English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It originated in early medieval England and, today, is the most spoken language in the world and the third most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.
TriphthongIn phonetics, a triphthong (UKˈtrɪfθɒŋ,_ˈtrɪpθɒŋ , US-θɔːŋ ) (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthonggos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are said to have one target articulator position, diphthongs have two and triphthongs three.
NynorskNynorsk (ˈnỳːnɔʂk) (New Norwegian) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (Landsmål) parallel to the Dano-Norwegian written language (Riksmål). Nynorsk became the name in 1929, and it is after a series of reforms still a variation which is closer to Landsmål, whereas Bokmål is closer to Riksmål and Danish.
BokmålBokmål (ˈbûːkmoːɫ) (UKˈbuːkmɔːl, USˈbʊk-,_ˈboʊk-; book tongue) is an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is the preferred written standard of Norwegian for 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. There is no nationwide standard or agreement on the pronunciation of Bokmål. Bokmål is regulated by the governmental Language Council of Norway. A related, more conservative orthographic standard, commonly known as Riksmål, is regulated by the non-governmental Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature.
Germanic strong verbIn the Germanic languages, a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel. The majority of the remaining verbs form the past tense by means of a dental suffix, and are known as weak verbs. In modern English, strong verbs include sing (present I sing, past I sang, past participle I have sung) and drive (present I drive, past I drove, past participle I have driven), as opposed to weak verbs such as open (present I open, past I opened, past participle I have opened).
Old FrenchOld French (franceis, françois, romanz; Modern French: ancien français) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the 8th and the 14th century. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the langue d'oïl, contrasting with the langue d'oc in the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île de France region; this dialect was a predecessor to Modern French.
EpenthesisIn phonology, epenthesis (ɪˈpɛnθəsɪs,_ɛ-; Greek ἐπένθεσις) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (prothesis) or in the ending syllable (paragoge) or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word epenthesis comes from epi- "in addition to" and en- "in" and thesis "putting". Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence for the addition of a consonant, and for the addition of a vowel, svarabhakti (in Sanskrit) or alternatively anaptyxis (ˌænəpˈtɪksɪs).
Icelandic languageIcelandic (aɪsˈlændɪk; íslenska ˈis.tl̥ɛn.ska) is a North Germanic language spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Due to being a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language Norn. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German.
Consonant clusterIn linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word splits. In the education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or a consonant blend. Some linguists argue that the term can be properly applied only to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable. Others claim that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries.
DiphthongA diphthong (ˈdɪfθɒŋ,_ˈdɪp- ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most varieties of English, the phrase "no highway cowboy" (noʊ_ˈhaɪweɪ_ˈkaʊbɔɪ) has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.
