I love learning languages, but also learning about languages. This document captures all the facts I know about any language, regardless of how much I know the language itself.
- Afrikaans
- Basque / euskara
- Brazilian Portuguese
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Cantonese Chinese
- Chinese
- Czech
- Danish
- English
- Esperanto
- Finnish / Suomi
- French
- Galician
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hmong
- Hungarian
- Interlingua
- Iranian Persian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Klingon
- Latin
- Mandarin Chinese
- Norwegian
- Ojibwe
- Pashto
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Vietnamese
- Zulu
- I studied a bit a long time ago.
- Similar to Dutch.
- Native to Namibia and South Africa.
- ~7.2 million speakers.
- I never seriously studied it, but I've been to Basque Country many times and I understand a bit.
- Language isolate (not similar to any other languages, although there are many theories connecting it to geographically distant languages)
- Native to Spain and France.
- ~750,000 speakers.
- I never seriously studied it, but my knowledge of Portuguese plus a lot of contact with Brazilians throughout my life gives me a good idea of the differences with Portuguese from Portugal.
- Native to Brazil.
- ~211 million speakers.
- I started studying it on 2021. My previous study of Russian helps understand most vocabulary.
- Native to Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Romania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine.
- ~8 million speakers.
- The Preslav Literary School developed the Cyrillic script in the late 9th century. That script/alphabet is used nowadays in Russian and other languages.
- I never seriously studied it, but my many visits and Catalan friends make me understand most of it.
- Native to Spain, Andorra, France and Italy.
- ~4.1 million speakers (more than 10 million if we count 2nd language).
- Chinese from Canton (Guangzhou in Mandarin), traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group.
- Despite much shared vocabulary, very different from Mandarin Chinese.
- Native to China, Hong Kong and Macau.
- ~80 million native speakers.
- I started studying it in 2020 (online material + weekly language exchange with Chinese native). I focused mainly on simplified Chinese and pinyin, but also studied HSK vocabulary levels 1 and 2
- It's a group of languages, not a single one.
- Native to China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Mandarin mostly in the first 3 countries, while Cantonese in the last 2.
- There are Chinese natives in many other countries. The top countries by number of Chinese speakers are: USA, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Thailand, Russia and Finland. All of them with over 10,000 speakers.
- ~1.2 billion native speakers.
- I never studied it seriously but I know some words (the most important: pivo)
- Very similar to Slovak (they're mutually intelligible)
- Native to Czech Republic
- ~14 million speakers.
- I never studied it, but I could appreciate the similarities with German when I visited Denmark.
- Very similar to Norwegian and Swedish (they're mutually intelligible in some regions)
- Native to Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein (Germany).
- ~6 million speakers.
- My 2nd language (3rd actually considering I have 2 mother tongues), which I consider myself to be very fluent at.
- Native to many countries. 67 countries have it as official language, including (in descending order by number of speakers): USA, Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Canada, Ghana, etc.
- ~400 million speakers (~1,150 million if we count 2nd language)
- I studied it when I was a teenager. I barely remember things, but its similarity with Latin and romance languages makes it easy to understand.
- It's a constructed language created in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof.
- ~1,000 native speakers estimated, at least 30,000 speakers as 2nd language.
- The countries with the most Esperanto speakers are (in descending order): Brazil, Germany, Japan, France, the United States, China and Italy.
- I studied it for like a week and then switched to Polish; it's still on my to-study-one-day list. I've been to Finland so I "tasted" it.
- It's very different from the surrounding Germanic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, ...), making it a bit similar to Basque in that aspect.
- Native to Finland and some parts of Norway, Sweden and Russia.
- ~5.8 million speakers.
- Important word: olut.
- I studied it as a 2nd foreign language back in high school. That makes it my 4th language. I've been to France in many ocassions and I think I'm a bit fluent, but I don't practice it often so it's much easier to understand than to speak for me.
- Native to France but to many other countries. The most important ones: Canada (Quebec), Belgium, Switzerland and many countries in North and West Africa.
- ~80 million speakers (~275 million if we count 2nd language).
- My mother tongue.
- Native to Galicia.
- ~2.4 million speakers in Galicia but due to heavy emigration there's no accurate number of total speakers in the world.
- It's NOT a dialect of Spanish.
- I studied it when I was a kid, from a great book inherited from my grandpa. Then I re-studied it in University. Been to Germany a couple of times too. I understand it but I'm not fluent.
- Native to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol and the German-speaking Community of Belgium (1% of the Belgium population).
