Adangme (also called Dangme), is a Kwa language spoken in south-eastern Ghana by 800,000 people.

Some sources list Adangbe as another name for the same language whereas Ethnologue lists it as a different language in the Left bank branch of the Kwa family.

Oromo, also known as Afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa(a) and sometimes in other languages as variant spellings of these names (Oromigna, Afan Oromo, etc.), is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the CushiticArabic, some (including SIL) view it as a set of closely related languages, but, at least within Ethiopia, its speakers consider it to be a single language. It is spoken by approximately 24–5 million Oromos and other neighboring nationalities in Ethiopia and in Kenya. Formerly the language and people were often referred to by non-Oromos within Ethiopia as well as by Europeans as Galla, but this term is considered pejorative by the Oromos and is no longer used.

Akan languages are those languages belonging to the Kwa language family spoken in Ghana and the Côte d'Ivoire

Akan is also the name of a major Ghanaian language spoken comprising these dialects:

• Twi - Both the Akuapem and Asante (Ashanti) dialects - identified as 83g in the MN Home Language Code list.
• Fante (Fanti, Mfantse) - identified as 83d in the MN Home Language Code list.
  

Albanian is a language spoken by over 6 million people, primarily in Albania, Serbia including Kosovo, Greece, Montenegro, and the Republic of Macedonia but also in other parts of the Balkans, along the eastern coast of Italy and in Sicily, as well as by a significant diaspora in Scandinavia, Germany, Greece, Italy, the UK, Egypt, Australia, Turkey, and the USA. The language forms its own distinct branch of the Indo-European language family.

Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the "official working" language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and thus has official status and use nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system, including Amhara Region, the multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, and Afar Region, despite the latter's homogeneity. It has been the working language of government, the military, and of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church throughout modern times. Outside Ethiopia, Amharic is the language of some 2.7 million emigrants (notably in Egypt, Israel and Sweden), and is spoken in Eritrea by educated Eritreans of the preindependence generation and younger deportees from Ethiopia.

It is written, with some adaptations, with the Ge'ez alphabet (used for the language of the same name) called fidel in Ethiopian Semitic languages (ፊደል fĭdel 'alphabet,' 'letter,' or 'character').

 see Ojibwe

see Ojibwe

Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Classical Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam. Because of its liturgical role, Arabic has lent many words to other Islamic languages, akin to the role Latin has in Western European languages. During the Middle Ages Arabic was also a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it. The Arabic script is written from right to left.

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people in the Republic of Armenia, in Georgia (especially in Samtskhe-Javakheti), Mountainous Karabakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and also used by the Armenian Diaspora. It constitutes an independent branch of the Indo-European language family, though many Indo-Europeanists believe it forms a subgroup with the Greek and Indo-Iranian families (see Clackson 1994 for extensive discussion).

see Indonesian

See Bengali

Bantu is a major language family of Africa,  belonging to the Niger-Congo group. Bantu languages are spoken in south Cameroon, and in the south-eastern region of Nigeria close to the Cameroonian border, in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya and the southern tip of Somalia, Tanzania, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. This wide expansion makes the Bantu family the most widespread language family in Africa, with about 310 million speakers.

See Bassa (Cameroon)

See Bassa (Cameroon)

The Bassa (also spelled Basa or Basaa) are an ethnic group in Cameroon. These people, numbering approximately 230,000, are Bantu. Their language is the Basaa language.

The Bassa are a people of Liberia, living in Grand Bassa, Rivercess, and Montserrado counties, who speak a Kru language. They number about 350,000 (as of 1991). They have their own writing system, called "Bassa" or "Vah," which was developed around 1900. There are also about 5000 in Sierra Leone. They practice Christianity, as well as indigenous religions.

Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of East South Asia, evolved from Prakrit, Pali and Sanskrit.

With nearly 200 million native speakers, Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages of the world (it is ranked between four^[1] and seven^[2] based on the number of speakers). Bengali is the main language spoken in Bangladesh, and the third most commonly spoken language in India (after Hindi-Urdu and Telugu). Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-European languages.

See Edo

The Brahui language is mainly spoken in Balochistan, Pakistan, although also in Afghanistan and Iran by the Brahui. It reportedly [1] has about two million speakers in Pakistan (1998), and a tenth that number elsewhere. In Pakistan it is mainly spoken in the Kalat region of Balochistan.

Although it is a Dravidian language, it has been heavily influenced by the Iranian languages spoken in the area such as Balochi.

Brahui is generally considered to be a remnant of a formerly more widespread Dravidian language family that was reduced during the Indo-Aryan migration. It is also sometimes speculated that Brahui might be a direct legacy of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Other hypotheses suggest that such languages may have arised through Aryan and Dravidian assimilation during the later phases of Proto-Vedic Continuity

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic languages. Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of noun declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan linguistic union), the lack of a verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of the proto-Slavic verb system. There are various verb forms to express nonwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action.

Bulgarian is closely related to Macedonian, generally recognized as a distinct language, although the prevalent opinion in Bulgaria, to some extent in Greece, and that of certain international linguists is that Bulgarian and Macedonian are two standard forms of the same diasystem.

The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar. Although the government officially recognises the language as Myanmar, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the mother tongue of the Bamar, Rakhine, and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar. Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman languages, which is a subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It is spoken by 32 million as a first language, and as a second language by minorities in Myanmar. Burmese is a tonal and analytic language. The language utilises the Burmese script, which derives from the Mon script and ultimately from the Brāhmī script.

Khmer or Cambodian, the language of the Khmer people of Cambodia, is one of the main Austroasiatic languages. Sanskrit and Pali have had considerable influence on the language, through the vehicles of Buddhism and Hinduism. As result of their geographic proximity, the Khmer language has influenced Thai and Laotian and vice versa.

Khmer is somewhat unusual among its neighboring languages (Thai, Laotian and Vietnamese) in that it is not a tonal language.

see Spanish

see Spanish

Chinese is a language (or language family) that forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. According to Guinness World Records 2006, Chinese, with 915 million speakers in the Mandarin dialect alone, is the most commonly spoken language in the world. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language.

In general, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. However, spoken Chinese is also distinguished for a high level of internal diversity. Regional variation between different variants/dialects is comparable in many respects to the Romance language family; many variants of spoken Chinese are different enough to be mutually incomprehensible.

There are between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most populous by far is Mandarin (c. 800 million), followed by Wu (c. 90 million), and Cantonese (Yue; c. 70 million). The identification of the varieties of Chinese as “languages” or “dialects” is a controversial issue. If Chinese is classified as a single language rather than a group of languages, it has the largest number of speakers in the world; if not then speakers of English as a first and second language number more, though Mandarin still holds the title for most native speakers.

see Shona

see Serbo-Croatian

see Serbo-Croatian

Cutchi, Kutchi or Kachhi (also spelled Kachchhi) is an Indo-Aryan Language spoken in the Kutch region of the Indian state of Gujarat, with approximately 866,000 speakers. It is spoken by the Kutchi people; specifically, these are the Bhanushalis(traditionaly known as Bhunsari in Kutchi), Brahmins (Rajgor Ganyathy - Bhuj) Megvals, Visa Oshwal and Dasa Osval (Oshwal) Jains, Lwanas, followers of satpanth,and various Muslim communities in the region, as well as by the Khojas, who use the language for liturgical purposes.

Kachhi is closely related to Sindhi, spoken in neighboring Sindh, Pakistan. Kachhi is often mistakenly thought to be a mixture of Sindhi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Rajasthani. This may be because Kachhi phonology is very much like that of Sindhi, but the vocabulary is closer to that of Gujarati.

Dakota language, the language of the Santee, which is now considered a dialect of the Sioux language

Sioux has 3 major regional varieties, with various sub-lects:

1. Santee (a.k.a. Dakota)
   • Santee
   • Sisseton
2. Yankton (a.k.a. Yankton-Yanktonai, Nakota)
   • Yankton
   • Yanktonai
3. Lakota (a.k.a. Lakhota, Teton, Teton Sioux)
   • Northern Lakota
   • Southern Lakota
     

See Adangme

Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 22 million people, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium ^[1].

see Marshallese

Edo (also called Bini) is a Benue-Congo language spoken in Edo State, Nigeria by approximately 1,000,000 people.

The Efik people are a branch of the Ibibio, who in the early 1600s migrated down the Cross River and founded numerous settlements in the Creek Town-Duke Town area (now in Cross River State, Nigeria), and across the river in Cameroon. This area of Nigeria is now known as Calabar and is not to be confused with Kalabari (sometimes 'New Calabar') in the Rivers State, a 100 miles to the west.

Ibibio is a Cross River language spoken by 1,5 to 2 million Ibibio in the Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Because of its importance in trade and education in the region, many Annang and Efik people also speak Ibibio. Ibibio is a member of the Benue-Congo group, which forms part of the Niger-Congo language family. It is closely related to Efik.

