LANGUAGE, human speech; the ag gregate of those articulate sounds, called words, used to express perception and thought, accepted by and current among any community; the expression of thought by articulate sounds or words; the body of uttered and audible sounds by which, in human society, thought is expressed.
Also a particular set or aggregate of articulate sounds or words peculiar to a particular race, nation, tribe, or com munity; as, the English language, the French language, etc.; each of these of ten presents local varieties, to which the name of dialects has been given. Lan guages are divided according to two prin ciples: First, morphologically, accord ing to the structure of the language and the manner in which the sounds are formed or combined; and secondly; gene alogically, according to their connection and relationship with respect to origin. The first class consists of three subdivi sions of language, denominated isolating, agglutinating and inflectional. Isolat ing languages, of which Chinese is an example, consist entirely of monosyllabic, unchanging roots. The Scythian is the type of what is called an agglutinative structure, in which the root maintains itself unaltered in the whole group of derivatives and inflections, and each suf fix has an unchanged form and office. The Basque and Armenian languages are also agglutinative, with this difference, that the roots which are joined together have been abbreviated, as in the Basque iihun=twilight, from hill="--dead+egurt=- day. To these languages it has been pro posed to give the distinctive name of in corporating' or polysynthetic languages.
In inflectional languages, which are the most highly developed, the roots are cap able of being modified by prefixes or suf fixes, which were once independent words.
Languages, when classified genealogi cally, are divided into families or groups connected by a community of origin. Thus the Indo-European (called also Aryan, or Indo-Germanic) is composed of seven great branches: The Indian, the Iranian or Persian, the Greek, the Italic, the Celtic, the Slavonic or Slavo-Celtic, and the Germanic or Teutonic. Each of these may again be subdivided. Thus the Germanic branch includes 1VIso Gothic. or the dialect of the Goths of 1VIwsia; the Low German languages, still spoken in the north of Germany, and including two important cultivated tongues, the Netherlandish and Eng lish; the High-German body of dia lects, represented now by only a single literary language, the so-called German; and the Scandinavian division, written in the forms of Danish, Swedish, Norwe gian and Icelandic. The Semitic family of languages is the next in importance. It includes Arabic, Syrian, or Aramaic, the Canaanitish dialects, chief among which are Hebrew and Phcenician, and the Assyrian and Babylonian dialects.
In music, in an organ an open metal flue pipe consists of foot, and language, and body. The language is a flat piece of metal fastened by its edge to the top of the foot, and which, by its shape, only permits the air to leave the foot in one direction.