Languages

Asian

Cambodian is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. As a result of geographic proximity, the Khmer language has affected, and also been affected by, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham.15.7 to 21.6 million people speak Cambodian. (more)

Chinese is a language or language family that forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world speaks some form of Chinese as their native language. (more)

Hindi an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is one of the two official languages of India, the other being English. Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, with over 337 million speakers. (more)

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language that was officially defined with the declaration of Indonesia's independence in 1945. There are more than 250 million speakers worldwide. (more)

Japanese is a language spoken by over 130 million people, in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities around the world. Japanese is the de facto official language of Japan, which is the only country to have Japanese as an official working language. (more)

Korean is the official language of both North Korea and South Korea with about 80 million native speakers. Similar to the Japanese and Vietnamese languages, Korean language was influenced by the Chinese language in the form of Sino-Korean words. (more)

Laotian is the official language of Laos with over 5 million native speakers. 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. (more)

Tagalog is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines. It is the most spoken Philippine language in terms of the number of speakers. Tagalog, as its de facto standardized counterpart, Filipino, is the principal language of the national media in the Philippines. (more)

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 with over 60 million speakers. (more)

Vietnamese, formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese, is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people, who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States. (more)

European

Albanian is a language spoken by about 7-8 million people, primarily in Albania and Serbia (Kosovo), but also in other parts of the Balkans with an Albanian population, along the eastern coast of Italy and in Sicily, as well as by a significant diaspora in Greece, Scandinavia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Australia, Turkey, and the United States. (more)

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic languages with over 10 million speakers. Bulgarian is a part of the Balkan linguistic union, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and Torlakian dialect of the Serbian language. (more)

The modern Croatian standard language is a continuous outgrowth of more than nine hundred years of literature written in a mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic and the vernacular language. Croatian language is today the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Bosnian and Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (more)

Czech is one of the West Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, Pomeranian (Kashubian), and Lusatian Sorbian. It is spoken by most people in the Czech Republic and by Czechs all over the world (about 12 million native speakers in total). (more)

Danish (dansk) is one of the North Germanic languages, a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark. (more)

Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 million people, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, but also by smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. (more)

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and by some ten thousand in various migrated communities. It is a Finno-Ugric language and is closely related to Finnish. (more)

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden and Norway. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Menkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken. (more)

French is a Romance language originally spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and today by about 300 million people around the world as either a native or a second language, with significant populations in 54 countries. (more)

The German language is one of the world's major languages. German is closely related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. Around the world, German is spoken by 100 million native speakers and also 30 million non-native speakers. Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language. (more)

Greek has a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest of any single language in the Indo-European language family. Today, it is spoken by approximately 1525 million people in Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and emigrant communities around the world, including Australia, United States, Germany and elsewhere. (more)

Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in seven neighboring countries. There are about 14.5 million native speakers, of whom 9.5-10 million live in modern-day Hungary. (more)

Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of three official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino. (more)

Latvian, sometimes referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 200,000 abroad. Latvian is one of two living Baltic languages (with the other one being Lithuanian), a group of its own within the Indo-European language family. (more)

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. There are over 6.3 million speakers of Norwegian. (more)

Polish is the official language of Poland. It is the most spoken West Slavic language; it is spoken by most of the 38 million inhabitants of Poland. (more)

Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal from the Latin spoken by romanized Celtiberians about 1000 years ago. Today it is one of the world's major languages, ranked sixth according to number of native speakers (over 200 million). (more)

Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Moldova and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia). (more)

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages with over 147 million speakers worldwide. (more)

The Slovak language, sometimes referred to as "Slovakian", is an Indo-European language belonging to the West Slavic languages (together with Czech, Polish, Cashubian and Sorbian). Slovak is spoken by over 6 million persons worldwide. (more)

Swedish 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 land islands, by more than nine million people. (more)

Turkish is a language spoken by 6573 million people worldwide, predominantly in Turkey, with smaller communities of speakers in Cyprus, Greece and Eastern Europe, as well as by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly Germany, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. (more)

Ukrainian is the official state language of Ukraine. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Slovak. Ukrainian is spoken by approximately 36,894,000 people in the world. (more)

Latin American

Spanish is a Romance language originally from the northern area of Spain. It is the official language of Spain and most Latin American countries. The language is spoken by between 322 and 400 million people natively, making Spanish the most spoken Romance language and possibly the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. (more)

Middle Eastern

Arabic is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. Classified as Central Semitic, it is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and has its roots in a Proto-Semitic common ancestor. Estimates of native speakers are between 186 and 422 million. (more)

Farsi is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait and elsewhere. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. 120 million people worldwide speak Farsi. (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 it is spoken by a majority of the population. (more)