In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two phones represent two separate phonemes in the language.
Eh is a spoken interjection used in many varieties of English. The oldest Oxford English Dictionary defines eh as an "interjectional interrogative particle often inviting assent to the sentiment expressed." Today, while eh has many different uses, it is most popularly used in a manner similar in meaning to "Excuse me?", "Please repeat that", "Huh?", or to otherwise mark a question. It is also commonly used as an alternative to the question tag "right?", as a method for inciting a reply, as in "Don't you think?", "You agree with me, right?", as in, "It's nice here, eh?". In the Americas, it is most commonly associated with Canada and Canadian English, though it is also common in England, Scotland, and New Zealand. It is also known in some American regions bordering Canada, including the area stretching from northern Wisconsin up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Similar interjections exist in many other languages, such as Azerbaijani and Italian.
Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially appearing in some speakers as far north as Erie County, as far west as Youngstown, Ohio, and as far south as Clarksburg, West Virginia. Commonly associated with the working class of Pittsburgh, users of the dialect are colloquially known as "Yinzers". The dialect is even heard in the town of Hancock, Maryland.
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The two words may be spelled the same, for example rose (flower) and rose, or spelled differently, as in rain, reign, and rein. The term homophone sometimes applies to units longer or shorter than words, for example a phrase, letter, or groups of letters which are pronounced the same as a counterpart. Any unit with this property is said to be homophonous.
Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German, is a variation of Palatine German spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Amish, Mennonites, Fancy Dutch, and other related groups in the United States and Canada. There are approximately 300,000 native speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States and Canada.
Plautdietsch or Mennonite Low German is a Low Prussian dialect of East Low German with Dutch influence that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Vistula delta area of Royal Prussia. The word Plautdietsch translates to "flat German". In other Low German dialects, the word for Low German is usually realised as Plattdütsch/Plattdüütsch or Plattdüütsk, but the spelling Plautdietsch is used to refer specifically to the Vistula variant of the language.
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation. Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, negative concord occurs in a minority of languages.
Over 50 million Americans claim German ancestry, which makes them the largest single claimed ancestry group in the United States. Around 1.06 million people in the United States speak the German language at home. It is the second most spoken language in North Dakota and is the third most spoken language in 16 other states.
Pleonasm is redundancy in linguistic expression, such as "black darkness," "burning fire," "the man he said," or "vibrating with motion." It is a manifestation of tautology by traditional rhetorical criteria and might be considered a fault of style. Pleonasm may also be used for emphasis, or because the phrase has become established in a certain form. Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature.
Belgian French is the variety of French spoken mainly among the French Community of Belgium, alongside related Oïl languages of the region such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois, and Lorrain (Gaumais). The French language spoken in Belgium differs very little from that of France or Switzerland. It is characterized by the use of some terms that are considered archaic in France, as well as loanwords from languages such as Walloon, Picard, and Belgian Dutch.
A contraction is a shortened version of the spoken and written forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters and sounds.
Gairaigo is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese, but in modern times, primarily from English, Portuguese, Dutch, and modern Chinese dialects, such as Standard Chinese and Cantonese. These are primarily written in the katakana phonetic script, with a few older terms written in Chinese characters (kanji); the latter are known as ateji.
Frankish, also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 9th century.
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of its capital city, Port Moresby.
Nigerian Pidgin, also known as Naija or Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is sometimes referred to as Pijin, Brokun 'Ullu' or "Vernacular". It can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, dialect or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting. In the 2010s, a common orthography was developed for Pidgin which has been gaining significant popularity in giving the language a harmonized writing system.
North-Central American English is an American English dialect, or dialect in formation, native to the Upper Midwestern United States, an area that somewhat overlaps with speakers of the separate Inland Northern dialect situated more in the eastern Great Lakes region. In the United States, it is also known as the Upper Midwestern or North-Central dialect and stereotypically recognized as a Minnesota accent or sometimes Wisconsin accent. It is considered to have developed in a residual dialect region from the neighboring Western, Inland Northern, and Canadian dialect regions.
Jambi Malay, is a Malayic language primarily spoken by the Jambi Malay people in Jambi, Indonesia, but also spoken by migrants who have settled in Jambi. The Jambi Malay language is considered as a dialect of the Malay language that is mainly spoken in Jambi, but it is also used in the southern part of Riau and the northern part of South Sumatra. In Jambi, the Jambi Malay language has eight dialects, including the Tanjung Jabung dialect, Jambi City dialect, Muaro Jambi dialect, Batanghari dialect, Tebo dialect, Bungo dialect, Sarolangun dialect, and Merangin dialect. The Jambi Malay language is used as a lingua franca and for interaction among the various ethnic groups in Jambi. The differences between each dialect in the Jambi Malay language range from about 51 to 80 percent.
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.
Midland American English is a regional dialect or super-dialect of American English, geographically lying between the traditionally-defined Northern and Southern United States. The boundaries of Midland American English are not entirely clear, being revised and reduced by linguists due to definitional changes and several Midland sub-regions undergoing rapid and diverging pronunciation shifts since the early-middle 20th century onwards.
Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter, is a constructed language developed by the linguist and polyglot Nick Farmer for The Expanse television series. In the universe, it was spoken by Belters, inhabitants of the asteroid belt and the moons of outer planets of the Solar System.
