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77-471: Portuguese is a pluricentric language ; it is the same language with several interacting codified standard forms in many countries. Portuguese is a Romance language with Celtic , Germanic , Greek , and Arabic influence. It was spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before as Galician-Portuguese. With the formation of Portugal as a country in the 12th century, the language evolved into Portuguese. In

154-530: A dictionary of Sri Lankan Tamil. As a result of the Pure Tamil Movement , Indian Tamil tends to avoid loanwords to a greater extent than Sri Lankan Tamil. Coinages of new technical terms also differ between the two. Tamil policy in Singapore and Malaysia tends to follow that of Tamil Nadu regarding linguistic purism and technical coinages. There are some spelling differences, particularly in

231-705: A large dialect continuum defined as a unit culturally. Medieval Hindustani (then known as Hindavi ) was based on a register of the Delhi dialect and has two modern literary forms, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu . Additionally, there are historical literary standards, such as the closely related Braj Bhasha and the more distant Awadhi , as well as recently established standard languages based on what were once considered Hindi dialects: Maithili and Dogri . Other varieties, such as Rajasthani , are often considered distinct languages but have no standard form. Caribbean Hindi and Fijian Hindi also differ significantly from

308-595: A pluricentric language with four standards: Bulgarian (based on the Rup , Balkan and Moesian (" Eastern Bulgarian ") dialects), Macedonian (based on the Western and Central Macedonian dialects ), Gorani (based on the Torlakian dialects ), and Paulician (including Banat Bulgarian ). Politicians and nationalists from Bulgaria are likely to refer to this entire grouping as 'Bulgarian', and to be particularly hostile to

385-639: A struggle against the harsh soil and inclement climate, a character was formed: "that of the sad demeanor, the mistrusting air, courageous, daring, hardworking, loyal, and with strength of character a way of life." Etnografia Transmontana, Lisbon, 1992 The Transmontanos are known in Portugal for their often plentiful table, usually filled with wine, olive oil, sausage and bread. The historical province of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro included 31 municipalities, divided between four districts ( Vila Real , Bragança , Viseu and Guarda ), that include: In 1998 there

462-442: A wide range of vowel allophones: The realization of /ɐ/ in this contrast occurs in a limited morphological context, namely in verbal conjugation between the first person plural present and past perfect indicative forms of verbs such as pensamos ('we think') and pensámos ('we thought'). proposes that it is a kind of crasis rather than phonemic distinction of /a/ and /ɐ/ . It means that in falamos 'we speak' there

539-495: Is a historical province of Portugal located in the northeastern corner of the country, known for its scenery, which includes plateaux, river valleys, mountains, and castles. A first attempt to register its constitution was made under the reign of King Sancho II (1223–1248). A second was made in the reign of his son and successor, Afonso III (1248–1279), under the Inquirições or royal commissions in 1258, intending to base

616-614: Is a pluricentric language with historically more than one written form. Malayalam script is officially recognized, but there are other standardized varieties such as Arabi Malayalam of Mappila Muslims , Karshoni of Saint Thomas Christians and Judeo-Malayalam of Cochin Jews . The Persian language has three standard varieties with official status in Iran (locally known as Farsi), Afghanistan (officially known as Dari ), and Tajikistan (officially known as Tajik ). The standard forms of

693-664: Is a popular idea in Bulgarian politics, but an unpopular one in North Macedonia. English is a pluricentric language, with differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, etc., between each of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, North America, the Caribbean, Ireland, English-speaking African countries, Singapore, India, and Oceania. Educated native English speakers using their version of one of

770-486: Is a uniform stage pronunciation based on a manual by Theodor Siebs that is used in theatres, and, nowadays to a lesser extent, in radio and television news all across German-speaking countries, this is not true for the standards applied at public occasions in Austria, South Tyrol and Switzerland, which differ in pronunciation , vocabulary , and sometimes even grammar . (In Switzerland, the letter ß has been removed from

