Adyghe

                     Adyghe|адыгэбзэ   Living

  What is it?

Adyghe is a North West Caucasian language spoken by about 300,000 people mainly in the Republic of Adygea in the Russian Federation. Adyghe, which is also known as West Circassian, is also spoken in Turkey, Israel and Jordan.

Adyghe is closely related to Kabardian, and to a lesser extent to Ubykh, Abkhaz and Abaza. According to the UNESCO Map of the World's Languages in Danger (2009), Adyghe is vulnerable.

Since 1938 Adyghe has been written with a version of the Cyrillic alphabet. Between 1927 and 1938 it was written with the Latin alphabet, and before 1927 it was written with the Arabic alphabet. The literary language is based on the Chemguy dialect.

Alphabet:

Achuar-Shiwiar

     Achuar-Shiwiar|Achuár Chícham   Living

                                              What is it?

Achuar-Shiwiar is a Jivaroan language spoken Peru and Ecuador by about 5,000 people who belong to the Achuar, Shiwiar and Maina tribes. It is spoken along the Morona, Macusari, Tigre, Huasaga and Corrientes rivers in Peru, and along the Pastaza and Bobonaza Rivers in Ecuador.

The language is also known as Achuar-Shiwiar, Achuar-Shiviar, Achuár, Ashuar, Achual, Achuale, Achuare, Achuara, Atchuara, Shiwiár, Shiviar, Shiwiar-Maina, Shiwiar Chicham, Máin, Mayna, Mayno, and Áints

                                                       Alphabet:

Acholi

                            Acholi|Lwo   Living

                                              What is it?

Acholi is spoken mainly in northern Uganda, particularly in districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, known collectively as Acholiland, and in the Opari district of southern Sudan. Approximately 790,000 people speak Acholi, which belongs to the Western Nilotic branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages, and is closely related to Alur and Lango.

Acholi is also known as Acoli, Akoli, Acooli, Atscholi, Shuli, Gang, Lwoo, Lwo, Lok Acoli or Dok Acoli

The best-known piece of writing in Acholi is the Song of Lawino, an epic poem by Okot p'Bitek from Uganda. It was first published in 1966 and has been translated into quite a few other languages, including English.

                                                        Alphabet:

Acehnese

                   Acehnese|Bahsa Acèh   Living

                                          What is it?

Acehnese is a member of the Chamic branch of Malayo-Polynesian languages and is spoken in Aceh in Sumatra in Indonesia by about 3.5 million people. Acehnese is closely related to other Chamic language such as Jarai and Cham, which are spoken in Cambodia and Vietnam, and also to Minangkabau, Gayo and Batak. The name of the language has also been spelled as Achinese, Achehnese and Atjehnese.

Acehnese was formerly written with the Arabic alphabet but is now written with the Latin alphabet.

                                                   Alphabet:

Abenaki

                      Abenaki|Alnôba   Living

                                             What is it?

Abenaki is an Eastern Algonquian language with only a handful of fluent speakers, and perhaps several hundred non-fluent speakers. Most Abenaki speakers are elderly and live on the Odanak reservation in Quebec, Canada. It was originally spoken in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Efforts are being made to revive the language.

There are two main groups of Abenaki dialects: Western Abenaki, which is still spoken in Quebec; and Eastern Abenaki, which was spoken until quite recently by some of the Penobscot tribe in eastern Maine.

                                                            Alphabet:

Apache

                            Apache|Ndéé       Living



                                     What is it?

Apache is an Athabaskan (Na-Dene) language spoken by about 15,000 in Arizona and New Mexico. There are in fact two Apache languages: Western Apache and Eastern Apache, each of which has a number of dialects, including Jicarilla, Lipan, Kiowa-Apache, Chiricahua, and Mescalero. The Apache and Navajo languages are closely related.

The name Apache probably comes from the Yuma word for "fighting-men" and/or from apachu, which means "enemy" in Zuni. This was what the Zuni called the Navajo, who in turn were called Apaches de Nabaju by the early Spanish explorers in New Mexico. They call themselves N'de, Inde or Tinde, which all mean "the people".

                                                       Alphabet:

Azeri

                      Azeri|Azərbaycan dili   Living

                                             What is it?

Azerbaijani is a member of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family spoken by about 32.2 million people mainly in Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia, Russia and Turkey, and also in Iraq, Syria and Turkmenistan.There are two main varieties of the language: North Azerbaijani and South Azerbaijani, which are sometimes classified as separate languages, although there is a fair degree of mutually intelligibility between them.

North Azerbaijani is spoken in Azerbaijan, where is the official language, and also southern Dagestan, in the southern Caucasus Mountains and in parts of Central Asia. There are around 7.3 million native speakers, and another 8 million second language speakers.

South Azerbaijani has about 16.9 million speakers mainly in the northwest of Iran, where it is known asتورکی (Türki), and also in parts of Iraq and Turkey, and in Afghanistan and Syria.

                                                      Alphabet:

Source: www.omniglot.com

Avestan

                   Avestan|   Living

                                                                   What is it?

The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a.k.a Zoroaster), the Avesta. Many of the letters are derived from the old Pahlavi alphabet of Persia, which itself was derived from the Aramaic alphabet. Greek influence, in the form of the full representation of vowel sounds, is also present. The Avestan alphabet was replaced by the Arabic alphabet after Persia converted to Islam during the 7th century AD. Zorastrians in India wrote Avestan with their own alphabets.


                                                       Alphabet:






Source: www.omniglot.com

Aymara

                      Aymara|Aymar aru   Living

                                         What is it?

Aymara is an Aymaran language with about 2.2 million speakers in Bolivia, Peru, where it is an official language, and also in Chile and Argentina. The majority of Aymara speakers, about two million, are found in Bolivia, several hundred thousand live in Peru, and a few thousand in Chila and Argentina.

The Aymara originally used a collection of symbols, mainly pictures of people or things, as a mnemonic device. The symbols represented the things they portrayed or similar sounding words but never developed into a complete writing system. The symbols were originally written on animal skins using plant or mineral pigments but paper was substituted after the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. The symbols were never standardised and there was considerable variation in the way they were used among different Aymara groups.

Under the influence of the Spanish, the Latin alphabet was adopted to write Aymara. Many different spelling systems have been divised over the years. In 1985, the Peruvian goverment introduced a new spelling system known as the Aymara Official Alphabet or Unified Alphabet.

                                                      Alphabet:

                                                                   Sample Text:

Taqpach jaqejh khuskat uñjatatäpjhewa munañapansa, lurañapansa, amuyasiñapansa, ukatwa jilani sullkanípjhaspas ukham uñjasipjhañapawa.

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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 

Source: www.omniglot.com

Assamese

                   Assamese|অসমীয়া   Living

                                     What is it?

Assamese is an eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 20 million people in the Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and also spoken in Bangladesh and Bhutan. Assamese is closely related to Bengali and Oriya. The Assamese alphabet is written with an alphabet that developed from the Gupta alphabet around 1200 AD and which closely resembles the Mithilakshar and Bengali alphabets. Assamese has a long literary tradition, and was used for edicts and other writings of medieval kings. The first printed book in was Atmaram Sarma's translation of the Bible, which published in 1813 by the Serampore English Missionary Press in Calcutta.

                              
                                                     Alphabet:







                                     Sample Text:




Source: www.omniglot.com

Armenian

                      Armenian|Հայերէն   Living

                                
                                   What is it?

Armenian is an Indo-European language with about 6 million speakers mainly in Armenia (Հայաստան [Hayastan]) and Nagorno-Karabakh, a de facto, though unrecognised, independent republic in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the South Caucasus. There are also Armenian speakers in many other countries, including Russia, Georgia, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Egypt and the USA.

Armenian is the offical language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and has official status as a minority language in Cyprus, Poland and Romania. Until the the early 1990s schools in Armenian taught in either Armenian or Russian, however after the collapse of the USSR, Armenian became the main medium of instruction and the Russian-medium schools were closed. In 2010 Russian language education was reintroduced in Armenia.


                                                                Alphabet:





                                Sample Text:


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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.




Source: www.omniglot.com

Aramaic

                       Aramaic|ܐܪܡܝܐ‎|ארמית   Living


                                            What is it?

Aramaic is a family of languages or dialects, belonging to the Semitic family. More specifically, it is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. The Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to both the Arabic and modern Hebrew alphabets.

