Glossary

Definitions of terms used throughout CountryReports.

This glossary contains 1,144 terms used throughout CountryReports — political, economic, cultural, historical, and geographic terminology referenced in country profiles and articles. Terms are drawn from authoritative sources including the Library of Congress.

""Moldavian"" (moldavskiy in Russian): Term used by the Soviet government to describe the language and nationality of the ethnic Romanians (q.v.) in Bessarabia (q.v.). Joseph V. Stalin claimed that their language and nationality were different and distinct from the language and nationality of the ethnic Romanians in Romania as a justification for creating the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940. In actuality, the ""Moldavian"" language is a dialect of Romanian. Under the Soviet regime, ""Moldavia"" was used as the short form for the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.; Source: Library of Congress
Asante/Ashanti/Ashantee: Akan group, geographically located to the central part of the country. Founders of the Asante Empire, and speakers of Asante-Twi language.
Autonomous Region: Governorates of As Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk, and Irbil, the Kurdish majority area. In this region--popularly known as Kurdistan--Kurdish has status of official language, and residents enjoy limited autonomy from central government.
Baba Chinese: Descendants of marriages between Chinese men and Malay women, many of whom moved to Singapore from Malacca in the early nineteenth century. Although mixed parentage gradually disappeared through marriage with Chinese immigrants, the Babas usually spoke Malay or English as their first language and identified more closely with Singapore and Malaya than with China. After establishment of Straits Settlements (q.v.) in 1826, their descendants also came to be known as Straits Chinese (q.v.).
Bahasa Indonesia: The Indonesian national language, also known as Indonesian; an Austronesian language reported to be modelled on Riau Malay and 80 percent cognate with Standard Malay.
Bangla: Official language of Bangladesh; often referred to as Bengali before 1971. An Indo-European language.; Source: Library of Congress
Bantu: Literally, ""human beings,"" in more than 300 Bantu languages of equatorial and southern Africa. Bantu languages are classified within the central branch of the Niger-Congo language family; characterized by a system of noun classes marked by prefixes, so that each dependent word in a sentence carries a prefix of the same class. Outsiders often simplify by omitting prefix; for example, the amaZulu (people) are known as the Zulu; their language, isiZulu, is also referred to as Zulu. Speakers of seSotho, the BaSotho, are often referred to simply as Sotho peoples. Four major subgroups of Bantu languages--Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga-Shangaan, and Venda--are widely represented in South Africa. They include nine of South Africa’s official languages--isiXhosa, isiZulu, isiNdebele, sePedi, seSotho, seTswana, siSwati, tshiVenda (also luVenda), and xiTsonga. During the apartheid era, the term Bantu was often used in government regulations, official statements, and sometimes in conversation to designate people of black African descent. Because this group was particularly disadvantaged by apartheid, the term Bantu assumed pejorative connotations in many apartheid-era contexts.
Bund: A political labor organization of Jewish workers founded in Vilna, Lithuania in 1987. The name is an abbreviation in Yiddish for The General Union of Jewish Workers in Russia, Lithuania, and Poland. The Bund opposed Zionism and viewed Yiddish as the only secular Jewish language.; Source: Library of Congress
cholo: A term that has a variety of definitions and social implications. During colonial times, it was equivalent to mestizo but has evolved to include persons of mixed or pure native American ancestry who are trying to move up the social and economic ladder by observing various Hispanic cultural norms. Cholos speak Spanish in addition to an indigenous language. Choloficación (Cholofication) refers to the transition process from native American to mestizo status.