847-595: Is divided into Northern and Southern varieties. The prestige norms are based on two varieties: that of Coimbra and that of Lisbon . Phonetically, differences emerge within Continental Portuguese. For example, in northern Portugal, the phonemes /b/ and /v/ are less differentiated than in the rest of the Portuguese speaking world (similar to the other languages of the Iberian peninsula). Also,

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924-471: Is frequent. The Armenian language is a pluricentric language with two standard varieties, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian , which have developed as separate literary languages since the eighteenth century. Prior to this, almost all Armenian literature was written in Classical Armenian , which is now solely used as a liturgical language . Eastern and Western Armenian can also refer to

1001-611: Is in an earlier stage of that process. Pre-Islamic Arabic can be considered a polycentric language. In Arabic-speaking countries different levels of polycentricity can be detected. Modern Arabic is a pluricentric language with varying branches correlating with different regions where Arabic is spoken and the type of communities speaking it. The vernacular varieties of Arabic include: In addition, many speakers use Modern Standard Arabic in education and formal settings. Therefore, in Arabic-speaking communities, diglossia

1078-562: Is influenced by Kanak languages in its vocabulary and grammatical structure. African French is another variety. Standard German is often considered an asymmetric pluricentric language; the standard used in Germany is often considered dominant, mostly because of the sheer number of its speakers and their frequent lack of awareness of the Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German varieties. Although there

1155-461: Is much smaller than the number of non-native speakers of English of reasonable competence. In 2018, it was estimated that for every native speaker of English, there are six non-native speakers of reasonable competence, raising the questions of English as a lingua franca as the most widely spoken form of the language. Philippine English (which is predominantly spoken as a second language) has been primarily influenced by American English. The rise of

1232-785: Is no standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound. The IPA Handbook transcribes it as /ɯ/ , but in Portuguese studies /ɨ/ is traditionally used. There are very few minimal pairs for this sound: some examples include pregar [pɾɨˈɣaɾ] ('to nail') vs. pregar [pɾɛˈɣaɾ] ('to preach'; the latter stemming from earlier preegar < Latin praedicāre ), sê [ˈse] ('be!') vs. sé [ˈsɛ] ('see/cathedral') vs. se [sɨ] ('if'), and pêlo [ˈpelu] ('hair') vs. pélo [ˈpɛlu] ('I peel off') vs. pelo [pɨlu] ('for the'), after orthographic changes, all these three words are now spelled pelo . European Portuguese

1309-507: Is now the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico in total number of speakers (L1 and L2 speakers). A report said there are 41 million L1 Spanish speakers and another 11.6 million L2 speakers in the U.S. This puts the US ahead of Colombia (48 million) and Spain (46 million) and second only to Mexico (121 million). The Spanish of Latin Americans has a growing influence on

1386-490: Is related to British English in its common pronunciation and vocabulary; a similar relationship exists between Canadian English and American English.) English was historically pluricentric when it was used across the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland prior to the Acts of Union in 1707. English English and Scottish English are now subsections of British English. In the modern era, there are several major loci of

1463-586: Is rolled, and with heavier contact with the English language than any of the above the pronunciation has shifted to harder sounding consonants in the 20th century. Cajun French equally has been an oral language for generations and it is only recently that its syntax and features been adapted to French orthography. Minor standards can also be found in Belgium and Switzerland , with particular influence of Germanic languages on grammar and vocabulary, sometimes through

1540-674: Is spoken mainly in the Armenian diaspora , especially in the Middle East, France, the US, and Canada. Additionally, Armenian is written in two standard orthographies: classical and reformed Armenian orthography. The former is used by practically all speakers of Western Armenian and by Armenians in Iran , while the latter, which was developed in Soviet Armenia in the 20th century, is used in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh . In

1617-400: Is taught in schools with British curriculum in countries with descendants of British settlers.) Due to globalization and the resulting spread of the language in recent decades, English is becoming increasingly decentralized, with daily use and statewide study of the language in schools growing in most regions of the world. However, in the global context, the number of native speakers of English

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1694-483: Is the Portuguese public television network and also serves as a vehicle for European-Portuguese-providing media content throughout the world. There is a branch of RTP Internacional named RTP África , which serves Lusophone Africa . In estimating the size of the speech community for European Portuguese, one must take into account the consequences of the Portuguese diaspora : immigrant communities located throughout

1771-477: Is the expected prenasal /a/ -raising: [fɐˈlɐmuʃ] , while in falámos 'we spoke' there are phonologically two /a/ in crasis: /faˈlaamos/ > [fɐˈlamuʃ] . Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels ( /e ~ ɛ/ and /o ~ ɔ/ ) contrast only when they are stressed. In unstressed syllables, they occur in complementary distribution. According to Mateus and d'Andrade (2000:19), in European Portuguese,

1848-430: Is usually pronounced by a Swedo-Finn as [ t͡ʃ ] ; in addition, the two tones that are characteristic of Swedish (and Norwegian) are absent from most Finnish dialects of Swedish, which have an intonation reminiscent of Finnish and thus sound more monotonous when compared to Rikssvenska . There are dialects that could be considered different languages due to long periods of isolation and geographical separation from

1925-726: The Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . North American French is the result of French colonization of the New World between the 17th and 18th centuries. In many cases, it contains vocabulary and dialectal quirks not found in Standard Parisian French owing to history: most of the original settlers of Quebec , Acadia , and later what would become Louisiana and northern New England came from Northern and Northwest France, and would have spoken dialects like Norman, Poitevin , and Angevin with far fewer speaking

2002-592: The Sanskritized standard Hindi spoken in India. The Malay language has many local dialects and creolized versions, but it has two main normative varieties which are Malaysian and Indonesian : Indonesian is codified by Indonesia as its own lingua franca based on the dialect spoken in Riau Islands , whereas Malaysia codifies Malaysian based on the vernacular dialect of Johor . Thus, both lects have

2079-587: The call center industry in the Philippines has encouraged some Filipinos to "polish" or neutralize their accents to make them more closely resemble the accents of their client countries. Countries such as Australia , New Zealand , and Canada have their own well-established varieties of English which are the standard within those countries but are far more rarely taught overseas to second language learners. (Standard English in Australia and New Zealand

2156-571: The langues d'oïl . However, government policy made it so that the dialect of Paris would be the method of instruction in schools, and other dialects, like Norman , which has influence from Scandinavian languages, were neglected. Controversy still remains in France over the fact that the government recognizes them as languages of France, but provides no monetary support for them nor has the Constitutional Council of France ratified

2233-466: The standard forms of English are almost completely mutually intelligible, but non-standard forms present significant dialectal variations, and are marked by reduced intelligibility. British and American English are the two most commonly taught varieties in the education systems where English is taught as a second language . British English tends to predominate in Europe and the former British colonies of

2310-625: The Autonomous Community of Galicia in Spain, is very closely related to Portuguese. There is, as yet, no consensus among writers and linguists on whether Galician and Portuguese are still the same language (in fact they were for many centuries, Galician-Portuguese having developed in the region of the former Roman province of Gallaecia, from the Vulgar Latin that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during

2387-487: The French language, including Standard French (also known as Parisian French), Canadian French (including Quebec French and Acadian French ), Belgian French , American French (for instance, Louisiana French ), Haitian French , and African French . Until the early 20th century, the French language was highly variable in pronunciation and vocabulary within France, with varying dialects and degrees of intelligibility,

European Portuguese - Misplaced Pages Continue

2464-554: The German-speaking area of Europe), and by different terminology employed in law and administration. A list of Austrian terms for certain food items has even been incorporated into EU law , even though it is clearly incomplete. Scholarly scepticism in German dialectology about the pluricentric status of German has led some linguists to detect a One Standard German Axiom (OSGA) as active in the field. The Hindi languages are

2541-460: The Spanish province of Galicia to the north of Portugal, the native language is Galician. Both Portuguese and Galician are very similar and natives can understand each other as they share the same recent common ancestor. Portuguese and Spanish are different languages, although they share 89% of their lexicon . Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables;

2618-557: The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, India, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, and elsewhere. The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian . In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be elaborated to appear as separate languages, e.g. Malaysian and Indonesian , Hindi and Urdu , while Serbo-Croatian