                                      Alphabet:









Source: www.omniglot.com

Arabic

                          Arabic|عربي   Living


                                             What is it?

The Arabic script evolved from the Nabataean Aramaic script. It has been used since the 4th century AD, but the earliest document, an inscription in Arabic, Syriac and Greek, dates from 512 AD. The Aramaic language has fewer consonants than Arabic, so during the 7th century new Arabic letters were created by adding dots to existing letters in order to avoid ambiguities. Further diacritics indicating short vowels were introduced, but are only generally used to ensure the Qur'an was read aloud without mistakes. There are two main types of written Arabic: Classical Arabic - the language of the Qur'an and classical literature. It differs from Modern Standard Arabic mainly in style and vocabulary, some of which is archaic. All Muslims are expected to recite the Qur'an in the original language, however many rely on translations in order to understand the text. Modern Standard Arabic (اللغة العربية الفصحى / al-luġatu l-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā) - the universal language of the Arabic-speaking world which is understood by all Arabic speakers. It is the language of the vast majority of written material and of formal TV shows, lectures, etc. Each Arabic speaking country or region also has its own variety of colloquial spoken Arabic. These colloquial varieties of Arabic appear in written form in some poetry, cartoons and comics, plays and personal letters. There are also translations of the bible into most varieties of colloquial Arabic. Arabic has also been written with the Hebrew, Syriac and Latin scripts.


                                                      Alphabet:





                                       Sample Text:


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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 


                                        Greetings:
!مرحبا Hello!
كيف حالك؟ How are you?
!صباح الخير Good morning!
!يوم جيد Good day!
!مساء الخير Good evening!
!ليلة سعيدة Good night!
!وداعا Good bye!

Source: www.omniglot.com

Amharic

                         Amharic|ኣማርኛ   Living


                                            What is it?

Amharic is a Semitic language and the national language of Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ). The majority of the 25 million or so speakers of Amharic can be found in Ethiopia, but there are also speakers in a number of other countries, particularly Eritrea (ኤርትራ), Canada, the USA and Sweden.The name Amharic (ኣማርኛ - amarəñña) comes from the district of Amhara (አማራ) in nortern Ethiopia, which is thought to be the historic centre of the language.

                                                     Alphabet:

                                                                  Sample Text:

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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Source: www.omniglot.com

Aleut

                    Aleut|Unangam Tunuu   Living

                                
                               What is it?

Aleut is a member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family and is spoken by about 300 people in Alaska and Siberian Commander Islands. Most of speakers live on the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands of Alaska. There are two main groups of Aleut dialects: Eastern Aleut and Atkan.During the 19th century, when Alaska was part of Russia, Aleut was written with a version of the Cyrillic alphabet by a Russian Orthodox priest, Ioann Veniaminov (1797-1879), who was later made a saint - Saint Innocent of Alaska. Veniaminov started working with the Aleut in 1824, translated parts of the bible and other religious works into Aleut, and in 1846 he published a grammar of Eastern Aleut.The Latin orthography for Aleut was developed during the second half of the 20th century by Knut Bergsland who worked with William Dirks Sr., Moses Dirks, and other Aleut speakers. Bergsland produced a comprehensive Aleut dictionary in 1994, and a detailed grammar in 1997.

                                                 Alphabet:

                                                              Sample Text:

Anĝaĝinam huzungis agaxtakuu ingisxigikux̂ ama liidax̂ nagan sahnganaxtada. Txin sakaaĝatal anagis mataxchx̂ida inaqamchix̂ agangudaganasaaĝiiĝutakus ludaangan huzuu ngaan quĝasaatakus.

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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Source: www.omniglot.com

Albanian

                        Albanian|Shqip   Living

                                       What is it?


Albanian is an Indo-European language which forms its own branch in the Indo-European family and has no close relatives. It is spoken by about 7.6 million people mainly in Albania and Kosovo, and also in parts of Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
Albanian is thought by some scholars to be a descendent of Illyrian, a group of Indo-European languages spoken in the Western Balkans until perhaps the 6th century AD. Others believe that Albanian descended from Thracian or Dacian, Indo-European languages spoken in parts of the Balkans until about the 5th century AD.
There are two main dialects of Albanian: Tosk (Toskësisht) Gheg (Gegërisht) and the dividing line between them is the Shkumbin river. Tosk, the official language of Albania, and one of the official languages of Kosovo and Macedonia, is spoken in southern Albania, Turkey, Greece and Italy, while Gheg is spoken in Serbia and Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, northern Albania and Bulgaria. The dialects are more or less mutually intelligible, and transitional varieties of Albanian are spoken in central Albania.


