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Ancient Greek:![]() ![]()
Notes: Greek comprises its own branch on the Indo-European family tree. Modern Greek is listed below. Speaker: Jerry Reedy (S) |
Bengali:![]() ![]()
Notes: The official language of Bangladesh, and also spoken in eastern India around Calcutta. Speaker: Sharif Khan (N) |
Bosnian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Since independence the official language of Bosnia-Hercegovina is no longer being lumped in with Serbo-Croatian. Speaker: Maja Marjanovic (N) |
Breton:![]() ![]()
Notes: Breton is the only Celtic language surviving on the European mainland, having been brought to northwestern France by Celtic people fleeing the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Speaker: Steve Hewitt (S) |
Bulgarian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Like Russian, Bulgarian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but with one unique symbol. It's the second letter of the third word. Speaker: Emilia Simeonova (N) |
Catalan:![]() ![]()
Notes: This Romance language is spoken up the east coast of Spain and over the Pyrenees into Andorra, where it is the official language, and a little into France. Speaker: Gemma (S) |
Croatian:![]() ![]() |
Czech:
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Speaker: Zuzana Tomková (N) |
Danish:![]() ![]()
Notes: The transcription needs considerable fine-tuning, as Danish has an intimidatingly complex vowel system. Speaker: (N) |
English:
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Notes: This is a narrow transcription in a Midwest American accent. Speaker: János McGhie (N) |
Estonian:![]() ![]()
Notes: A Finno-Ugric language. Speaker: Colm Doyle (S) |
Fijian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Fiji, at the eastern edge of Melanesia, was the jumping off point for the settlement of Polynesia. Fiji has strong influences from both regions, but the language is predominantly Polynesian in character. Speaker: Marica (N) |
Finnish:![]() ![]()
Notes: Along with the distantly-related Hungarian, Finnish is one of the very few non-Indo-European languages in Europe. Speaker: Gitta Hammarberg (N) |
French:
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Speaker: Marie (N) |
Georgian:![]() ![]()
Notes: The Kartvelian languages of the Caucasus Mountains don't seem to be related to anything else, or even for that matter to each other. Speaker: Eka Tchanturia (N) |
Greek:![]() ![]()
Notes: Greek comprises its own branch on the Indo-European family tree. Modern Greek is directly descended from Ancient Greek. Speaker: Diomedes Koufteros (N) |
Gujarati:![]() ![]()
Notes: Principally spoken in western India. Speaker: Asha (N) |
Hindi:![]() ![]()
Notes: Hindi is principally located in central India, but it is one of the more widely used languages in the country. In school all Indian students learn Hindi, English, and the local language, of which there are over 200. Urdu, although written with Arabic characters, is mutually intelligible when spoken. Speaker: (N) |
Hungarian:
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Notes: Hungarian is one of the very few languages spoken in Europe that doesn't belong to the Indo-European language family. The Hungarians migrated to their present location from somewhere on the Russian steppes. Some of their relatives went farther north, as Finnish and Estonian are distantly related, while others went east, leaving related languages in Siberia. The Hungarians' name for themselves and their language is 'Magyar', which is not pronounced 'MAG-yar', but rather more like 'MUJ-jur'. Speaker: John Haiman (N) |
Irish:
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Notes: The original Celtic language of Ireland is dampened by English, but roughly a quarter of Ireland and Northern Ireland's population has a decent command of the language. The strongholds are on the west coast. Irish, or Irish Gaelic, exists in a number of substantially different but mutually intelligible dialects. There is also a degree of intelligibility with the related Scottish Gaelic. Speaker: Justin McCubbin (S) |
Italian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Italian is hardly a homogeneous language, as its many varieties developed from dialects of Latin. Speaker: Sondra Dorsey (S) |
Khmer:![]() ![]()
Notes: Spoken in Cambodia. Although it is related to Vietnamese, Khmer doesn't have a tonal system and instead has roughly a million vowels. I still need the written version. Speaker: John Haiman (S) |
Kinyarwanda:
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Notes: Spoken in Rwanda and Zaire. Speaker: Eric Kagabo (N), Mark Kile (S) |
Kréyol:![]() ![]()
Notes: A French-based creole spoken on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Speaker: Cecile (N) |
Láadan:![]() ![]()
Notes: Láadan is a constructed language invented by science fiction author Suzette Haden Elgin. It is interesting linguistically because it aims to eliminate the perceived sexism of Western languages by including particles that allow speakers to unambiguously convey how they feel about every statement. Speaker: Colm Doyle (S) |
Latin:
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Notes: This is the literary language of Ancient Rome and her empire. The sound of actual spoken Latin, from which all Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and others) are descended, is a matter of scholarly debate. The translation is idiomatic, literally meaning 'I do not use the Latin language'. Speaker: János McGhie (S) |
Loglan:
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Notes: In the 1950s James Cook Brown created this logical language to be completely unambiguous and culturally neutral. Much of the grammar is actually based on predicate calculus. You can read more about it at www.loglan.org/what-is-loglan.html. Speaker: James Jennings (S) |