2695-616: The West Indies, Africa, and Asia, where English is not the first language of the majority of the population. (The Falkland Islands , a British territory off the southeast coast of South America with English as its native language, have their own dialect , while British English is the standard.) In contrast, American English tends to dominate instruction in Latin America, Liberia, and East Asia (In Latin America, British English

2772-459: The alphabet, with ss as its replacement.) Sometimes this even applies to news broadcasts in Bavaria , a German state with a strong separate cultural identity. The varieties of Standard German used in those regions are to some degree influenced by the respective dialects (but by no means identical to them), by specific cultural traditions (e.g. in culinary vocabulary, which differs markedly across

2849-584: The central dialects of Svealand and Götaland that came to constitute the base for the standard Rikssvenska . Dialects such as Elfdalian , Jamtlandic , and Gutnish all differ as much, or more, from standard Swedish than the standard varieties of Danish . Some of them have a standardized orthography, but the Swedish government has not granted any of them official recognition as regional languages and continues to look upon them as dialects of Swedish. Most of them are severely endangered and spoken by elderly people in

2926-489: The coast due to the lack of good roads, and suffered the effects of poverty and isolation. Emigration was often the only option. Today the situation has improved with better roads, but most villages are still losing population as youngsters there move to bigger towns for a better life. In small villages the ageing inhabitants still eke out a living from small farms. Corn , rye , potatoes , wheat , olive oil , chestnuts , and grapes for wine (namely Port wine ) have been

3003-474: The coast or emigrate to other European countries such as France , Luxembourg and Switzerland , and to Brazil . The most important towns in the region are Vila Real , Bragança , Chaves , Mirandela , Macedo de Cavaleiros , Lamego , Peso da Régua , Mogadouro , Miranda do Douro and Valpaços . All are relatively small, with less than 50 000 inhabitants. Many people in the region still live in small villages. Traditionally these villages were cut off from

3080-749: The countryside. The vast majority of Tamil speakers reside in southern India, where it is the official language of Tamil Nadu and of Puducherry , and one of 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India . It is also one of two official languages in Sri Lanka , one of four official languages in Singapore , and is used as the medium of instruction in government-aided Tamil primary schools in Malaysia . Other parts of

3157-652: The dialect of Bogotá) is valued for its clear pronunciation. The Judeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino ; not to be confused with Latino ) spoken by Sephardi Jews can be found in Israel and elsewhere; it is usually considered a separate language. Two varieties exist, though only one written standard remains (regulated by the Swedish Academy of Sweden): Rikssvenska (literally "Realm Swedish", also less commonly known as "Högsvenska", 'High Swedish' in Finland),

European Portuguese - Misplaced Pages Continue

3234-462: The dialect of Paris. This, plus isolation from developments in France, most notably the drive for standardization by L'Académie française , make North American dialects of the language quite distinct. Acadian French, spoken in New Brunswick , Canada, has many words no longer used in modern France, much of it having roots in the 17th century, and a distinct intonation. Québécois, the largest of

3311-452: The dialects, has a distinct pronunciation that is not found in Europe in any measure and a greater difference in vowel pronunciation, and syntax tends to vary greatly. Cajun French has some distinctions not found in Canada in that there is more vocabulary derived from both local Native American and African dialects and a pronunciation of the letter r that has disappeared in France entirely. It

3388-653: The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the standard was known as Pǔtōnghuà (普通话/普通話, literally "common speech"), but was defined in the same way as Guóyǔ in the Republic of China now governing Taiwan. It also became one of the official languages of Singapore , under the name Huáyǔ (华语/華語, literally "Chinese language"). Although the three standards remain close, they have diverged to some extent. Most Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and Singapore came from

3465-473: The ethnic variants of the standard language makes translation and second language teaching impossible"; however there have been many cases of Serbian films shown with subtitles in cinemas and on TV in Croatia, to the amusement of the audience. Spanish has both national and regional linguistic norms, which vary in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, but all varieties are mutually intelligible and

