only dialect forms. Increasingly, they only rarely know the language of their parents or grandparents. Standard Italian was once widely used in Somalia and Malta, but no longer. In Libya too its use has died out. Although Italian has a standard literary form, based on the dialect of Florence, the common speech is dialectal or a local variant of Standard Italian. The following dialect groups are distinguished: Northern Italian, or Gallo-Italian; Venetan, spoken in northeastern Italy; Tuscan (including Corsican); and three related groups from southern and eastern Italy—(1) the dialects of the Marche, Umbria, and Rome, (2) those of Abruzzi, Puglia (Apulia), Naples, Campania, and Lucania, and (3) those of Calabria, Otranto, and Sicily.

Indo-European language of the Italic group; ancestor of the modern Romance languages. Originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River, Latin spread with the growth of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then through most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa. The earliest known Latin inscriptions date from the 7th century BC; Latin literature dates from the 3rd century BC. A gap soon appeared between literary (classical) Latin and the popular spoken language, Vulgar Latin. The Romance languages developed from dialects of the latter. During the Middle Ages and much of the Renaissance, Latin was the language most widely employed in the West for scholarly and literary purposes. Until the latter part of the 20th century, its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church. Latin language, Latin lingua Latina, Indo-European language in the Italic group and ancestral to the modern Romance languages. Originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River, Latin spread with the increase of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then throughout most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa. The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire.

Indo-European language spoken mostly in Greece. Its history can be divided into four phases: Ancient Greek, Koine, Byzantine Greek, and Modern Greek. Ancient Greek is subdivided into Mycenaean Greek (14th–13th centuries BC) and Archaic and Classical Greek (8th–4th centuries BC). The language of the latter periods had numerous dialects (e.g., Ionic, Attic). The second phase, Koine (Hellenistic Greek), arose during the reign of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. A common language with simplified grammar, it spread throughout the Hellenized world. Purists who rejected Koine as a corruption of Attic Greek successfully advocated adoption of the Classical language for all writing. Thus, the written form, Byzantine Greek (5th–15th centuries AD), stayed rooted in the Attic tradition while the spoken language continued to develop. Modern Greek, dating from the 15th century, has many local dialects. Standard Modern Greek, Greece’s official written and spoken language, is largely based on a form called Demotic (used in popular speech) but includes elements of Katharevusa, the written language formerly used in government and public life. Greek language, Indo-European language spoken primarily in Greece. It has a long and well-documented history—the longest of any Indo-European language—spanning 34 centuries. There is an Ancient phase, subdivided into a Mycenaean period (texts in syllabic script attested from the 14th to the 13th century BCE) and Archaic and Classical periods (beginning with the adoption of the alphabet, from the 8th to the 4th century BCE); a Hellenistic and Roman phase (4th century BCE to 4th century CE); a Byzantine phase (5th to 15th century CE); and a Modern phase.