English is a widely distributed language that originated in England but is now the primary language in numerous countries. It is extensively used as a second language and as an official language in many other countries, is the most widely taught and understood language in the world, and is sometimes described as a lingua franca.

see Spanish

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and by some ten thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Finno-Ugric language and is related to Finnish and distantly to Hungarian. It has been influenced by German — initially Middle Low German, later also standard German, Russian, Swedish and Latvian, though it is not related to them genetically.

Ethiopian Semitic languages (sometimes Ethiopic, or Ethiosemitic for short) is a language group which together with Old South Arabian forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. The name 'Ethiopian Semitic languages' can be considered a misnomer as the north languages are also found in Eritrea with two of them being exclusively used there.

Ewe is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people (Capo 1991). Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, stretching from eastern Ghana to Western Nigeria. Other Gbe languages include Fon and Aja. Like other Gbe languages, Ewe is a tonal language.

Fante is one of the languages spoken in Ghana. It is like Twi and Asante, a dialect of Akan. It is classified as Niger-Congo, which is a branch of Niger-Kordofanian. One notable speaker is Kofi Annan.

see Persian

See Pilipino below.  Note that although Filipino is the official name, the MN list of home languages still lists Pilipino - therefore it is listed under that heading.. 

Finnish (suomi) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92%[2] as mother tongue) and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is also an official language in Finland and an official minority language in Sweden, in the form of standard Finnish as well as Meänkieli, and in Norway in the form of Kven.

Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family and is classified as an agglutinative language. It modifies the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs depending on their roles in the sentence.

French (français) is the third-largest of the Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish and Portuguese, being spoken by about 150 million people as a mother tongue or fluently. As a Romance language, it is a daughter language of Latin, although there has been significant borrowing from Ancient Greek.

It is an official language in 30 countries.

French is also an official or administrative language in several communities and international organisations (such as the European Union, International Olympic Committee, World Trade Organization, NATO, FINA, FIA, UCI, FIFA, World Anti-Doping Agency, United Nations, African Union, International Court of Justice, IHO, International Secretariat for Water, International Political Science Association, International Bureau of Weights and Measures, European Broadcasting Union, ESA, Universal Postal Union, Interpol and so on) and is among the six official languages of the United Nations and of all its agencies.

see Fulani

The Fula language is a language of West Africa, spoken by the Fula people from Senegal to Cameroon and Sudan. It belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family.

There are many names for the Fula people and their language. The Hausa call them the Fulani, while the Wolof use Pël and the Mandinka people Fula. The Fula call themselves Fulbe (plural), Pullo (singular). Speakers of western dialects call their language Pulaar or Pular, while eastern dialects use Fulfulde.

see Luganda

German (Deutsch (help·info)) is a West Germanic language. It is a member of the western group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family and one of the world's major languages. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 110 million native speakers and another 18 million non-native speakers [1].

Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language (according to the Guinness Book of Records).

Greek has a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest of any single language within the Indo-European family. It is also one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages, with fragmentary records in Mycenaean dating back to the 15th or 14th century BC, matched only by the Anatolian languages and Vedic Sanskrit. Today, it is spoken by approximately 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Italy, Turkey and emigrant communities around the world.

Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet (the first to introduce vowels), since the 9th century BC in Greece (before that in Linear B), and the 4th century BC in Cyprus (before that in Cypriot syllabary). Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly 3000 years.

Gurma (also called Gorma or Gourmantche) is an ethnic group living mainly in Burkina Faso, around Fada N'gourma, and also in northern areas of Togo and Benin. They number approximately 1,150,000.

They might include the Bassaries who live in northern Togo and the Northern Volta of Ghana

see Harari

Harari (sometimes (H)aderi or (H)adere) is the language of the Harari people of Ethiopia. According to the 1998 Ethiopian census, it is spoken by 21,283 people. Most of its speakers are multilingual in Amharic and/or Oromo. Harari is closely related to Zay and Silt'e.

Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more.

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. In Israel, it is the de facto language of the state and the people, as well as being one of the two official languages (together with Arabic), and is spoken by a majority of the population. The core of the Tanakh is written in Classical Hebrew, and much of its present form is specifically in the dialect of Biblical Hebrew that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, near the Babylonian exile. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lĕshôn Ha-Kôdesh, "the Sacred Language," since ancient times.

Hindī is an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India^{[1] [2]}. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Gujarati; on the south by Marathi; on the southeast by Oriya; on the east by Bengali; and on the north by Nepali

Hmong (Hmong Der: Hmoob) or Mong (Mong Leng: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong-Mien/Miao-Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos.^[2][1] including 170,000 Hmong Americans.^[3] Some dialects are mutually intelligible while others are so distinct as to be considered separate languages.

