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 written forms, and may also be conveyed through sign languages. 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.
A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance that is introduced by a quotative marker, such as a verb of saying. For example: John said: "I saw Mary today". Quotations in oral speech are also signaled by special prosody in addition to quotative markers. In written text, quotations are signaled by quotation marks. Quotations are also used to present well-known statement parts that are explicitly attributed by citation to their original source; such statements are marked with quotation marks.
A verb is a word that in syntax generally conveys an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done.
In linguistics, a neologism is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that nevertheless has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered a neologism once it is published in a dictionary.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ending with the reunification of the land in 280 by the Western Jin. The novel is based primarily on the Records of the Three Kingdoms, written by Chen Shou in the 3rd century.
Manglish is an informal form of Malaysian English with features of an English-based creole principally used in Malaysia. It is heavily influenced by the main languages of the country, Malay, Chinese languages, and Tamil. It is not one of the official languages spoken in Malaysia.
Chinglish is slang for spoken or written English language that is either influenced by a Chinese language, or is poorly translated. In Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong and Guangxi, the term "Chinglish" refers mainly to Cantonese-influenced English. This term is commonly applied to ungrammatical or nonsensical English in Chinese contexts, and may have pejorative or deprecating connotations. Other terms used to describe the phenomenon include "Chinese English", "China English", "Engrish" and "Sinicized English". The degree to which a Chinese variety of English exists or can be considered legitimate is still up for debate.
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation.
John Langshaw Austin, OBE, FBA was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.
Chinese whispers, or telephone, is an internationally popular children's game in which messages are whispered from person to person and then the original and final messages are compared. This sequential modification of information is called transmission chaining in the context of cultural evolution research, and is primarily used to identify the type of information that is more easily passed on from one person to another.
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that can appear only as part of a larger expression, while a free morpheme is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, and a free morpheme is a type of free form.
Wu is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, and the part of Jiangsu Province south of the Yangtze River, which makes up the cultural region of Wu. Speakers of various Wu languages sometimes labelled their mother tongue as Shanghainese when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhou dialect was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by the turn of the 20th century. The languages of Northern Wu are mutually intelligible with each other, while those of Southern Wu are not.
In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another (given) language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. The term arises when describing the difficulty of achieving the so-called perfect translation. It is based on the notion that there are certain concepts and words that are so interrelated that an accurate translation becomes an impossible task. Some writers have suggested that language carries sacred notions or is intrinsic to national identity. Brian James Baer posits that untranslatability is sometimes seen by nations as proof of the national genius. He quotes Alexandra Jaffe: "When translators talk about untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people".
The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe "the actual use of language in concrete situations". It is used to describe both the production, sometimes called parole, as well as the comprehension of language. Performance is defined in opposition to "competence"; the latter describes the mental knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language.
Yes and no, or similar word pairs, are expressions of the affirmative and the negative, respectively, in several languages, including English. Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English. Modern English uses a two-form system consisting of yes and no. It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse code, and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems.
K.O. 3an Guo is a Taiwanese television series starring George Hu, Xiu, Kirsten Ren, and three out of four members of Fahrenheit as special guests, who starred in the prequels. The title is pronounced as K.O.-san-guo. It is the third installment of the Zhong Ji series; preceded by KO One and The X-Family. This series is a spoof of the 14th century Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.
Jonathan Kos-Read, also known as Cao Cao, is an American film and television actor who has worked mostly in China. While well known in China, his work is little-known in the United States. Kos-Read uses the stage name Cao Cao, which is also the name of the penultimate chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty, a historical figure well-known to most Chinese people.
Mock language is a way of using a language not spoken by or native to a speaker.
In linguistics, anglicisation or anglicization is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce or understand in English. The term commonly refers to the respelling of foreign words or loan words in English, often to a more drastic degree than that implied in, for example, romanisation. One instance is the word "dandelion", modified from the French dent-de-lion. The term can also refer to phonological adaptation without spelling change: for example, pasta is accepted in English with Italian spelling, but anglicised phonetically in being pronounced in American English and in British English. The anglicisation of non-English words for use in English is just one case of the more widespread domestication of foreign words that is a feature of many languages, sometimes involving shifts in meaning. The term does not cover the unmodified adoption of foreign words into English or the unmodified adoption of English words into foreign languages.