Māori![]() ![]()
Notes: Spoken by the native Polynesian people of New Zealand. Nearly all Māori speak English, but heavily use their own tongue for ceremonial purposes. There has been a strong effort to revitalise the language which has received a lot of official support. Many signs are bilingual and you can have a legal case heard in a Māori-speaking court. New Zealand is also officially known by its Māori name: Aotearoa, which means Land of the Long White Cloud. Speaker: Tuti Aranui (N) |
Moldovan:![]() ![]()
Notes: Sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine, a now-independent Moldova was historically caught in a tug-of-war between Romania and the Soviet Union. The result for the Moldovan tongue is a Romance language very close to Romanian but with numerous Slavic influences. Speaker: Boris, Sarah, & Emmanuil (N,S,N) |
Nepali:![]() ![]()
Notes: I don't yet have the orthography. Speaker: Katharine Björk Guneratne (S) |
Norwegian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Norwegian and Swedish are close enough to be mutually intelligible, and the two are the only indigenous European languages to make use of tone. Note that r before a consonant produces a retroflex sound. The numerous dialects of Norwegian, and heavy Danish influence, have given rise to a confusing situation in which there are two written versions of Norwegian in official use, Nynorsk and Bokmål. Speaker: Mikkel Conradi (N) |
Oromo:![]() ![]()
Notes: One of the major languages of Ethiopia. Speaker: Naima Mohamed Ibrahim (N) |
Polish:![]() ![]()
Notes: Polish is unique among modern Slavic languages for having nasalised vowels, designated by a cedilla. Speaker: Natalia Wesołowska (N) |
Portuguese:![]() ![]()
Notes: Spoken, of course, in Portugal but also in Brazil. Also notable for its nasalised vowels. Speaker: Katie Hardy (N), Viviane (N) |
Romanian:![]() ![]() |
Scottish Gaelic:![]() ![]()
Notes: Although the Scottish tribes that so vexed the Romans spoke their own Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic is descended from the Irish Gaelic introduced by settlers from northeast Ireland in the middle of the first millenium CE. The later invasion of Germanic speakers into Great Britain produced a Germanic language called Scots or Inglis, and only in the 19th C. did the dialect of Scottish English supplant everything before it. Like most other Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic is struggling to survive, with most speakers on the coast and islands of the northwest. Literally the words translate as "Gaelic is not at me, but it is a beautiful language that is in it." Speaker: Harry Campbell (S) |
Serbian:![]() ![]() |
Shona:![]() ![]()
Notes: A wide variety of Shona dialects are spoken in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Most dialects are tonal, with vowels having either a low or high tone. Speaker: (N) |
Slovak:
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Speaker: Zuzana Tomková (N) |
Somali:![]() ![]()
Notes: Speaker: Ali Ali Ali (N) |
Spanish:
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Speaker: José Munuera (N) |
Swahili:
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Notes: Swahili was originally spoken along the coast and islands of East Africa, and absorbed many Arabic words from Arab traders. Swahili spread inland as a lingua franca as the coastal people became the middlemen in an extensive trade network. Consequently Swahili is the most widely spoken Bantu language, and is a second language for most of its speakers. It has official status in Kenya, Tanzania, and recently Uganda, and is spoken in several surrounding East African countries. Speaker: Bengo Mrema (N), Mark Kile (N) |
Swedish:![]() ![]()
Notes: Swedish has been more nationally standardised than Norwegian, with which it is mutually intelligible. Together they are the only two indigenous European languages to make use of tone. Speaker: Karin (N) |
Tatar:![]() ![]()
Notes: The Tatars are a Turkic people who swept into western Russia and ruled the country from the 13th to the 16th Centuries. Speaker: (N) |
Thai:![]() ![]()
Notes: The Thai writing system was based on Khmer, which was based on Sanskrit. Speaker: Tissana Kijsanayotin (N) |
Tok Pisin:![]() ![]()
Notes: There are some 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, so this English-based creole has become a significant means of communication between language groups. It is used extensively in the government and urban areas. Although Tok Pisin is a corruption of Talk Pidgin, the language has advanced beyond a pidgin (a rudimentary "Me Tarzan, you Jane" system) to an independent language with its own rules and irregularities. The simplified phonology can disguise English derivations; the adjective phrase "wanpela gutpela" can be glossed "one-fellow good-fellow". Native English speakers, like my source, have a more Anglicised pronunciation than New Guineans who didn't know English first. Speaker: Luke Sykora (S) |
Ukrainian:![]() ![]()
Notes: Ukrainian is written in the same Cyrillic alphabet as Russian, but the "i" and "ï" letters are unique. Speaker: Vasil (N) |
Urdu:![]() ![]() ![]()
Notes: Urdu is spoken in Pakistan. Although they're written in very different scripts, the language is closely related to Hindi. Owing to the current hostilities between Pakistan and India, this fact often comes as an enormous shock to speakers of either language. Speaker: Steve Hewitt (S), Hashaam Sheikh (N) |
Welsh:![]() ![]()
Notes: Although only a quarter of the population of Wales speaks this Celtic language, revitalisation efforts are gaining strength. Wales is renowned for its intimidating place names, such as Betws-y-Coed and Penrhyndeudraeth. Speaker: Steve Hewitt (S) |