The total number of speakers worldwide has been estimated to be over 4 million,

see Hmong

see Efik or Wikipedia entry for Ibibio

Igbo (also known, less commonly, as Ibo; asụsụ Ndi Igbo in Igbo) is a language spoken in Nigeria by around 18 million speakers (the Igbo), especially in the southeastern region once identified as Biafra. The language was used by John Goldsmith as an example to justify going away from the classical linear model of phonology as laid out in The Sound Pattern of English. It is written in the Roman script. Igbo is a tonal language, like Yoruba and Chinese. Most Igbo people prefer that the language be spelled Igbo rather than Ibo.

Icelandic (íslenska) is a North Germanic language spoken in Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese and can be somewhat understood by some Norwegians as well, depending on their dialect and education.

see Ibo

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language that was officially defined with the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945, and the two languages remain quite similar.

The language is spoken fluently as a second language by most Indonesians, who use a regional language (examples are Minangkabau and Javanese) at home and in their local community. Most formal education, as well as nearly all national media and other communication, are in Indonesian. In East Timor, Indonesian is recognized by the constitution as one of the two working languages (the other is English).

The Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia (literally language of Indonesia); this name is sometimes used in English as well. The language is sometimes called "Bahasa" by English-speakers, though this simply means "language" in Indonesian.

Italian (italiano (help·info), or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in Italy. Standard Italian was strongly influenced by the Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Gallo-Italian languages of the North. Like many languages written using the Latin alphabet, Italian has double consonants. However, contrary to, for example, French and Spanish, double consonants are pronounced as long (geminated) in Italian. As in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French), stress is distinctive. Out of the Romance languages, Italian is generally considered to be the one most closely resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary^{[citation needed]}, though Romanian most closely preserves the declension system of Classical Latin while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.

Japanese (Nihongo (help·info)) is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. It is considered an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary which indicate the relative status of speaker and listener. The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. Its recorded history goes back to the 8th century, when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled.

The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of glyphs: Chinese characters (called kanji), and two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet (called rōmaji) is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for things such as company names, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. Western style Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Chinese/Japanese numberings are also commonplace.

Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loans from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created on Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Western languages, primarily English.

see Cutchi

see Cutchi

The Karen languages are spoken by the Karen people and are classified as part of the Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The three main branches are Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o; they are not considered to be mutually intelligible^[1]. Karenni (also known Kayah or Red Karen) and Kayan (also known as Padaung) are related to the Sgaw branch. They are almost unique among the Tibeto-Burman languages in having a Subject Verb Object word order; other than Karen and Bai, Tibeto-Burman languages feature a Subject Object Verb order ^[2]. This is likely due to influence from neighboring Mon and Tai languages^[3]. The languages are also considered unusual for not having any Chinese influence.^[4]

see Karen Languages

see Nepali

see Karen Languages

see Karen Languages

see Nepali

see Cambodian

see Rwanda

see Swahili 

The Klingon alphabet (tlhIngan pIqaD) is the creation of an unknown inventor at Paramount. In the Star Trek TV series and movies random letters from the alphabet are used for effect. There is no official mapping of the Klingon letters to the Latin alphabet, but the one shown below is generally used by tlhIngan pIqaD enthusiasts. Most people who speak Klingon prefer to use the Latin alphabet to write it.

The Korean language is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also one of the two official languages (the other is Standard Mandarin) in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 80 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently, the Philippines.

The genealogical classification of Korean is debated. Many linguists place it in the Altaic language family; some others consider it to be a language isolate. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Like Japanese and Vietnamese, Korean has borrowed much vocabulary from Chinese or created vocabulary on Chinese models.

Krio is a creole language native to the Krios, a community of about 250,000 descendants of freed slaves living in Sierra Leone's capital city of Freetown. It is also spoken as a lingua franca, or second language, by about 4 million Sierra Leoneans of other ethnic groups, and by thousands of Krio descendants living in other parts of West Africa.

The vocabulary of Krio is derived primarily from English, while its sound system, grammar and sentence structure are heavily influenced by African languages, particularly the Yoruba language of Nigeria. Krio's standard greeting kushe, for instance, is derived from the Yoruba greeting è kú işé ("greetings on your work").

See also the Keriu language and Krio Dayak language of Indonesia.