Cyrillic alphabet: An alphabet, based on Greek characters, that was created in the ninth century to serve as a medium for writing Orthodox texts translated from Greek into Old Church Slavonic (q.v.). Named for Cyril, the leader of the first religious mission from Constantinople to the Slavic peoples, Cyrillic is used by modern Russian, Belarusian, ""Moldavian"" (q.v.), and several other languages, both Slavic and non-Slavic.; Source: Library of Congress
Dravidian: Ethnic group; ancient Australoid race of southern India; a language family of India, Sri Lanka, and western Pakistan that includes Tamil, Telugu, Gondi, and Malayalam. See also Tamils.
ethnic Belorussian/Belarusian: Person whose ethnic heritage is East Slavic and whose native language is Belorussian/Belarusian.
ethnic Bulgarian: Person whose ethnic heritage is South Slavic and whose native language is Bulgarian.
ethnic Pole: Person whose ethnic heritage is West Slavic and whose native language is Polish.
ethnic Romanian: Person whose ethnic heritage is Latin and whose native language is Romanian.
ethnic Russian: Person whose ethnic heritage is East Slavic and whose native language is Russian.
ethnic Ukrainian: Person whose ethnic heritage is East Slavic and whose native language is Ukrainian.
Garifuna: An ethnic group descended from the Carib of the Eastern Caribbean and from Africans who had escaped from slavery. The Garifuna resisted the British and the French in the Windward Islands until they were defeated by the British in 1796. After putting down a violent Garifuna rebellion on Saint Vincent, the British moved the Garifuna across the Caribbean to the Bay Islands (present-day Islas de la Bahía) in the Gulf of Honduras. From there they migrated to the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and southern British Honduras. Garifuna also refers to their language.; Source: Library of Congress
hijra: Literally, to migrate, to sever relations, to leave one’s tribe. Throughout the Muslim world, hijra refers to the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers to Medina. In this sense, the word has come into European languages as hegira. The year of Muhammad’s hijra constitutes the beginning of the Islamic calendar.; Source: Library of Congress
Iranian: Linguistically, a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European languages, which in modern times includes Persian (q.v.)--the most widely used--Pushtu, Kurdish (q.v.) dialects, and Ossetic. In the Middle Iranian stage of the group’s development (third century B.C. to tenth century A.D.), the chief languages were Parthian, Pahlavi (middle Persian), and Soghdian.
Khasa: A term applied to the peoples and languages in the western parts of Nepal, closely related to the cultures of northern India.
Kurdish: Term referring to a mainly Muslim people speaking an Indo-European language similar to Persian. Kurds constitute significant minorities in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, with smaller groups in Armenia and Syria. Despite international proposals in response to minority persecution, never united in a single state.
Kurds: A mainly Muslim people speaking an Indo-European language similar to Persian. Kurds constitute significant minorities in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, with smaller groups in Armenia and Syria. Despite international proposals in response to minority persecution, never united in a single state.
Ladino: Language based on medieval Castilian but with Hebrew suffixes and written in Hebrew alphabet; developed and used by Sephardim (q.v.).
Lao Loum: Literally translated as the valley Laotian. Inclusive term for people of Tai stock living in Laos, including lowland Lao and upland Tai. Group of lowland peoples comprising the majority population of Laos; generally used to refer to ethnic Lao, the country’s dominant ethnic group (approximately 66 percent of the population according to the 1985 census), and speaking Tai-Kadai languages, including Lao, Lue, Tai Dam (Black Tai), and Tai Deng (Red Tai).
Lao Sung: Literally translated as the Laotian of the mountain top--those who traditionally live in the high altitudes in northern Laos. In official use, term denotes a category of ethnic groups that speak Tibeto-Burmese, Miao-Yao languages; chiefly the Hmong (q.v.) (Meo) group of highland or upland minorities but also the Mien (Yao) and Akha. According to the 1985 census, these groups make up approximately 10 percent of the population.
Lao Theung: Literally, Laotian of the mountain slopes; group--including Kammu, Loven, and Lamet--that traditionally lives in medium altitudes, practices swidden, or slash-and-burn-agriculture, and speaks Mon-Khmer languages and dialects. According to the 1985 census, approximately 24 percent of the population. Regarded as original inhabitants of Laos, formally referred to by ethnic Lao as kha, or slave.
Old Church Slavonic (also known as Old Church Slavic): The first Slavic literary language, which influenced the development of the modern Slavic languages, including literary Russian. Used in liturgies of the Slavic Orthodox churches. After the twelfth century, known as Church Slavonic.
Pali: The language of the Theravada Buddhist sacred scriptures. A Prakrit, or a language derived from Sanskrit.