- ~85 million speakers.
- I never studied it directly although we studied a lot of ethymology back in High School when studying Latin, Spanish, Galician and French. Also a close friend living in Greece for years gave me some contact with the modern version of the language.
- There are differences between Modern Greek and Ancient/Classical Greek, although they have a lot in common (it's the same language, before and after centuries of evolution).
- A word that I always remember is καλημέρα, but I word I should remember is μπύρα :-)
- ~13.5 million speakers.
- I never studied it but it's on my list of to-study-one-day languages.
- The different script specially attracts me.
- Native to Israel, but there are a lot of speakers worldwide.
- ~5 million native speakers (of Modern Hebrew).
- Modern Hebrew is different from Biblical Hebrew. Spoken Mishnaic Hebrew was extinct by the 5th century and survived only as a liturgical language; in the late 19th century Hebrew was revived into Modern Hebrew.
- I studied a bit of Hindi and Urdu as I found a travel book to learn both. But never too seriously so I can't even understand them - I can only identify them and say a few words.
- Native to India (mostly everywhere but the South, although more in the Northern and Central India).
- ~322 million native speakers (including languages derived from Hindi).
- Dialect of the West Hmongic branch.
- Native to China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Although it's particularly important in Laos and USA.
- It has 3 major dialects: Hmong Daw (White Miao or Hmong Der), Mong Leeg (Leng Miao or Mong Leng) and Dananshan (Standard Chinese Miao). The 2 first dialects are the most spoken by Hmong Americans.
- ~3.7 million speakers.
- I never studied it, but I'm curious about the language.
- Native to Hungary, and areas of east Austria, Croatia, Romania, northern Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and western Ukraine.
- ~13 million speakers.
- I studied a bit back in the day when I studied Esperanto, but I can't remember anything.
- It's a constructed language created in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association
- It can be seen as a regular version of Romance languages, and non-native Romance speakers have shown better understanding of languages such as Spanish, Italian or French after learning Interlingua.
- ~1500 users of the written language
- I studied a long time ago through pen-paling with a translator native to Teheran. It was my first introduction to Arabic script.
- Also known as Farsi or Western Farsi.
- Native to Iran (modern Persia).
- ~80 million speakers.
- Probably the easiest language to understand for a native Spanish, as it's very close in grammar and vocabulary (I wonder if Romanian could be easier). I never seriously studied it, but I fully understand it and can get very fluent shortly by reviewing the basics.
- Native to Italy, San Marino, Vatican City and regions of Switzerland, Slovenia and Croatia. It had official status in other nearby countries, such as Albania, Malta, Greece, Monaco and Montenegro, as well as some colonial areas of Africa.
- ~67 million speakers (85 million if we count 2nd language)
- I studied it a long time ago, and I remember some vocabulary and some kanji, but I'd like to study it again some day. It was my first contact with Asian scripts.
- It's much easier to learn than Chinese as it's not a tonal language.
- Native to Japan, but talked in many other places. It was an interesting discovery when I was to Finland to see how those 2 countries/cultures are connected.
- ~128 million speakers
- I briefly studied it a decade ago for a challenge. I may study it again now that it's available in Duolingo.
- Not only a constructed language, but originated in a fiction book within the Star Trek universe (The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand, 1985). It was deliberately designed to sound "alien".
- The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan (Scotty in Star Trek) for the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture (first time that Klingons spoke in Klingon instead of English).
- There are supposed to be a dozen of fluent speakers in the world.
- I studied it in high school as it was mandatory. I didn't like it much at the moment but I appreciate its usefulness now.
- It's the base of all Romance languages and therefore its study helps learning and understanding most of them.
- It's considered a dead language nowadays, but same as Hebrew it survived during centuries as a liturgical language.
- The main difference between Latin and most current Romance languages is the use of cases (curiously similar in that aspect to the non-Romance language German).
- Its 6 or 7 cases, along with 3 genders, five declensions, four conjugations, six tenses, three persons, three moods, two voices, two or three aspects and two numbers, make Latin a highly inflected language.
- It's the official language of the Holy See in Vatican City.
- There's no official statistic of "native" Latin speakers. Most people agree that as a dead language it has really zero native speakers, although many people is taught the language (myself included) and most Catholic clerics and ministers get very proficient at it.
- It's by far the largest of the Chinese dialects, spoken by 70% of all Chinese speakers.
- Originated in Northern China, and including the Beijing dialect, it's sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese, although it has extended to many areas of China, as well as Taiwan and Singapore.
- ~920 million speakers (~1,120 million counting 2nd language).
- I never studied it and I don't know much about it yet.
- I know it's kind of a mid-point between Danish and Swedish, and Norwegian speakers are known to understand more the other 2 than the other way round.
- There are a lot of dialects in Norwegian, some of them particularly close to Danish and Swedish.
- Native to Norway
- ~5.32 million speakers
- Also known as Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe in Ojibwe) or Chippewa (technically that would be Southwestern Ojibwe, spoken in USA).
- My first contact with the language was in 2020 when I came to Minnesota for the first time. It's one of many native-American languages.
- Native to Canada and USA (mostly the Northern states of Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan).
- It was used as lingua franca for trading back in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- It's a polysynthetic language: words are formed by concatenation of many morphemes.
- ~50,000 native speakers.
- I briefly learned a bit when I was studying Farsi, as I was interested in different Arabic forms. It's actually very similar to Farsi and sometimes called Eastern Iranian.
- Native to Afghanistan (mother tongue of 60% of population) and Pakistan (15%).
- ~60 million speakers.
- I studied Polish around 2005, after giving up on Finnish, when I was trying to learn something "close to" Russian but not Russian.
- As a Slavic language it's more related to languages such as Slovak and Czech than Russian. However it has some vocabulary similarities with Russian, with borrowings from that language happening in the 19th century.
- Despite the Latin script, the Polish alphabet is sort of complicated, with 32 letter (standard Latin is 26), although only 32 of them are native (q, x and v are only used in foreign terms). Of the 32 letters, 23 are consonants and 9 are vowels.
- Polish was used as lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe, making the language spread and understood along many countries.
- Native to Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, parts of Latvia, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.
- ~45 million speakers (~50 million counting 2nd language).
- Although I never seriously studied it, being a native Galician I had a lot of contact with the language, both in Galicia and in Portugal. I fully understand it and I can speak a bit.
- Romance language, very closely related to Galician, as they were once the same language (today referred to as Galician-Portuguese) and then they diverged due to the political separation of Portugal from Galicia.
- Being Galicia and Portugal so close, both languages diverged mostly phonetically but not much in the written form. Mutual intelligibility is estimated at 90%.
- Southern Galician is actually really close to Portuguese also phonetically. Other Galician dialects differed more probably due to the Galician people being apart from each other due to orography and politics.
- Native to Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Timor Leste, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe and Macau. But spoken in other places as well.
- ~250 million speakers (~275 million if we count 2nd language).
- I never studied it, although there are many Romanian immigrants in Spain and I had some contact with it.
- As a Romance language, it should be easy to understand for Spanish or Italian people. The lexical similarity of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, with French 75%, with Catalan 73%, with Portuguese 72% and with Spanish 71%.
- Native to Romania and Moldova.
- ~26 million speakers (~30 million counting 2nd language).
- I started studying it in 2016 and had the chance to practice a bit in 2017 when I visited Russia (Moscow and St Petersburg).
- Knowing a bit of Russian really opens many doors, especially in the chess world :-)
- The Cyrillic script, characteristic of the Russian language, was created in the Bulgarian Empire, and it's used by more than 50 languages, including Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian, Tajik, Turkmen, Ukrainian and Uzbek.
- Important word: пиво :-)
- Native to Russia.
- ~150 million speakers (~260 million if we count 2nd language).
- My other mother tongue.
- Native to Spain, Equatorial Guinea and a large number of countries in America.
- It's the world's second most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese, and 4th most spoken overall after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.
- ~489 million native speakers (~586 million total speakers)
- I have no idea of swahili, but I remember having a look at it when I was studying Afrikaans.
- Also known as Kiswahili, its native name.
- It's a Bantu language (family of African languages in the southern half of Africa), native to the Swahili people.
- Native to Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bajuni Islands (Somalia), Mozambique (mostly Mwani), Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Comoros, Mayotte (France territory in Norhtern Mozambique), Zambia, Malawi and Madagascar.
- It is considered a lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region.
- Estimates of native speakers range from 2 million to 18 million, plus another 90 million as 2nd language.
- I studied it a bit in Duolingo. Similar to Norwegian and Danish.
- When I was to Finland I discovered Swedish has a co-official status in Finland and everybody speaks it there so that's good (as Finnish is so different and complicated).
- Native to Sweden, Finland and Estonia (I didn't know this and I've been to Estonia...).
- ~10 million speakers (~13.2 million if we count 2nd language).
- I don't know much about the language, but as I got interested in the Armenian Genocide I read a lot about the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish history in general.
- A very close friend living in Greece for several years had quite a lot of contact with the language. The language caught my attention as very different to any other languages I know.
- Native to Turkey, Cyprus, Azerbaiyan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- ~75.7 million speakers (~88 million counting 2nd language).
- I only discovered that Ukrainian was different from Russian when I met Tihon.
- Ukrainian language evolved from Old East Slavic in a complete different branch from Russian. It has mutual intelligibility with Belarusian.
- The soviet era (1920-1990) was testing for the language as it had to compete with Russian in periods ranging from total acceptance and encouragement to complete persecution and suppression.
- Nowadays, Ukrainian is used by ~80% of the population in Ukraine, mainly in western and central Ukraine. The politically Russian region of Ukraine (west Ukraine) speaks Russian instead (although Kyiv had a shift in the recent years and both languages seem to be spoken there now).
- Native to Ukraine.
- ~35 million speakers (~40 million total speakers)
- I studied a bit of Hindi and Urdu as I found a travel book to learn both. But never too seriously so I can't even understand them - I can only identify them and say a few words.
- It's the official language and lingua franca of Pakistan, but it's spoken in many parts of India too.
- It has been described as a "Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language" (Hindi). In fact Urdu and Hindi are very similar and mutually intelligible.
- ~68.62 million speakers (~230 million total speakers)
- I studied it a bit in Duolingo (and I'll keep doing). The latin script they use for the written form makes it much easier to learn than other Asian languages.
- It's by far the most spoken Austroasiatic language (followed by Khmer). "Austroasiatic" means Southern Asiatic.
- Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Chinese and French.
- Native to Vietnam and Dongxing (in Guangxi, China, a city bordering Vietnam).
- ~76 million native speakers.
- Zulu captivated my interest along with Swahili when I was studying Afrikaans.
- It's a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch, spoken mainly in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (Swaziland).
- It's the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population) and understood by over 50% of the population.
- Xhosa is mutually intelligible with Zulu.
- The Northern Ndebele language in Zimbabwe is also closely related to Zulu.
- Nowadays there is the so called "urban zulu" that differs from "standard zulu" in borrowing many terms from other languages, mainly English. For example, the standard zulu term for "mobile phone" would be "umakhalekhukhwini", but in urban zulu we could use "icell"; the standard zulu term for "I understand" would be "Ngiyezwa" but in "urban zulu" you would use "Ngiya-andastenda".
- ~12 million native speakers.
This is just a list of languages I'm interested in exploring / learning something about. I know a thing or two of some of them but they won't make the previous list until I study a bit more:
- Achagua
- Achí
- Ahtna
- Akan
- Aleut
- Algerian Arabic
- Alutiiq/Sugpiaq
- Amharic
- Amuzgo
- Ancash Quechua
- Andoque
- Arabic
- Aramaic
- Araona
- Arapaho
- Armenian
- Assamese
- Awa Pit
- Awadhi
- Awakatek
- Ayapaneco
- Aymara
- Ayoreo
- Balochi
- Barí