                                                  Alphabet:







                                                                   Sample Text:

Të gjithë njerëzit lindin të lirë dhe të barabartë në dinjitet dhe në të drejta. Ata kanë arsye dhe ndërgjegje dhe duhet të sillen ndaj njëri tjetrit me frymë vëllazërimi.
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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.


                                                       Greetings:

Përshëndetje! Hello!
Si jeni? How are you?
Mirëmëngjesi! Good morning!
Mirëdita! Good day!
Mirëmbrëma! Good evening!
Natën e mirë! Good night!
Mirupafshim! Good bye!

Source: www.omniglot.com

Ainu

                            Ainu|アイヌ イタ<sub>ク   Living

                                           
                                     What is it?</sub>

Ainu is spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido by maybe 15 families. It was once spoken in the Kurile Islands, the northern part of Honshu and the southern half of Sakhalin. The last Ainu speaker on Sakhalin died in 1994. Ainu is a language isolate, unrelated to any other language.

The vast majority of the 150,000 people who claim to be ethnically Ainu speak only Japanese. The actual number of people of Ainu descent is thought to be higher, however many are unaware of their ethnicity or deny it through fear of discrimiation.

Efforts are currently being made to revive and revitalise Ainu, particularly by Shigeru Kayano, a native speaker of the Tsishima dialect of Ainu (the only surviving dialect). He has set up a school to teach the language and has started collecting traditional Ainu stories.

Ainu is officially written with a version of the Japanese katakana syllabary. A Latin-based alphabet is also used. The Ainu also have a rich oral tradition, including Yukar (sagas of heros), Kamui Yukar (stories of the gods) and Uwepeker (old stories). 


                                                               _Alphabet:





                                  Sample Text:

Katakana version

Japanse version

ある日に（川の）水源の方へ（私が）遊ぶに（私が）出かけたら（思いがけなく）（川の）水源に一人の小男が胡桃（くるみ）の木の梁（やな）をたてるため（胡桃の木の）杭を打っていた。 （それに下げた）腰を幾度も上げて立っている。(腰を曲げ曲げしている。)

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One day, as I was setting out traveling toward the source of the (river’s) water, the walnut wood post was struck as at the water’s source a little man all by himself was erecting a walnut wood plank. He was standing there now bent over at the waist and now standing up straight over and over again.

Source: www.omniglot.com

Akkadian

    Akkadian|  Historical

What is it?

Akkadian was a semitic language spoken in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) between about 2,800 BC and 500 AD. It was named after the city of Akkad and first appeared in Sumerian texts dating from 2,800 BC in the form of Akkadian names.

The Akkadian cuneiform script was adapted from Sumerian cuneiform in about 2,350 BC. At the same time, many Sumerian words were borrowed into Akkadian, and Sumerian logograms were given both Sumerian and Akkadian readings. In many ways the process of adapting the Sumerian script to the Akkadian language resembles the way the Chinese script was adapted to write Japanese. Akkadian, like Japanese, was polysyllabic and used a range of inflections while Sumerian, like Chinese, had few inflections.

A large corpus of Akkadian texts and text fragments numbering hundreds of thousands has been excavated. They include mythology, legal and scientific texts, correspondence and so on. During the 2nd millenium BC the Akkadian language developed into two variants, Assyrian and Babylonian, in Assyria and Babylon.

Akkadian became the lingua franca of the ancient Near East, but started to be replaced by Aramaic by the 8th century BC. After that it continued to be used mainly by scholars and priests and the last known example of written Akkadian dates from the 1st century AD.

                                                      Alphabet:

Sample Text:

    

      Tips: www.ancientscripts.com                                                                         

         Source: www.omniglot.com                                                                                                                      

Akan

                            Akan|Twi   Living


                                      What is it?

