Portal:Language

Wikimedia portal

Portal maintenance status: (January 2019)

This portal's subpages have been checked by an editor, and are needed.

Please take care when editing, especially if using automated editing software. Learn how to update the maintenance information here.

Welcome to the Language Portal Welcome to the Language Portal

edit

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

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected language - show another

Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, Bāṅlā [baŋˈla] ⁱ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken by the Bengali people, native to the Bengal region (Bangladesh, India's West Bengal and Tripura) of South Asia. With over 242 million (24.2 crore) native speakers and another 43 million (4.3 crore) as second language speakers as of 2025, Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world.

Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India. It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand. Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas (Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions. (Full article... )

List of selected language articles

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that English missionary Reverend Thomas Sparshott co-wrote a book in Swahili, and his daughter Margaret Elwyn Sparshott was responsible as matron for 22 hospitals in World War I?
... that the Greco-Australian dialect , a variety of Modern Greek, blends words with English roots into the Greek language?
... that Oey Kim Tiang was one of two "men with no name" to translate Jin Yong's Condor Trilogy into vernacular Malay?
... that language activist Hasan Ali spent more than 20 years compiling a dictionary of the Osing 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 in 1944, the Tuvan-language journal Lenin–Stalinnьꞑ tugunuꞑ adaa-pile switched from the Latin script to the Cyrillic script?

edit

More did you know - show different entries

...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?

More Did you know

edit

Related portals

Selected topic - show another

Pierre Trudeau is the father of the Official Languages Act , which in 1969 made Canada officially bilingual.

The official languages of Canada are English and French, which "have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada," according to Canada's constitution. "Official bilingualism " (French: bilinguisme officiel) is the term used in Canada to collectively describe the policies, constitutional provisions, and laws that ensure legal equality of English and French in the Parliament and courts of Canada, protect the linguistic rights of English- and French-speaking minorities in different provinces, and ensure a level of government services in both languages across Canada.

In addition to the symbolic designation of English and French as official languages, official bilingualism is generally understood to include any law or other measure that:

mandates that the federal government conduct its business in both official languages and provide government services in both languages;
encourages lower tiers of government (most notably the provinces and territories, but also some municipalities) to conduct themselves in both official languages and to provide services in both English and French rather than in just one or the other;
places obligations on private actors in Canadian society to provide access to goods or services in both official languages (such as the requirement that food products be labelled in both English and French);
provides support to non-government actors to encourage or promote the use or the status of one or the other of the two official languages. This includes grants and contributions to groups representing the English-speaking minority in Quebec and the French-speaking minorities in the other provinces to assist with the establishment of an infrastructure of cultural supports and services. (Full article... )

List of selected topics

edit

Selected picture - show another

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Credit: © Hans Hillewaert

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek.

More selected pictures

More...

edit

Language News

29 September 2025 – Hungary–Ukraine relations, Telecommunications in Hungary

Hungary blocks access to 12 Ukrainian news websites to reciprocate Ukraine's earlier ban on several Hungarian-language portals. (Reuters)

5 September 2025 – Anglophone Crisis

A roadside bomb kills seven Cameroonian soldiers in the Southwest Region. An English-speaking separatist group claims responsibility for the bombing. (ABC News)

13 June 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis

Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last Shah, writes in Farsi calling for the Iranian military to abandon the Islamic Republic and accuses Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of forcing Iranians into the war. He also refers to the war as "Khamenei's war and the Islamic Republic's war". (Jerusalem Post)

Language news from Wikinews...

edit