3542-527: The grammar of their pronominal systems. The result is that communication between the two varieties of the language without previous exposure can be occasionally difficult, although speakers of European Portuguese tend to understand Brazilian Portuguese better than vice versa, due to the heavy exposure to music, soap operas etc. from Brazil . Word ordering can be dramatically different between European and Brazilian Portuguese, without significantly hampering mutual intelligibility . A unified orthography for all

3619-552: The greater use of Grantha letters to write loanwords and foreign names in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. The Tamil Nadu script reform of 1978 has been accepted in Singapore and Malaysia, but not Sri Lanka. Tr%C3%A1s-os-Montes e Alto Douro 41°17′43.696″N 7°44′46.550″W  /  41.29547111°N 7.74626389°W  / 41.29547111; -7.74626389 Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro ( Portuguese pronunciation: [ˌtɾaz uʒ ˈmõtɨz i ˈaltu ˈðoɾu] )

3696-634: The influence of local dialects. In Belgium, for example, various Germanic influences in spoken French are evident in Wallonia (for example, to blink in English, and blinken in German and Dutch, blinquer in Walloon and local French, cligner in standard French). Ring ( rocade or périphérique in standard French) is a common word in the three national languages for beltway or ring road. Also, in Belgium and Switzerland, there are noted differences in

3773-463: The language across the globe through music, culture and television produced using the language of the largely bilingual speech community of US Latinos. In Argentina and Uruguay the Spanish standard is based on the local dialects of Buenos Aires and Montevideo . This is known as Rioplatense Spanish , (from Rio de la Plata (River Plate)) and is distinguishable from other standard Spanish dialects by voseo . In Colombia , Rolo (a name for

3850-403: The main agricultural products. Granite and mineral water are also important industries. There is a popular saying: "Beyond Marão , those who rule are those who're there" ("Para lá do Marão mandam os que lá estão"). Lisbon has paid little attention to this area until recent years. According to Padre Fontes, a local ethnographer, "in this centuries-old "corner of the corner of Europe", alone, in

3927-405: The modern day. One example would be the area's distinctive traditional bagpipe, the gaita transmontana . Not only did Trás-os-Montes maintain a piping tradition as bagpipes in general declined throughout Europe, but the regional bagpipe also shows many aspects of pre-modern musical scales which have been preserved. Also, it's in this region that is spoken the second official language of Portugal,

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4004-782: The modern era, Catalan is a pluricentric language with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. This language is internationally known as Catalan , as in Ethnologue . This is also the most commonly used name in Catalonia , but also in Andorra and the Balearic Islands , probably due to the prestige of the Central Catalan dialect spoken in and around Barcelona . However, in the Valencian Community ,

4081-464: The notion that Macedonian is an autonomous language separate from Bulgarian, which Macedonian politicians and citizens tend to claim. As of 2021, the hypothesis that Eastern South Slavic, 'Greater Bulgarian', 'Bulgaro-Macedonian', or simply 'Bulgarian', is a pluricentric language with several mutually intelligible official standards in the same way that Serbo-Croatian is, and Czechoslovak used to be, has not yet been fully developed in linguistics; it

4158-487: The number system when compared to standard Parisian or Canadian French, notably in the use of septante , octante/huitante and nonante for the numbers 70, 80 and 90. In other standards of French, these numbers are usually denoted soixante-dix (sixty-ten), quatre-vingts (fourscore) and quatre-vingt-dix (fourscore-and-ten). French varieties spoken in Oceania are also influenced by local languages. New Caledonian French

4235-467: The official language of Sweden, and Finlandssvenska which, alongside Finnish, is the other official language of Finland. There are differences in vocabulary and grammar, with the variety used in Finland remaining a little more conservative. The most marked differences are in pronunciation and intonation: Whereas Swedish speakers usually pronounce /k/ before front vowels as [ ɕ ] , this sound

4312-640: The official name of this language is Valencian . One reason for this is political (see Serbo-Croatian for a similar situation), but this variant does have its own literary tradition that dates back to the Reconquista . Although mutually intelligible with other varieties of Catalan, Valencian has lexical peculiarities and its own spelling rules, which are set out by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua , created in 1998. However, this institution recognizes that Catalan and Valencian are varieties of