The Akan languages are part of the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo languages. There are about 7 million Akan speakers in eastern Ivory Coast, south-central Ghana, and central Togo. There are numerous dialects of Akan, including Twi, Fante, Bono, Wasa, Nzema, Baule and Anyi, with a high level of mutual intelligibility between them.

Akan languages started to be written down, mainly in religious publications, by Danish, German and British missionaries during the 17th and 18th centuries.

There are currently three standardized orthographies for Asante, Akuapem and Fante, there is also a unified Akan orthography which was created during the 1980s.

                                             Alphabet:

A a	B b	C c	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	M m
N n	O o	P p	Ɛ ɛ	R r	S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	Ɔ ɔ	Y y	Z z

                                                      Sample Text:

Nnipa nyinaa yɛ pɛ. Na wɔde adwene ne nyansa na abɔ obiara. Ɛno nti, ɛsɛ sɛ obiara dɔ ne yɔnko, bu ne yɔnko, di ne yɔnko ni.

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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 

Source: www.omniglot.com

Ahom

                                                         Ahom|   Historical

                                             
                                       What is it?

Ahom or Tai Ahom is a Tai-Kadai language formerly spoken in the Indian state of Assam, where the Ahom people, who originally came from Yunnan province in China, ruled Brahmaputra valley between 1228 to 1826. Ahom was used as the sole language of the Ahom kingdom until the 15th or 16th century, when it started to be replaced by Assamese. By the early 19th century Ahom was no longer used as a spoken language, although it continued to be used in religious ceremonies throughout the 19th century, and since 1920 efforts have been made to revive the Ahom language and culture. One difficultly is that the phonology of Ahom was not recorded. An Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary was published by G. Barua in 1920, and a number of other works in Ahom have been published since then, especially since 1997, when the first computer font for Ahom was developed by Stephen Morey. The Ahom alphabet was probably derived from the Brahmi script. The earliest inscriptions, on a stone pillar, dates from the 15th century. The alphabet also appears on coins, brass plates and numerous manuscripts on cloth or bark.

                                               
                                                                    Alphabet:

Consoantes:


Vogais:



Source: www.omniglot.com

Afrikaans

                      Afrikaans|Afrikaans   Living

                                  
                                          What is it?

Afrikaans is a Low Franconian West Germanic language descended from Dutch and spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia. There are also speakers of Afrikaans in Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Germany, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe. About 7.2 million people speak Afrikaans as a native language, and a further 8-15 million speak it as a second language.

Afrikaans retains some features of 18th century Dutch, together with vocabulary from various Bantu and Khoisan languages and also from Portugese and Malay. Speakers of Afrikaans can understand Dutch, though Dutch speakers tend to need a while to tune into Afrikaans.

From about 1815 Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa. At that time it was written with the Arabic alphabet. Afrikaans, written with the Latin alphabet, started to appeared in newspapers and political and religious works in about 1850. Then in 1875 a group of Afrikaans speakers from the Cape formed the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaanders (Society for Real Afrikaners), and published a number of books in Afrikaans, including grammars, dictionaries, religious material and histories. They also published a journal called the Patriot.

During the early years of the 20th century there was a blossoming of academic interest in Afrikaans. In 1925 Afrikaans was recognised by the government as a real language, instead of a slang version of Dutch. Afrikaans has changed little since then.

                                    Alphabet:

A a	B b	C c	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i
aa	bee	see	dee	ee	ef	gee	haa	ie
J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	O o	P p	Q q	R r
jee	kaa	el	em	en	oo	pee	kuu	er
S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	X x	Y y	Z z
es	tee	uu	vee	wee	ex	y	set

                                                            Sample Text:

Alle menslike wesens word vry, met gelyke waardigheid en regte, gebore. Hulle het rede en gewete en behoort in die gees van broederskap teenoor mekaar op te tree.

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All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

                                                 Greetings:

Hallo! Hallo!

Hoe gaan dit? How are you?
Goeie more! Good morning!
Goeie dag! Good day!
Goeie naand! Good evening!

Goeie nag! Good night!

Goeie bye! Good bye!

Tips: www.easyafrikaans.com/easyafrikaans/Basic_Grammar.html

        www.exploresouthafrica.net/phrasebook.htm

Source: www.omniglot.com