The Kurdish language is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.^[1] Kurdish is an official language in Iraq while it is banned in Syria where it is forbidden to publish material in Kurdish ^[2]. Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media.^[3] The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet have led to judicial persecution in 2000 and 2003 ^{[4] [5]}. In Iran, though it is used in the local media and newspapers, it is not allowed to be taught in schools ^{[6] [7]}. As a result many Iranian Kurds have left for Iraq where they can study in their native language.^[8]

The Kurdish language belongs to the western sub-group of the Iranian languages which belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages family. The most closely related languages to Kurdish are Balochi, Gileki and Talysh, all of which belong to the north-western branch of Iranian languages. Persian which belongs to the south-western branch, is also considered a related language.

See Cutchi

Lao is the official language of Laos. It is a tonal language of the Tai family, and is so closely related to the Isan language of the northeast region of Thailand that the two are often classed as one language. The writing system of Lao is an abugida (a writing system composed of signs denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel) and is closely related to the writing system used in Thai.

see Lao above

Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). The Lithuanian name for the language is lietuvių kalba.

Tshiluba (also called Luba-Kasai and Luba-Lulua) is a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is a national language.

Tai Lü (or Tai Lue, Tai Le;  Xishuangbanna Dai; Chi Dǎilèyǔ; Vietnamese: Lự or Lữ) is a language spoken by about 670,000 people in South East Asia. This includes 250,000 people in China, 200,000 in Burma, 134,000 in Thailand, and 5,000 in Vietnam. The language is similar to other Tai languages.

Luganda, also known as Ganda, is a Bantu language. It is spoken mainly in the Buganda region of Uganda by a population of over three million people. With 100,000 second language speakers, it is the most widely spoken second language in Uganda next to English. The language is used in some primary schools in Buganda as pupils begin to learn English, the official language of Uganda.

Malayalam is the language spoken predominantly in the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 23 official languages of India, spoken by around 36 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayali". Malayalam is also spoken in the Union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry (in Mahé/Mayyazhi).

The language belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil. Malayalam has a script of its own.

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Maharashtrian people of western India. It serves as the official language of the state of Maharashtra, with roughly ninety million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi ranks 4th in India according to the number of speakers as their primary language.

The Marshallese language (Marshallese: Kajin M̧ajeļ or Kajin Majõl ) or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.

The Mende language is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken both by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca. Mende belongs to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. In 1921, Kisimi Kamara invented a syllabary for Mende he called Ki-ka-ku. The script achieved widespread use for a time but has largely been replaced with an orthography using the Latin alphabet.

Mongolian is the best-known member of the Mongolic language family, and the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia. It is also spoken in some of the surrounding areas in provinces of China and Russia. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the Khalkha (or Halh) dialect, while those in China speak the Chahar, Oyirad, and Barghu-Buryat dialect groups.

See Burmese

Nepali (Khaskura) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Myanmar (Burma). It is the official language of Nepal. Roughly half the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a mother tongue, and many other Nepalese speak it as a second language.

Nepali goes by various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese (i.e. the language of Nepal).

There are a total of 250 languages spoken in Nigeria which correspond with the estimated number of ethnic groups in Nigeria. To facilitate cultural and linguistic unity, English was chosen as the official language. The major languages spoken in Nigeria are Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo.

Norwegian is a Germanic language spoken in Norway. Norwegian is closely related to and generally mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish. Together with these two languages as well as Faroese and Icelandic, Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Due to isolation, Faroese and Icelandic are no longer mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form, because mainland Scandinavian has diverged from them.

As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian – Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). The Norwegian Language Council recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in English, but these are seldom used.

The Nuer language is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer tribe in southern Sudan.

The Anishinaabe language or the Ojibwe group of languages or Anishinaabemowin is the third most commonly spoken Native language in Canada (after Cree and Inuktitut), and the fourth most spoken in North America (behind Navajo, Cree, and Inuktitut). It is spoken by the Anishinaabeg who are the Algonquin, Nipissing, Ojibwa (Chippewa), Saulteaux, Mississaugas and Odawa (Ottawa). Very closely related to Anishinaabemowin and often included in this group are the Anishininimowin language and the Potawatomi language.

see Afaan Oromoo

See Afaan Oromo

see Karen Languages

see Punjabi

see Karen Languages

Patois, although without a formal definition in linguistics, can be used to describe a language considered as nonstandard. Depending upon the instance, it can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but is not commonly applied to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant.

Persian (or Farsi) is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family.

See Pilipino below

Filipino (formerly called Pilipino) is the national language and one of the official languages of the Philippines—along with English—as designated in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. The language, a member of the Austronesian languages, is a standardized dialect of Tagalog. It is sometimes referred to as, albeit incorrectly, the generic name for the several different languages of the Philippines.

