Portal:Language

Introduction

A mural in Teotihuacan, Mexico (c. 2nd century) depicting a person emitting a speech scroll from his mouth, symbolizing speech

Braille writing, a tactile variant of a writing system

Cuneiform is the first known form of written language, but spoken language predates writing by at least tens of thousands of years.

Two girls learning American Sign Language

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.

Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille. In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.

Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Critical examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the relationships between language and thought, how words represent experience, etc., have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greek civilization. Thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have argued that language originated from emotions, while others like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and logical thought. Twentieth century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) argued that philosophy is really the study of language itself. Major figures in contemporary linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky. (Full article...)

Outline of linguistics • Index of language articles

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Precontact distribution of the Natchez language

The Natchez language is the ancestral language of the Natchez people who historically inhabited Mississippi and Louisiana, and who now mostly live among the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples in Oklahoma. The language is considered to be either unrelated to other indigenous languages of the Americas or distantly related to the Muskogean languages.

The phonology of Natchez is atypical in having voicing distinction in its sonorants but not in its obstruents; it also has a wide range of morphophonemic processes. Morphologically, it has complex verbal inflection and a relatively simple nominal inflection (the ergative case marks nouns in transitive clauses), and its syntax is characterized by active-stative alignment and subject-object-verb word order (or more accurately Agent-Object-Verb and Subject-Verb). Natchez storytellers used a specific register, "cannibal speech", to impersonate cannibals, a recurring character in Natchez oral literature. (Full article...)

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... that The Oceanic Languages is so ubiquitous among scholars of the Oceanic languages that it is known simply as "the blue book"?
... that after learning to write with Inuktitut syllabics to help Catholic missionaries learn her language, Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk wrote one of the first Inuktitut-language novels?
... that "Plaza", a recognized Basque surname, comes from the Spanish language?
... that Le langaige du Bresil, one of the earliest documentary sources of any South American language, demonstrates that Europeans and Brazilian indigenous peoples maintained intimate social contacts?
... that the 11.7 million people of Papua New Guinea speak more than 800 languages?
... that code-switching in Lebanon is so common that "hi, كيفك؟ Ça va ?", which combines English, Levantine Arabic and French, is a typical greeting?

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...that a large portion of the vocabulary of the coastal Mozambiquean language Koti derives from a past variety of Swahili?
...that the Ambelau, Buru, Kayeli and Lisela people and their Ambelau, Buru, Kayeli and Lisela languages are unique to the Indonesian islands of Buru and Ambelau?
...that the Korean dialect spoken by ethnic Koreans in Japan has changed so much that some of its speakers don't think it can be properly referred to as "Korean" anymore?
...that the National Language Authority in Pakistan is the first autonomous regulatory institution to have internationally standardized the Urdu language code table and Urdu keyboard for typewriters, teleprinters, and computer software?

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Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time. The oldest surviving Chinese verse, in the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), shows which words rhymed in that period. Scholars have compared these bodies of contemporary evidence with the much later Middle Chinese reading pronunciations listed in the Qieyun rhyme dictionary published in 601 AD, though this falls short of a phonemic analysis. Supplementary evidence has been drawn from cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages and in Min Chinese, which split off before the Middle Chinese period, Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, and early borrowings from and by neighbouring languages such as Hmong–Mien, Kra-Dai, Vietic and Tocharian languages.

Although many details are disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless sonorants. Most recent reconstructions also posit consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. (Full article...)

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Credit: Luca

The Phoenician alphabet was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Aramaic alphabet, a modified form of Phoenician, was the ancestor of modern Arabic script, while Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin, the Cyrillic and the Coptic), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to represent vowels.

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Language News

12 June 2026 – Regulation of artificial intelligence in the United States

The U.S. Department of Commerce orders artificial intelligence company Anthropic to ban non-Americans from accessing its large language models Claude Mythos and Fable 5. (BBC News) (CNBC)

23 May 2026 – Ukraine–Vietnam relations, Kazakhstan–Ukraine relations

In accordance with bilateral agreements, Vietnam grants 40 scholarships to Ukrainians for the 2026–2027 academic year for bachelor's, master's, and postgraduate degrees, including a one-year language course for those who do not speak Vietnamese. Kazakhstan also grants 40 scholarships for similar degrees. (Interfax-Ukraine)

27 February 2026 – Artificial intelligence in government

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rejects a U.S. Department of Defense request to loosen security safeguards on the Claude large language model for potential use in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems. (BBC News) (SRF)

9 February 2026 – Immigration to Sweden

Swedish migration minister Johan Forssell announces the implementation of stricter naturalization requirements from June 6, extending the residency period from five years to eight, imposing a minimum income threshold of 20,000 kr (US$2,225), requiring language and civic knowledge tests, and lengthening waiting times for applicants with criminal records. (Reuters)

1 February 2026 – 68th Annual Grammy Awards