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19-646: The Khün varieties share 93% to 100% lexical similarity . Khun is closely related to other Tai languages . Khün shares 90% to 95% lexical similarity with Northern Thai language , 92% to 95% with Lü , 93% to 97% with Shan , and 80% to 83% with standard Thai . In China, there are about 10,000 Tai Khuen ( Chinese : 傣艮/傣痕 ) people in the following areas of Yunnan province (Gao 1999). There are contrastive five or six tones in Khün. The varieties spoken in Keng Tung City, Kang Murng, and Kat Fah have five tones, and

38-565: A Conservative (1968), a book advocating individualism and constitutional literalism. In the book, Pei denounces the income tax as well as communism and other forms of collectivism . Pei was also an internationalist and advocated the introduction of Esperanto into school curricula across the world to supplement local languages. He died on March 2, 1978. Arrangements were made with George Van Tassel's Community Funeral Home in Bloomfield, N.J., and burial at St. Raymond's Cemetery in

57-531: A book entitled One Language For the World and How to Achieve It and sent a copy to the leader of every nation in existence at the time. The book argued that the United Nations should select one language—regardless of whether it was an existing natural language like English or a constructed language like Esperanto —and require it to be taught as a second language to every schoolchild in the world. Pei

76-578: A full professor in 1952. In 1941, he published his first language book, The Italian Language . His facility with languages was in demand in World War II, and Pei served as a language consultant with two agencies of the Department of War . In this role, he wrote language textbooks, developed language courses, and wrote language guidebooks. While working as a professor of Romance Philology at Columbia University, Pei wrote over 50 books, including

95-605: A word. When Chinese symbols (Hanzi) are used for writing in Korean (which are called "Hanja") and in Japanese (which are called "Kanji"), sometimes a few words can be understood in a sentence, but an entire sentence is highly unlikely to be understood even in writing. Japanese and Korean have their own writing systems which are different from Hanzi, so entirely sentences aren't likely to be fully written in borrowed Chinese symbols. A study conducted by Mario Pei in 1949 which analyzed

114-439: Is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. There are different ways to define the lexical similarity and the results vary accordingly. For example, Ethnologue ' s method of calculation consists in comparing a regionally standardized wordlist (comparable to

133-743: Is only one indication of the mutual intelligibility of the two languages, since the latter also depends on the degree of phonetical, morphological, and syntactical similarity. The variations due to differing wordlists weigh on this. For example, lexical similarity between French and English is considerable in lexical fields relating to culture, whereas their similarity is smaller as far as basic (function) words are concerned. Unlike mutual intelligibility, lexical similarity can only be symmetrical. There are words borrowed from Chinese which are called Sino-Korean vocabulary, and there are new Korean words created from Chinese characters , and there are also words borrowed from Sino-Japanese vocabulary . According to

152-872: The Standard Korean Language Dictionary published by the National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL), Sino-Korean represents approximately 57% of the Korean vocabulary. As for Japanese, it has been estimated that about 60% of the words contained in modern Japanese dictionaries are Sino-Japanese , and that about 18–20% of words used in common speech are Sino-Japanese, as measured by the National Institute for Japanese Language in its study of language use in NHK broadcasts from April to June 1989. The usage of such Sino-Japanese words also increase in formal or literary contexts, and in expressions of abstract or complex ideas. Despite

171-514: The Swadesh list ) and counting those forms that show similarity in both form and meaning. Using such a method, English was evaluated to have a lexical similarity of 60% with German and 27% with French . Lexical similarity can be used to evaluate the degree of genetic relationship between two languages. Percentages higher than 85% usually indicate that the two languages being compared are likely to be related dialects . The lexical similarity

190-595: The Bronx followed. Pei was fond of Esperanto , an international auxiliary language . He wrote his positive views on it in his book called One Language for the World . He also wrote a 21-page pamphlet entirely on world language and Esperanto called Wanted: a World Language . Noting that neologisms are of immense value to the continued existence of a living language, as most words are developed as neologisms from root words , Pei stated in The Story of Language : Of all

209-532: The best-sellers The Story of Language (1949) and The Story of English (1952). His other books included Languages for War and Peace (1943; later retitled The World's Chief Languages ), A Dictionary of Linguistics (written with Frank Gaynor, 1954), All About Language (1954), Invitation to Linguistics: A Basic Introduction to the Science of Language (1965), and Weasel Words : Saying What You Don't Mean (1978). Pei wrote The America We Lost: The Concerns of

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228-412: The borrowing of many Chinese words into the Japanese and Korean languages, speakers of the three languages do not have enough mutual intelligibility to be able to communicate with each other. Japanese and Korean aren't tonal languages, but Chinese languages are tonal, which means that the proper pronunciation of a syllable for a word is important for communication, as well as the proper tone when pronouncing

247-587: The degree of differentiation of languages from their parental language (in the case of Romance languages to Latin comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ) produced the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin): The table below shows some lexical similarity values for pairs of selected Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages, as collected and published by Ethnologue . Notes: Mario Pei Mario Andrew Pei (February 16, 1901 – March 2, 1978)

266-450: The five or six phonemic tones occur in checked syllables which are closed syllables ending in a glottal stop (/ʔ/) or an obstruent sound , such as /p/, /t/, or /k/. The table below presents the three tones in the varieties spoken in Keng Tung City, Kang Murng, and Kat Fah. This Kra–Dai languages –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Lexical similarity In linguistics , lexical similarity

285-522: The structure of at least one hundred of the world's languages. In 1923, he began his career teaching languages at City College of New York , and in 1928 he published his translation of Vittorio Ermete de Fiori's Mussolini: The Man of Destiny . Pei received a PhD from Columbia University in 1937, focusing on Sanskrit , Old Church Slavonic , and Old French . That year, he joined the Department of Romance Languages at Columbia University, becoming

304-460: The variety spoken in Murng Lang has six tones. Keng Tung City, Kang Murng, and Murng Lang are part of Kengtung Township . The table below presents the tones in the varieties spoken in Keng Tung City, Kang Murng, Kat Fah, and Murng Lang. These tones occur in smooth syllables which are open syllables or closed syllables ending in a sonorant sound , such as /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /w/, or /j/. Three of

323-489: The words that exist in any language only a bare minority are pure, unadulterated, original roots. The majority are "coined" words, forms that have been in one way or another created, augmented, cut down, combined, and recombined to convey new needed meanings. The language mint is more than a mint; it is a great manufacturing center, where all sorts of productive activities go on unceasingly. While slang may be condemned by purists and schoolteachers, it should be remembered that it

342-443: Was an Italian-born American linguist and polyglot who wrote a number of popular books known for their accessibility to readers without a professional background in linguistics. His book The Story of Language (1949) was acclaimed for its presentation of technical linguistics concepts in ways that were entertaining and accessible to a general audience. Pei was a supporter of uniting humans under one language, and in 1958 published

361-616: Was born in Rome, Italy , and emigrated to the United States with his mother in order to join his father in April 1908. By the time that he was out of high school, he spoke not only English and his native Italian but also French and had studied Latin as well. Over the years, he became fluent in several other languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and German) capable of speaking some thirty others, having become acquainted with

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