Indo-European

Sir William Jones, a judge in British India during the late 1700s, read ancient Sanskrit texts in his spare time (and I thought my hobby here was odd). To everyone's surprise, however, he found that Sanskrit, and therefore its Indic language descendents, were somehow related to the language families of Europe. It became clear that the ancestors of these families were themselves descendents of an even older language, Proto-Indo- European. Thus the Indo-European superfamily includes ten branches: Celtic, Germanic, Romance, Greek, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian, and two dead branches, Anatolian and Tocharian. It is truly astounding to realise that Indo-European languages are the dominant languages on over four of the six inhabited continents (Europe, North and South America, Australia, as well as Russia and the Indian subcontinent of Asia). Other Indo-European languages not yet represented include Albanian, Armenian, Latvian, and Lithuanian.

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: (N)

Catalan: Notes: This Romance language is spoken along 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: Notes: With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, attempts to create a nationally standard language fell off, and Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are being recognized as separate, although closely related, languages. Speaker: Nikki Ruklić (N)

Czech: Speaker: Zuzana Tomková (N)

Danish: Notes: The transcription needs considerable fine-tuning, as Danish has an intimidatingly complex vowel system. Speaker: (N)

Dutch: Notes: There are a large number of Dutch dialects, both within the Netherlands and in the Flanders region of Belgium, where the language is called Flemish. Worldwide, there are creoles and descendents of Dutch throughout the former Dutch trading empire, most notably Afrikaans in South Africa. Speaker: Mai (N)

English: Notes: This is a narrow transcription in a Midwest American accent. Speaker: János McGhie (N)

Faroese: Notes: The Faroe Islands, halfway between Scotland and Iceland, were settled during the Viking Age and the language retains many elements of Old Norse. The islands are now a self-governing protectorate of Denmark. Speaker: Heri Joensen (N)

French: Speaker: Marie (N)

German: Notes: Although this is Standard High German, there are a great number of German dialects, in the north shading gradually into Dutch. Although High German is more prestigious than Low German, the terms simply refer to regional elevation: High German up along the Alps, Low German in the plains to the north. Speaker: János McGhie (S)

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)

Icelandic: Notes: Iceland's history of high literacy rates and low outside contact have produced a language little changed from the 13th century. Modern Icelanders can read their ancient sagas much more easily than, say, English speakers can read The Canterbury Tales. Speaker: Tómas (N)

Irish: 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)

Latin: 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)

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)

Persian: Notes: This language is called Farsi by its speakers in Iran, and Dari in Afghanistan, but their language academy has said it's just fine for westerners to go with the more long-standing Persian. Speaker: Sher Auria (N), Steve Hewitt (S)

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: Notes: Romanian, and its next-door-neighbour Moldovan, descended from the Latin exported around the Roman Empire (Romania was the province of Dacia), but due to their farflung location they developed rather seperately from the other Romance languages. Speaker: Alexandru Burst (N)

Russian: Notes: I'd always wondered why Russian letters looked so blocky. It turns out that the Cyrillic alphabet was developed from Greek letters by Greek Orthodox missionaries who were creating a written language for the Russians so they could print religious texts. Apparently lower case letters were considered too base for religious printing, so Cyrillic letters were all modelled after the blockier upper case Greek letters. Speaker: Alina Doroshko (N), Max (N)

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 century 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: Notes: With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, attempts to create a nationally standard language fell off, and Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are being recognized as separate, although closely related, languages. Speaker: "Unchatenfrance" (S)

Slovak: Speaker: Zuzana Tomková (N)

Spanish: European Spanish: Speaker: José Munuera (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)

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 Pakistand 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)