4389-501: The original alveolar trill /r/ remains common in many northern dialects (especially in rural areas), like Transmontano , Portuense , Minhoto , and much of Beirão . Another regionalism can be found in the south and the islands with the use of the gerund in the present progressive tense rather than the infinitive. Portuguese is spoken by a significant minority in Andorra and Luxembourg . There are also immigrant communities in France and Germany. The Galician language , spoken in

4466-547: The prestige Shtokavian dialect, major differences in intelligibility are identified not on the basis of standardised varieties, but rather dialects, like Kajkavian and Chakavian . According to at least one linguistics scholar, "[l]exical differences between the ethnic variants are extremely limited, even when compared with those between closely related Slavic languages (such as standard Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian), and grammatical differences are even less pronounced. More importantly, complete understanding between

4543-727: The same orthographic rules are shared throughout. In Spain , Standard Spanish is based upon the speech of educated speakers from Madrid . All varieties spoken in the Iberian Peninsula are grouped as Peninsular Spanish . Canarian Spanish (spoken in the Canary Islands ), along with Spanish spoken in the Americas (including Spanish spoken in the United States , Central American Spanish , Mexican Spanish , Andean Spanish , and Caribbean Spanish ), are particularly related to Andalusian Spanish . The United States

4620-478: The same dialectal basis, and linguistic sources still tend to treat the standards as different forms of a single language. In popular parlance, however, the two varieties are often thought of as distinct tongues in their own rights due to the growing divergence between them and for political reasons. Nevertheless, they retain a high degree of mutual intelligibility despite a number of differences in vocabulary (including many false friends ) and grammar. Malayalam

4697-672: The same language. For their part, there are specific varieties in the two major Balearic islands, Mallorcan ( Catalan : mallorquí ) in Mallorca , Menorcan ( menorquí ) in Menorca , Ibizan ( eivissenc ) in Ibiza . The University of the Balearic Islands is the language regulator for these varieties. Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local varieties of Chinese . These varieties had diverged widely from

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4774-551: The south bank of the Douro river included in the districts of Viseu and Guarda . The name — Beyond-the-Mountains and Upper Douro — refers to the location on the "other" (eastern) side of such mountains as Marão, Alvão and Gerês, which separate the coast from the interior, and along the upper valley of the Douro River . This isolation kept the province poor and underpopulated for centuries, causing many people to move to

4851-754: The southeast coast of China, where the local dialects lack the retroflex initials /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ/ found in northern dialects, so that many speakers in those places do not distinguish them from the apical sibilants /ts tsʰ s/. Similarly, retroflex codas ( erhua ) are typically avoided in Taiwan and Singapore. There are also differences in vocabulary, with Taiwanese Mandarin absorbing loanwords from Min Chinese , Hakka Chinese , and Japanese , and Singaporean Mandarin borrowing words from English, Malay , and southern varieties of Chinese. Some linguists and scholars, mostly from Bulgaria and Greece , but some also from other countries, consider Eastern South Slavic to be

4928-798: The standard European dialect, but have undergone their own phonetic and grammatical developments, sometimes reminiscent of the spoken Brazilian variant. A number of creoles of Portuguese have developed in African countries, for example in Guinea-Bissau and on the island of São Tomé . Serbo-Croatian is a pluricentric language with four standards (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian) promoted in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Montenegro , and Serbia . These standards do differ slightly, but do not hinder mutual intelligibility . Rather, as all four standardised varieties are based on

5005-517: The stressed [ɐ] only occurs in the following three contexts: In Greater Lisbon (according to NUTS III , which does not include Setúbal ) /e/ can be centralized [ɐ] before palatal sounds ( /j, ɲ, ʃ, ʒ, ʎ/ ); e.g. roupeiro [ʁoˈpɐjɾu] , brenha [ˈbɾɐ(ʲ)ɲɐ] , texto [ˈtɐ(ʲ)ʃtu] , vejo [ˈvɐ(ʲ)ʒu] , coelho [kuˈɐ(ʲ)ʎu] . European Portuguese possesses a near-close near-back unrounded vowel . It occurs in unstressed syllables such as in pegar [pɯ̽ˈɣaɾ] ('to grip'). There

