The Wonderful World of Languages

The Wonderful World of Languages

ཨ is for Armenian, a rather unique and interesting language.

Б is for bilabial trill, an unusual sound which occurs in some spoken languages.

C is for Chuukese, a Micronesian language spoken on the small atoll of Chuuk.

ဍ is for the Dravidian languages, a language family from India.

E is for Esperanto, a conlang developed by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof. It is the most successful constructed language in the world.

F is for fricative, a group of consonants found in most languages.

G is for glottal stop, a feature found in certain languages.

H is for Hiri Motu, one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea.

I is for IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. The IPA is one of the most common systems of phonetic notation, and is commonly used to represent sounds of languages.

J is for John C. Wells, a phonetician and Esperanto teacher from Great Britain.

K is for Kalaba-X, a simple constructed language. It was devised to help with the teaching of translation techniques.

L is for Lojban, a constructed language created for the purpose of communication between speakers of different languages.

M is for Mataian, a language which I am currently developing. It is based upon the ‘Uvean, Niuean, Hawaiian, and Māori languages, all of which are part of the Polynesian family of languages.

N is for Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. It is still spoken by around 1.5 million people in central Mexico.

Ꭳ is for Ojibwe, a North American language part of the Algonquin family of languages. It is spoken throughout much of southern Canada, and in the parts of the United States.

P is for Pirahã, the language of the Pirahã people of Brazil. It is unique in that it is considered one of the most phonologically simple languages in the world,

Q is for Quenya, a constructed language, or conlang, developed by J.R.R. Tolkien.

R is for Rongorongo, a script discovered on Easter Island during the 19th century. It remains undeciphered.

စ is for the Salishan languages, a group of languages spoken in the Pacific Northwest.

T is for Tok Pisin, an English-derived creole spoken by most inhabitants of Papua New Guinea.

U is for ‘Uvean, one of the two official languages of Wallis and Futuna, a nation in Polynesia first colonized by the French.

V is for Vanuatu, the country with the highest  density of languages per capita in the world.

W is for the Wakhi language, which is spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and Tajikistan.

X is for Xhosa, a Bantu language, and one of the few spoken languages to include click consonants. It is currently spoken by approximately 8 million people in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Y is for Yiddish, the traditional language of the Ashkenazi Jews.

Z is for the Zulu language of South Africa. It has over 10 million speakers, and is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages.