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Some languages have two forms of the personal pronoun,
we. One form is used
if it includes the person or people addressed
(inclusive) and another form if the
person addressed is not included
(exclusive).
The Pacific languages are characterized by few consonants and vowels.
Hawaiian has only 8 consonants
(H, K, L, M, N, P, W and the glottal stop) and 5
vowels
(A, E, I, 0, U). There is a preference for open syllables (like in the names of
the islands
FI JI and
TA HI TI).
Tagalog and Maori have a
Verb-Subject-Object word order. Malagasay has
the word order
Verb-Object-Subject.
The speakers of this language family are thought to have originated in southern
China (the Yellow River valleys) and migrated via Taiwan into the islands of the
Philippines (about 2500BC), Indonesia and out into the Pacific
(about 1000BC).
The Afro-Asiatic Family of Languages
The
Afro-Asiatic Family is dominated by
Arabic, an important modern
and classical language. It is the language of the Quran and of Islam.
The other languages in the
Semitic Branch of this family are
Maltese which is
written in the Latin script because the Maltese are Catholic.
Hebrew is another
important classical language with its own script. It is the language of Judaism and of
the Old Testament of the Bible. By the 1st Century BC it had become a liturgical
language for Judaism. A modern form was revived and is now spoken in Israel where
it is called
Ivrit.
Amharic is the language of Ethiopia and has its own script.
Tigrinya is spoken
in the Horn of Africa. Many important ancient languages belong to this branch.
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