Languages
These posts contains introductions and study guides for many languages. These guides focus primarily on how to master natural languages rather than on systematic linguistic study of natural languages.
The content of posts is organized into languages. There are introductions to languages about pronunciation, writing system, grammar, vocabulary, logic, rhetoric, etc.
The classification and relationships of languages refer to ISO 639. Use ISO 639-3 codes as language identifiers. But the writing order of content is guided by my personal interests. My main goal was not to study obscure languages, so most of the languages presented were chosen from the ISO 639-1 list.
Also refer to:
The following is my reference when choosing study objects:
- Wikipedia: List of languages by total number of speakers
- Wikipedia: List of ISBN registration groups
- Usage statistics of content languages for websites
- Interested literature reading and domain-specific languages.
- The language itself is fun.
Afroasiatic Languages
Standard Arabic
ISO 639-3 Code: arb
Indo-European Languages
Ancient Greek
ISO 639-3 Code: grc
English
ISO 639-3 Code: eng
Learning value:
- Total users exceed 1 billion.
- Occupies 2 one-digit prefix partitions in ISBN.
- Website language accounts for more than 50%.
- Main language for scientific literature and academic communication.
About the writting system:
English is written using the standard Latin alphabet, in addition to Arabic numerals and several punctuation marks. Foreign words may be spelled using Latin letters that are not part of the standard Latin alphabet. This occurs mainly with words borrowed from other languages that also use the Latin writing system.
In addition, due to the serious disconnect between the spelling and pronunciation of English words, an additional phonetic system is needed to represent the pronunciation of words. You can use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) of the International Phonetic Association to notate phonetic notation. However, many English dictionaries also have their own phonetic notations. Even if some dictionaries use IPA, they will undergo their own adjustments. My personal suggestion is to master one or two commonly used dictionary phonetic notation methods.
About phonetics:
The phonetic system of English is not complicated. There is no complicated intonation system and there are no particularly difficult phonemes to pronounce. However, due to historical reasons, there is a serious disconnect between the spelling and pronunciation of words. This adds a lot of learning costs.
About grammar and vocabulary:
English is an inflectional language that commonly uses SVO word order. But English is relatively less inflected. On the one hand, there are some situations in English that require vocabulary inflection. On the other hand, the word order of English is relatively fixed and cannot be adjusted at will.
Due to historical reasons, there are many irregularly inflection words in English. There are also no systematic rules for the usage of many expressions. So English words and phrases need to be memorized one by one.
French
ISO 639-3 Code: fra
German
ISO 639-3 Code: deu
Italian
ISO 639-3 Code: ita
Latin
ISO 639-3 Code: lat
Modern Greek
ISO 639-3 Code: ell
Portuguese
ISO 639-3 Code: por
Russian
ISO 639-3 Code: rus
Spanish
ISO 639-3 Code: spa
Japonic
Japanese
ISO 639-3 Code: jpn
Koreanic
Korean
ISO 639-3 Code: kor
Sino-Tibetan Languages
Classical Chinese
ISO 639-3 Code: lzh
Learning value:
About the writting system:
About phonetics:
About grammar and vocabulary:
Jin Chinese
ISO 639-3 Code: cjy
Mandarin Chinese
ISO 639-3 Code: cmn
Learning value:
- Total users exceed 1 billion.
- Occupies 1 one-digit prefix partitions in ISBN.
- Website language accounts for more than 1%.
- Reading of Chinese historical and cultural documents.
About the writting system:
About phonetics:
About grammar and vocabulary:
Yue Chinese
ISO 639-3 Code: yue
Independent Artificial Languages
Toki Pona
ISO 639-3 Code: tok