On November 13, 1937, the First National Assembly created the National Language Institute, which selected Tagalog, the indigenous language with the most developed and extensive written literary tradition (mirroring that of the Tuscan dialect of Italian), as the basis of a new national language. In 1961, this language became known as Pilipino, which was later renamed to Filipino in the 1972 Constitution.

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland.

Polish was once a lingua franca in various regions of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although no longer having as great an influence outside of Poland, due in part to the dominance of the Russian language, it is still sometimes spoken or at least understood in western border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language. It shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Eastern Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian.

There are approximately forty Polynesian languages. The most prominent of these are Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan, Māori, and Hawaiian.

Portuguese (português (help·info)) is an Iberian Romance language, of the Indo-European family. It originated in what is today Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal (the Roman Gallaecia). It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, and co-official with Chinese in the Chinese S.A.R. of Macau and Tetum in East Timor.

Portuguese is ranked sixth among the world's languages in number of native speakers (over 200 million), and first in South America (186 million, over 51% of the population). It is also a major lingua franca in Africa. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century as Portugal set up a vast colonial and commercial empire (1415–1999), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China. In that colonial period, many Portuguese creoles appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Punjabi (also Panjabi;  Pañjābī in Gurmukhī,  Panjābī in Shāhmukhī) is the language of the Punjabi people and the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan.

It is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Iranian subfamily. Unusually for an Indo-European language, Punjabi is tonal; the tones arose as a reinterpretation of different consonant series in terms of pitch. In terms of morphological complexity, it is an agglutinative language^[1] (also very unusual for an Indo-European language, most of which are inflecting) and words are usually ordered 'Subject Object Verb'.

The Punjabi people suffered a split between India and Pakistan during the Partition of 1947. However, Punjabi language and culture tend to be uniting factors in spite of national and religious affiliations.

see Karen Languages

see Karen Languages

Romanian (limba română) is the fifth of the Romance languages in terms of number of speakers. It is spoken as a first language by somewhere around 24 to 26 million people, and enjoys official status in Romania, Moldova and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia). The official form of the Moldovan language ^[2] in the Republic of Moldova is identical to the official form of Romanian save for a minor rule in spelling. Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union – the latter as of 2007).

Romanian speakers are also found abroad in many other countries (due to emigration), notably in Italy, Spain, the United States, Canada, France and Germany (cf. Romanians). Owing to a general lack of consistently-derived data, precise estimates for the total numbers of Romanian-speaking emigrants are not available. Some secondary sources claim for example that more than 3 million Romanian speakers live abroad as immigrants in Europe and North America,^[3], while however such census data as is available indicates these numbers may be overestimates.

Rundi, a Bantu language spoken in Burundi, and by refugees etc in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda

Russian (Russian: russkiy yazyk,  listen (help·info)) is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia and the most widespread of the Slavic languages.

Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages. Within the Slavic family, Russian is one of three living members of the East Slavic group, the other two being Belarusian and Ukrainian.

Wikipedia redirects to Kinyarwanda

Kinyarwanda is the chief spoken language in Rwanda. It is also spoken in the east of DRC and in the south of Uganda (Bufumbira-area). Kinyarwanda is a tonal language of the Bantu language family (Guthrie D61). Kinyarwanda is closely related to Kirundi spoken in the neighboring country, Burundi and to Giha of western Tanzania.

The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups (Although the validity of the ethnic nature is debatable; see [1]): Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Hutu outnumbering the latter two groups (see Hutu for a more complete historical perspective).

The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language in both territories. It is a member of the Austronesian family, and more specifically the Samoic branch of the Polynesian subphylum. There are 370,337 Samoan-speakers worldwide, nearly half of them in Samoa.

see Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian or (also Croatian or Serbian, Serbian or Croatian) (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski or hrvatski ili srpski or srpski ili hrvatski), earlier also Serbo-Croat, was an official language of Yugoslavia (along with Slovenian, Macedonian). It was mentioned for the first time by Slovene philologist Jernej Kopitar in a letter from 1836, although it cannot be ruled out that he had become acquainted with the term by reading the Slovak philologist Pavol Jozef Šafárik's manuscript "Slovanské starožitnosti" ( printed 1837.) Officially, the term was used from 1921 - ca.1993 as an umbrella term (Dachsprache) for dialects spoken by Serbs and Croats, as well as Bosniaks and Montenegrins upon their national recognition. In its standardized form, it was based on Štokavian dialect and defined Ekavian and Iyekavian variants called "pronunciations" (unofficially, there were "Eastern" (based on Serbian idiom) and "Western" (based on Croatian idiom) variants. By extension, it also declared Kajkavian and Chakavian as its dialects (while Torlakian dialect was never recognized in official linguistics), but they were never in official use.