- Bauré
- Bavarian
- Belarusian
- Bengali
- Bhojpuri
- Blackfoot
- Bora
- Burmese
- Cabiyari
- Camsá
- Carijona
- Cavineña
- Cayuga
- Cayuvava
- Cebuano
- Ch'ol
- Ch'orti
- Chaattisgarhi
- Chácobo-Pakawara
- Chatino
- Cherokee
- Chewa
- Chichimeca
- Chimané
- Chimila
- Chinanteco
- Chipewyan
- Chiquitano
- Chittagonian
- Chocho
- Choctaw
- Ch'ol
- Chontal Maya
- Chontal of Oaxaca
- Chuj
- Cochimí
- Cocopah
- Cofán
- Comanche
- Cora
- Cree
- Crow
- Cubeo
- Cuiba
- Cuicatec
- Deccan
- Deg Xinag
- Denaʼina
- Desano
- Dhundhari
- Eastern Min
- Ese Ejja
- Eyak
- Fox (Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo)
- Frisian
- Fula
- Fulniô
- Gan Chinese
- Garífuna
- Georgian
- Guajá
- Guajajara
- Guambiano
- Guaraní
- Guarayu
- Guayabero
- Gujarati
- Gwichʼin
- Haida
- Haitian Creole
- Hakka Chinese
- Hän
- Haryanvi
- Hausa
- Havasupai–Hualapai
- Hejazi Arabic
- Hiligaynon/Ilonggo
- Hitnü
- Holikachuk
- Hopi
- Huarijio
- Huasteco
- Huave
- Huichol
- Igbo
- Ika
- Ilocano
- Indonesian
- Inuinnaqtun
- Inuktitut
- Inupiat
- Inuvialuktun
- Itene
- Itonama
- Ixcatec
- Ixil
- Jakaltek
- Javanese
- Jin Chinese
- Jupda
- Ka'apor
- Kaigang
- Kaiwá
- Kakwa
- Kalaallisut
- Kallawaya
- Kanamari
- Kannada
- Kaqchikel
- Karajá
- Karu
- Kashinawa
- Kayapo
- Kazakh
- Keresan
- Khmer
- K'iche'
- Kichwa
- Kiliwa
- Kinyarwanda
- Kiowa
- Kirundi
- Kogi
- Kom
- Konkani
- Korean
- Koreguaje
- Koyukon
- Kulina
- Kumeyaay
- Kuna
- Kʼicheʼ
- Lacandon
- Lao
- Leco
- Macuna
- Macushi
- Madurese
- Magahi
- Maithili
- Malay
- Mam
- Mapuche
- Marathi
- Maricopa/Piipaash
- Marwari
- Matlatzinca
- Mawé
- Mayo
- Mazahua
- Mazateco
- Mesopotamian Arabic
- Mikasuki
- Min Bei Chinese
- Min Dong Chinese
- Min Nan Chinese
- Minica Huitoto
- Miskito
- Mixe
- Mixtec
- Mohawk
- Mojave
- Mopan
- Moquoit
- Moroccan Arabic
- Mossi
- Movima
- Moxo
- Muinane
- Munduruku
- Muscogee
- Nahuatl
- Navajo
- Nepali
- Nheengatu
- Nigerian Fulfulde
- Nonuya
- North Levantine Arabic
- Northern Kurdish
- Northern Pashto
- Northern Uzbek
- Nukak
- Ocaina
- Occitan
- Odia
- Oneida
- Onondaga
- Oromo
- Otomi
- Oʼodham
- Paez
- Paipai
- Pakaásnovos
- Pame
- Piapoco
- Piaroa
- Pima Bajo
- Poqomam
- Poqomchiʼ
- Puinave
- Punjabi
- Purepecha/Tarasco
- Quechan
- Qʼanjobʼal
- Qʼeqchiʼ
- Quechua
- Rama
- Reyesano
- Rundi
- Sa'idi Arabic
- Sakapultek
- Sanaani Spoken Arabic
- Sanumá
- Saraiki
- Seneca
- Serbo-Croatian
- Seri
- Seychellois Creole
- Shona
- Shoshoni
- Shuar
- Sikuani
- Sindhi
- Sinhalese
- Siona
- Sioux
- Sipakapense
- Siriano
- Sirionó
- Slavey
- Soteapanec
- Somali
- South Azerbaijani
- South Levantine Arabic
- Southern Pashto
- Southern Quechua
- Sudanese Arabic
- Sumo
- Sundanese
- Sylheti
- Tacana
- Tagalog
- Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic
- Taíno languages
- Tamil
- Tanacross
- Tanana
- Tarahumara
- Tatuyo
- Tektitek
- Telugu
- Tembé
- Tepehua
- Tepehuán
- Terena
- Tewa
- Thai
- Tibetan
- Tikuna
- Timbira
- Tlapaneco
- Tlingit
- Tojolabʼal
- Toromono
- Totonac
- Tsimshian
- Tukano
- Tunebo/Uwa
- Tunisian Arabic
- Tupi-Mondé
- Turkmen
- Tuscarora
- Tzeltal
- Tzotzil
- Tz’utujil
- Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì
- Upper Kuskokwim
- Upper Tanana
- Uspanteko
- Uyghur
- Waiwai
- Wanano
- Wapishana
- Warázu
- Wayuu / Guajiro
- Weenhayek
- Western Apache
- Wichi
- Wiwa
- Wounaan
- Xavante
- Xerente
- Xhosa
- Xiang Chinese
- Xincan
- Yaminawa
- Yanomamö
- Yaqui
- Yaru Quechua
- Yavapai
- Yoruba
- Yucatec Maya
- Yue Chinese
- Yukpa
- Yup'ik (Central Alaskan)
- Yuracaré
- Yurok
- Zacatepec Mixtec
- Zapotec
- Zhuang
- Zuni
More languages here