5082-447: The territory of Trás-os-Montes on so-called "new towns" under direct control of the Crown. Afonso III gave it its charter in 1253, referring to the town, "a hill opposite the Crespos", which already had a core of settlements organized around the Church of St. Facundo. Since 1833 the region has been divided into two districts on the right (northern) bank of the Douro river — Vila Real and Bragança , with 5 other municipalities on

5159-416: The three are based on the Tehrani , Kabuli , and Dushanbe varieties, respectively. The Persian alphabet is used for both Farsi (Iranian) and Dari (Afghan). Traditionally, Tajiki is also written with Perso-Arabic script . In order to increase literacy, a Latin alphabet (based on the Common Turkic Alphabet ) was introduced in 1917. Later in the late 1930s, the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic promoted

5236-421: The time of the Roman Empire) or distinct yet closely related languages. Galicia has expressed interest in joining the CPLP as an associate observer pending permission from the Spanish government. The Instituto Camões is a Portuguese international institution dedicated to the worldwide promotion of the Portuguese language, Portuguese culture, and international aid, on behalf of the Government of Portugal. RTP

5313-415: The two major dialectal blocks into which the various non-standard dialects of Armenian are categorized. Eastern Armenian is the official language of the Republic of Armenia . It is also spoken, with dialectal variations, by Iranian Armenians , Armenians in Karabakh (see Karabakh dialect ), and in the Armenian diaspora , especially in the former Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia , Ukraine). Western Armenian

5390-560: The use of Cyrillic alphabet , which remains the most widely used system today. Attempts to reintroduce the Perso-Arabic script were made. The language spoken by Bukharan Jews is called Bukhori (or Bukharian), and is written in Hebrew alphabet . Apart from the Galician question , Portuguese varies mainly between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese (also known as "Lusitanian Portuguese", "Standard Portuguese" or even " Portuguese Portuguese "). Both varieties have undergone significant and divergent developments in phonology and

5467-404: The varieties (including a limited number of words with dual spelling) has been approved by the national legislatures of the Portuguese-speaking countries and is now official; see Spelling reforms of Portuguese for additional details. Formal written standards remain grammatically close to each other, despite some minor syntactic differences. African Portuguese and Asian Portuguese are based on

5544-437: The vowels /a ɛ e ɔ o/ tend to be raised to [ɐ ɛ ɨ ɔ u] when they are unstressed (see below for details). The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing vowels to a greater extent than others. Falling diphthongs are composed of a vowel followed by one of the high vowels /i/ or /u/ ; although rising diphthongs occur in the language as well, they can be interpreted as hiatuses . European Portuguese possesses quite

5621-521: The world have Tamil-speaking populations, but are not loci of planned development. Tamil is diglossic , with the literary variant used in books, poetry, speeches and news broadcasts while the spoken variant is used in everyday speech, online messaging and movies. While there are significant differences in the standard spoken forms of the different countries, the literary register is mostly uniform, with some differences in semantics that are not perceived by native speakers. There has been no attempt to compile

5698-494: The world in the Americas, Australia, Europe and Africa. Pluricentric language A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms , often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in

5775-526: The written form used by scholars, Literary Chinese , which was modelled on the language of the Chinese classics . As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on northern varieties , known as Guānhuà (官話, literally "speech of officials"), known as Mandarin in English after the officials. Knowledge of this language

5852-631: Was a referendum on the creation of new Administrative Regions. The proposed region of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro included these 31 municipalities, plus Mêda , also from the District of Guarda . The referendum had low participation (less than the required 50% to be mandatory), but the No won and the Administrative Regions were not created. Due to the region's isolation from outside influence, many folkloric forms have remained preserved up to

5929-527: Was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. In the early years of the 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which was based on northern dialects . In the 1930s, a standard national language Guóyǔ (國語, literally "national language") was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect , but with vocabulary also drawn from other northern varieties. After

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