With the breakup of Yugoslavia, its languages followed suit and Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and ultimately Montenegrin came to be described as separate languages (Ausbausprachen). Conversely, the term "Serbo-Croatian" went out of use, first from official documents and gradually from linguistic literature. Today, the name Serbo-Croatian is a controversial issue due to history, politics, and the variable meaning of the word language. Many native speakers nowadays find the term politically incorrect or even offensive. Others, however, especially nostalgic speakers originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, continue using the original language name, as they have studied it at school.

Linguists are divided on questions regarding whether the name is deprecated. It is still used, for lack of a more succinct alternative, to denote the "daughter" languages as a collectivity. An alternative name has emerged in official use abroad — Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BHS),

Mutually intelligible forms of it continue to be used under different names and standards in today’s Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and are still reasonably well understood in Macedonia and Slovenia.

see Karen Languages

Shona (or ChiShona) is a native language of Zimbabwe; the term is also used to identify those Kintu speaking peoples in Southern Africa who speak one of the Shona languages. Shona proper is an official language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and English. Numbering about 6,225,000 (SIL 1989), Shona speakers comprise more than 80% of Zimbabwe's population. Shona is also spoken by a substantial number of residents of Mozambique. Other countries that host Shona language speakers are Zambia and Botswana. The total number of Shona speakers is at least 7,000,000 (UBS 1990).

Sidamo is an Afro-Asiatic language, belonging to the Cushitic sub-phylum. It is spoken in parts of southern Ethiopia.

The term Sidamo has also been used by some authors to refer to larger groupings of East Cushitic and even Omotic languages.

Sidamo vocabulary has been influenced by Ge'ez and Amharic, and has in turn influenced Oromo vocabulary.

The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.

Scholars divide the Slavic languages into three main branches, some of which feature sub-branches:

• East Slavic, including Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn
• West Slavic, which further subdivide into:
  • Czech and Slovak,
  • Upper and Lower Sorbian (minority languages in Germany),
  • Lechitic languages: Polish , Pomeranian/Kashubian and extinct Polabian.
• South Slavic, which further subdivide into:
  • Western subgroup composed of Slovenian on one hand; Serbo-Croatian on the other.
  • Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian and Macedonian. (Some slavicists, especially those in Bulgaria and Greece, regard Macedonian as a "regional norm" of the Bulgarian language rather than as a separate language.

The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. It is spoken mostly in Somalia and adjacent parts of Djibouti (majority), Ethiopia, Kenya, and Italy. Its speakers are known as Somalis. Because of the civil war and diaspora, speakers are found all over the world. The exact number of speakers is unknown but is estimated to be between 15 and 25 million.

Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is an Iberian Romance language. It was spoken by roughly 364 million people in the year 2000 ^[1][2]. Current estimation accounts up to 410 million, making Spanish the most widely spoken Romance language.

Spanish originated as a dialect in the Cantabria region of Spain^{[citation needed]}; from that region, its use gradually spread to the kingdom of Castile, where it became the principal language of government and trade. It was later brought to the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world in the last five centuries by Spanish explorers, colonists and empire-builders. Spanish is one of six official working languages of the United Nations and one of the most used global languages, along with English. It is spoken on all continents, most extensively in North and South America, Europe, and certain parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania. Within the globalized market, there is currently an international expansion and recognition of the Spanish language in literature, the film industry, television (notably telenovelas) and mostly music.

Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see link for a discussion of the nomenclature) is a Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people who inhabit a 1500 km stretch of the East African coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. It is spoken by over 50 million people^[1], of whom there are approximately five million first-language speakers and thirty to fifty million second-language speakers^{[citation needed]}. Swahili has become a lingua franca for East Africa and surrounding areas. It is the Sub-Saharan African language with the most speakers.

Swedish (svenska (help·info)) is a North Germanic language (also called Scandinavian languages) spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands, by more than nine million people. It is mutually intelligible with two of the other Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian. Standard Swedish is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well-established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized, with a 99% literacy rate among adults. Some of the genuine dialects differ considerably from the standard language in grammar and vocabulary and are not always mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. These dialects are confined to rural areas and are usually spoken by small numbers of people with low social mobility. Though not facing imminent extinction, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is often encouraged by local authorities.

Tagalog is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines. It is the largest of the Philippine languages in terms of the number of speakers.

