World Languages

Nepali or Nepalese (नेपाली) is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.

It is the official language and de facto lingua franca ofNepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar (Burma). In India, it is one of the country's 23 official languages: Nepali has official language status in the formerly independent state ofSikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. Geographically, Nepali is considered to be the easternmost of the Pahari languages, a geographic group of languages spoken across the lower elevations of theHimalaya range, from eastern Nepal through the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The influence of the Nepali language can also be seen in Bhutan and some parts of Burma. Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Tibeto-Burman languages, most notably Nepal Bhasa (Newari), and shows Tibeto-Burmaninfluences. Nepali is closely related to the Hindi languages and is sometimes considered mutually intelligible to some extent, yet is more conservative with more Sanskritic derivations and fewer Persian or English loan words than Hindi-Urdu.

Historically, the language was first called Khaskura(language of the khas 'rice farmers'), then Gorkhali orGurkhali (language of the Gurkha) before the termNepali was taken from Newari. Other names includeParbatiya ("mountain language", identified with theParbatiya people of Nepal) and Lhotshammikha (the "southern language" of the Lhotshampa people of Bhutan). The name 'Nepali' is ambiguous, as it was originally a pronunciation of Newari, the Tibeto-Burman language of the capital Kathmandu.

The people of Vietnam regained independence and broke away from China in AD 938 after their victory at the battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive dynasties flourished along with geographic and political expansion deeper into Southeast Asia, until it was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. Efforts to resist the French eventually led to their expulsion from the country in the mid-20th century, leaving a nation divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued during theVietnam War, ending with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.

Emerging from this prolonged military engagement, the war-ravaged nation was politically isolated. The government’s centrally planned economic decisions hindered post-war reconstruction^{[citation needed]} and its treatment of the losing side engendered more resentment than reconciliation. In 1986, it instituted economic and political reforms and began a path towards international reintegration.^{[citation needed]} By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations. Its economic growth had been among the highest in the world in the past decade.^[vague] These efforts culminated in Vietnam joining the World Trade Organization in 2007.

Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since around the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest written evidence is found in the Linear B clay tabletsin the "Room of the Chariot Tablets", an LMIII A-context (c. 1400 BC) region ofKnossos, in Crete, making Greek one of the world's oldest recorded living languages. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest attestation is matched only by the Anatolian languages.

The later Greek alphabet (unrelated to Linear B) is derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods:

Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. Today, Russian is widely used outsideRussia. Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc).Because of the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century and was widely taught in primary and higher education as a foreign language in many countries all over the world^{[vague][citation needed]}. Hence, the language is one of the sixofficial languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatalsecondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft andhard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction ofunstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicatedorthographically though, according to the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent (знак ударения) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names).

Korean (한국어/조선말, see below) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers. In the 15th century a national writing system was developed by Sejong the Great, currently called Hangul.