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Khmer (/kəˈmɛər/; ខ្មែរ, UNGEGN: Khmêr [kʰmae]) is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Khmer people, and the official and national language of Cambodia. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon–Khmer family, predating Mon and Vietnamese, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla, Angkor and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state, Funan.

The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh, and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng province, both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer. (Full article...)

• ... that Ahmet Cevat Emre shared a household with Vâlâ Nureddin and Nâzım Hikmet in Batumi, with Emre responsible for cooking, Hikmet writing poetry and Nureddin giving Turkish language lessons?
• ... that Micah Joseph Lebensohn began to translate poetry into Hebrew at the age of twelve?
• ... that Ontario's last German-language newspaper, the Berliner Journal, was forced to publish in English in 1918 after the Canadian government prohibited German publications?
• ... that New Zealand author Patricia Grace did not include a glossary for Māori terms in her book Potiki because she "didn't want the Māori language to be treated as a foreign language in its own country"?
• ... that Ita Ekpenyon coached American actor Paul Robeson in speaking the Efik language for the 1937 film King Solomon's Mines?
• ... that David Ahl purchased BASIC-8 to sell with the PDP-8 when DEC management proved more interested in their own FOCAL language?

• ...that the Permanent North American Gaeltacht (pictured) is an officially designated Irish speaking area in English/French speaking Ontario, Canada, the first of its kind outside of Ireland?
• ...that Englog is English mixed with Tagalog words, while Taglish is Tagalog mixed with English words, both being macaronic languages?
• ...that some 19th-century newspapers in South Australia published articles in the Cornish dialect of English to meet the needs of miners who had migrated there?
• ...that the Halegannada, literally "old Kannada", is an ancient form of the Kannada language?

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Yue (Cantonese pronunciation: [jyːt̚˨]) is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang).

The term Cantonese is often used to refer to the whole branch, but linguists prefer to reserve the name Cantonese for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect of the group. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese. (Full article...)

Credit: © Hans Hillewaert

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek.

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1 January 2024 – Public Domain Day
The animated short film Steamboat Willie, the German-language version of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, and other works published in 1928 enter the public domain in the United States. (Mashable)
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