mindmap root((LINGU)) linguistics The study of human speech.
🌱The new speechwriter, who had majored in linguistics, was soon putting his knowledge of the deceptive tricks of language to good use. 🌳Any analysis of language, including 8th-grade grammar, can be called linguistics. As recently as 200 years ago, ordinary grammar was about the only kind of linguistics there was. Today a linguist may be a person who learns foreign languages, but the term usually refers to people who devote themselves to analyzing the structure of language. Many linguists concentrate on the history of a language; others study the way children learn to speak; others analyze the sounds of a language—and still others just study English grammar, a subject so big that you could easily spend your entire life on it. multilingual Using or able to use several languages.
🌱She soon discovered that he was truly multilingual, fluent in not only the German and Polish he had grown up speaking but in English and Arabic as well. 🌳The roots of multilingual come from Latin （See MULTI.）If you happen to prefer Greek, use the synonym polyglot, in which poly- has the same meaning as multi-, and -glot means the same thing as -lingual. The best way to become multilingual is probably to be born in a bilingual （two-language household; learning those first two seems to give the mind the kind of exercise that makes later language-learning easy. lingua franca A language used as a common or commercial language among peoples who speak different languages.
🌱That first evening in Tokyo, she heard English being spoken at the next table, and realized it was serving as a lingua franca for a party of Korean and Japanese businessmen. 🌳In the Middle Ages, the Arabs of the eastern Mediterranean referred to all Europeans as Franks （the name of the tribe that once occupied the land we call France）. Since there was plenty of Arab-European trade, the traders in the Mediterranean ports eventually developed a trading language combining Italian, Arabic, and other languages, which almost everyone could more or less understand, and it became known as the "Frankish language," or lingua franca. Some languages actually succeed in becoming lingua francas without changing much. So, when the Roman empire became vast and mighty, Latin became the important lingua franca; and at a meeting between Japanese and Vietnamese businesspeople today, English may well be the only language spoken. linguine A narrow, flat pasta.
🌱As a test of her clients' table manners, she would serve them challenging dishes and watch to see how gracefully they could handle chopsticks or deal with long, slithery linguine. 🌳The modern language closest to Latin is Italian, and the Italian word linguine means literally "little tongues." Linguine is only one of the types of pasta whose names describes their shapes. Others include spaghetti （"little strings"）, fettuccine （"little ribbons"）, penne （"little quills"）, orzo （"barley"）, farfalle （"butterflies"）, vermicelli （"little worms"）, capellini （"little hairs"）, fusilli （"little spindles"）, and radiatori （"little radiators"）. If you're thinking about learning Italian, you could make a good start by just visiting an Italian restaurant.