Tagalog, as its standardized counterpart, Filipino, is the principal language of the national media in the Philippines. It is the primary language of public education. It is, along with English, a co-official language and the sole national language. Tagalog is widely used as a lingua franca throughout the country, and in overseas Filipino communities. However, while Tagalog may be prevalent in those fields, English, to varying degrees of fluency, is more prevalent in fields such as government and business.

Tamil is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the eighteenth most spoken language, with over 74 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the official languages of India, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

Telugu is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language. It is the Dravidian language with the largest number of speakers (including non-native speakers), the second-largest spoken language in India after Hindi, and one of the 23 national languages of the Republic of India.

The Thai language (phasa thai), is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai-Kadai language family. The Tai-Kadai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and some linguists have proposed links to the Austroasiatic, Austronesian, or Sino-Tibetan language families. It is a tonal and analytic language. The combination of tonality, a complex orthography, relational markers and a distinctive phonology can make Thai difficult to learn for those who do not already speak a related language.

Tai Dam is a Tai language spoken in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and China (mostly in Jinping ). It is called Black Tai in Thai and Dǎidānyǔ  in Chinese.

Tai Dam speakers in China are classified as part of the Dai nationality.

Temne (also known as 'Themne' or 'Timne') is a language of the Atlantic subfamily of languages spoken in Sierra Leone by about 2.7 million first speakers, or more than 30% of the country’s population. It also serves as a lingua franca for an additional 900,000 people living in areas near the Temne people. Temne is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages of Sierra Leone.

The Tibetan language is spoken primarily by the Tibetan people who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia, as well as by large number of Tibetan refugees all over the world. Several forms of Tibetan are also spoken by various peoples of northern Pakistan and India in areas like Baltistan and Ladakh, which are both in or around Kashmir.

Tigre (sometimes written as Tigré, also sometimes known as Xasa) is a Semitic language of the North Ethiopic branch, descended from Ge'ez and closely related to Tigrinya. It is spoken by approximately one million people in Eritrea, with a few speakers in Sudan. Tigre is also the name for the people. The Tigre language, speakers and area should not be confused with the Tigray-Tigrinya people who live in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and in Eritrea and who speak Tigrinya.

see Tigrinya

Tigrinya (also spelled Tigrigna) is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea (there called "Tigrinya" people), where it is one of the main working languages (Eritrea does not have official languages), and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia (whose speakers are called "Tigray"), where it also has official status, and among groups of emigrants from these regions, including some of the Beta Israel now living in Israel. Tigrinya should not be confused with the related Tigre language, which is spoken in the lowland regions in Eritrea to the north and west of the region where Tigrinya is spoken.

Tongan (lea fakatonga) is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 100,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language.

see Luba

Turkish (Türkçe) is a Turkic language spoken natively by the Turkish people in Turkey, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece, Republic of Macedonia and other countries of the former Ottoman Empire, as well as by several million emigrants in the European Union. The exact number of native speakers in Turkey is uncertain, primarily due to a lack of minority language data.

There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and other Oghuz languages such as Azeri, Turkmen, and Qashqai. If these are counted together as "Turkish", the number of native speakers is 100 million, and the total number including second-language speakers is around 125 million.

Twi (pronounced 'chwee') is a language spoken in Ghana by about 7 million people. It is one of the three dialects of the Akan language, the others being Akuapem Twi and Fante, which in turn belongs to the Kwa language family. Within Ghana, Twi is spoken in the Ashanti Region and in parts of the Eastern, Western, Central, Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions.

There are many divisions of the Twi languages, but they are all mutually intelligible.

Urdū (Urdu) is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan family that developed under Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, and Sanskrit influence in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (1200–1800).

Taken by itself, Urdū is approximately the twentieth most populous natively spoken language in the world, and is the national language of Pakistan as well as one of the 23 national languages of India.

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ^[1]), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of Vietnamese people (người Việtngười Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, the bulk of whom are Vietnamese Americans. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, and it was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.

see Tigre

Yoruba (native name ede Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language') is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil and Cuba (where it is called Nago). Yoruba is an isolating, tonal language with SVO syntax. Apart from referring to the aggregate of dialects and their speakers, the term Yoruba is used for the standard, written form of the language. Yoruba is classified as a Niger-Congo language of the Yoruboid branch of Defoid, Benue-Congo.

The traditional Yoruba area, the southwestern corner of Nigeria, is commonly called Yorubaland and is comprised of today's Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Kwara, and Lagos states as well as the western part of Kogi state. Geophysically, Yorubaland forms part of a plateau (elevation 366 m) bordered to the north and east by the Niger River. A large part of it is densely forested; the northern part however, including Oyo, lies in the savanna to the north of the forest.

see Serbo-Croatian.