Persian: As a language, a member of the Iranian subgroup in the Indo-European language family. The official language of modern Iran and spoken widely in Afghanistan. Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was used between the third century B.C. and the ninth century A.D. and was the official language of the Sassanid Empire that ruled parts of Central Asia from the third century to the sixth century A.D. Modern Persian is called Farsi by native speakers.
putonghua: The common spoken language; also called guoyu (national language). The official spoken language of China, used in its various forms by more than 70 percent of the population. The People’s Republic government started promoting putonghua in 1956 for use in schools, the cultural arena, and daily life as a means of bringing about the standardization of the language used by the Han (q.v.) nationality. Putonghua is based on the northern dialect, and uses Beijing pronunciations as its standard.
Roman Catholic: In historical use, the Latin Church refers to the western wing of Christianity using Latin as its liturgical language, jurisdictionally related to the bishop of Rome (the pope) rather than one of the other patriarchs, and generally corresponding to the area of the Western Roman Empire rather than the Eastern Roman or Byzantine section. After the great schism of 1054 those churches accepting papal authority became known as Catholic in contrast to the Orthodox; the vast majority of these were Latin rite or Roman Catholic. Since the religious conflict in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus was as much cultural as one of hierarchical structure, Roman Catholics have continued to be known in Cyprus as Latins; the term also is used to distinguish the descendants of the former Lusignan and Venetian elites from Greek Cypriots.
Russianization: The policy of several Soviet regimes promoting Russian as the national language of the Soviet Union. Russian was given equal and official status with local languages in most non-Russian republics; it was made the official language of the Soviet Union in state and diplomatic affairs, in the armed forces, and on postage stamps, currency, and military and civilian decorations.; Source: Library of Congress
Scheduled Languages: Article 351 of the Indian constitution allows the government to compile a schedule (list) of languages recognized by the government for use in state legislatures. The Eighth Schedule, written in 1950, lists Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Sindhi was added to the schedule in 1967, and Konkani, Manipuri, and Nepali were added in 1992. Article 343 of the constitution designates Hindi written in Devanagari (q.v.) as the official language of India. Even though it was supposed to be phased out by 1965, English continues as India’s other official language for use in Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the high courts unless otherwise authorized by the president.
Sinhala: An Indo-European langauge of the Indo-Iranian group. It was derived from a Prakrit, or dialectical, form of Sanskrit. Majority language of Sri Lanka.
Sinhalese: The largest ethnic group, distinguished primarily by their language. As of 1981, Sinhalese constituted approximately 74 percent of the population; over 90 percent of them are Theravada Buddhists. Their ancestors probably migrated from northern India around 500 B.C.
Straits Chinese: Chinese born in the Straits Settlements (q.v.) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and more oriented to Southeast Asia than to China. They often spoke Malay or English as their first language.
Tagalog: Large ethnolinguistic group indigenous to central and southern Luzon, particularly around Manila. The Tagalog language is the basis for Pilipino, the national language of the Philippines.
Tamils: Ethnic group, predominantly Hindu, whose language is Tamil, a Dravidian language spoken by the Tamil minority in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka; and which is the major regional language spoken in Tamil Nadu State, southeast India. Sri Lankan Tamils are descendants of settlers and invaders and are a native minority that represented approximately 12.6 percent of the population in 1981. Indian Tamils are descendants of estate laborers imported under British sponsorship to the island primarily in the nineteenth century, and represented approximately 5.5 percent of the population in 1981. The Indian Tamil population has been shrinking because of repatriation programs to Tamil Nadu.
Veddah: Last descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Sri Lanka, predating arrival of the Sinhalese. Veddahs have not preserved their own language, live in small rural settlements, and have become more of a caste than a separate ethnic group. They are generally accepted as equal in rank to the Sinhalese Goyigama (q.v.) caste.
Yiddish: A language based on medieval Rhineland German used by Jews in eastern, northern, and central Europe and in areas to which Jews from these regions migrated. It also contains elements of Hebrew, Russian, and Polish, and it is commonly written in Hebrew characters.