G

Ga
Ga is spoken in south-eastern Ghana, in and around the capital Accra. It has relatively little dialectal variation. Although English is the official language of Ghana, Ga is one of 16 languages which the Bureau of Ghana Languages publishes material in. Ga is a Kwa language, part of the Niger-Congo family. It is very closely related to Adangme, and together they form the Ga-Dangme branch within Kwa.

Gutob
Or Gadaba language is a Munda language of India.

Gafat
Is an extinct Semitic language that was once spoken along the Abbay River in Ethiopia. The records of this language are extremely sparse: a translation of the Song of Songs written in the 17th or 18th Century at the Bodleian Library, and the reports of W. Leslau who visited the region in 1947 and after considerable work was able to find a total of four people who could still speak the language. Edward Ullendorff, in his brief exposition on Gafat, concludes that as of the time of his writing, "one may ... expect that it has now virtually breathed its last."

Gagauz
Is a Turkic language, used by Gagauz people, official language of Gagauzia, Republic of Moldova. It is spoken by approximately 150,000 people. Originally, it used the Greek script. Beginning in 1957, the Cyrillic alphabet was used. The current Gagauz script is a Latin-based alphabet, modelled after the Turkish.

Galician
Is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia. Galicia is an autonomous community (roughly comparable to a federated state) with the constitutional status of "historic nationality", located in northwestern Spain.

Gangte
Is a tribe from northeast India with a population of 15,100 (as of 2001), primarily in Manipur's southern districts, Meghalaya, and Assam. Though nationally "Indian," this tribe displays East Asian-type features. They are considered part of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo group of tribes. Other tribes in this group are the Thadou (Kuki), Hmar, Lushai (Mizo), Paite, Simte, Vaiphei, and Zou. Gangte is also the name of the language spoken by the Gangte tribe of northeast India. Classification: Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Kuki-Chin-Naga, Kuki-Chin, Northern.

Garhwali
Is a term that refers to people belonging to the hilly Garhwal subdivision of Uttaranchal. It is also the language spoken by natives of Garhwal. Garhwali dialects are basically spoken in the Garhwal Division of Uttaranchal and belongs to the Indo-Aryan language group. Bhotiyas living in the north speak Tibeto-Burman dialects that is unintelligble to other Garwhali dialects and Tibetan. The closest language is Kumauni or Kumaoni to its immediate east in the Central subgroup of the Pahari chain of dialects stretching from Himachal Pradesh to Nepal. Garhwali, like Kumauni has many regional dialects spoken in different places in Uttaranchal. The Script used for Garhwali is Devanagari.

Gaulish
Is the name given to the Celtic language that was spoken in Gaul before the Vulgar Latin of the late Roman Empire became dominant in Roman Gaul. The language is known from several hundred inscriptions on stone, on ceramic vessels and other artefacts, and on coins, and occasionally on metal (lead, and on one occasion zinc). They are found in the entire area of Roman Gaul, i.e., mostly in the area of modern France, as well as parts of Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Belgium (Meid 1994). Gaulish is paraphyletically grouped with Celtiberian, Lepontic, and Galatian as Continental Celtic.

Gayo
Is the spoken language of about 180,000 people (1989) in the mountain region of North Sumatra around Takengon, Genteng, and Lokon. It is classified as belonging to the Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages, but is not closely related to other languages.

Ghazw
Is an Arabic word meaning an armed incursion for the purposes of conquest, plunder, or the capture of slaves and is cognate with the terms ghaziya and maghazi. In pre-Islamic times it signified the plundering raids organized by nomadic Bedouin warriors against either rival tribes or wealthier, sedentary neighbours. In English language literature the word often appears as razzia, deriving from the French word razzier (rezzou) which entered the language at the time of the French colonization of North Africa, and which is itself a transliteration of the colloquial Arabic word ghazya. "Ghazawat" in some Muslim countries has the meaning of "Judgement".

Ge'ez
Is an ancient language that developed in the Ethiopian Highlands of the Horn of Africa as the language of the peasantry. It later became the language of the Ethiopian imperial court.
Today Ge'ez remains the main language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church, the Ethiopic Catholic Church, and also the Beta Israel Jewish community. However, in Ethiopia Amharic (the main lingua franca of modern Ethiopia) or other local languages, and in Eritrea Tigrinya may be used for sermons.

Gen
Is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo in the Maritime Region. It is also spoken in the Mono Department of Benin. It is part of the Kwa sub-family of the major African Niger-Congo language family. Like the other Gbe languages, Gen is a tonal language. According to SIL/Ethnologue there are 200 900 Mina-speakers in Togo and another 126 000 in Benin (total: 327 000).

Georgian
Is the official language of Georgia, a republic in the Caucasus. Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself (83 percent of the population), and of another 200,000 abroad (chiefly in Turkey, Iran, Russia, USA and Europe). It is the literary language for all ethnographic groups of Georgian people, especially those who speak other South Caucasian languages (or Kartvelian languages): Svans, Megrelians, and the Laz. Gruzinic, or "Kivruli", sometimes considered a separate Jewish language, is spoken by an additional 20,000 in Georgia and 65,000 elsewhere (primarily 60,000 in Israel).

German
Is a West Germanic language. It is a member of the western group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family and one of the world's major languages. Spoken by more than 120 million people in 38 countries of the world, German is — like English and French — a pluricentric language with Germany, Austria and Switzerland as the three main centres of usage.

German Sign Language
Or Deutsche Gebärdensprache is the sign language of the Deaf community in Germany. It is often abbreviated as DGS. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 in 1986. The language was not invented; it has evolved naturally though use in deaf communities over hundreds of years.

Ghomara
The language of the Ghomara is a Northern Berber language of the Zenati subgroup, spoken on the eastern edge of the Rif in Morocco. Contrary to the Ethnologue, it is not extinct; Peter Behnstedt reports that it is spoken in at least the douar of Amtiqan and its immediate neighborhood, just west of Oued Ouringa. However, it is spoken by only a small minority of the Ghomara; even in 1931, according to Carleton Coon, only one of their eight tribes, the Beni Bu Zra, continued to speak it. It is mutually comprehensible with Tarifit.

Gikuyu
Is a language in the Central Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family spoken primarily by the Kikuyu people of Kenya. Numbering about 6 million (22% of Kenya's population), they are the largest ethnic group in Kenya. Gikuyu is spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi. Gikuyu is one of the five languages of the Thagichu subgroup of the Bantu languages that stretches from Kenya to Tanzania. The Gikuyu people usually identify their lands by the surrounding mountain ranges in Central Kenya which they call Kirinyaga or 'the shining mountain'.

Gileki
(Gilaki in Persian) is a northwestern Iranian language and is spoken in Iran's Gilan province. It can be divided into three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki and Tabari Gilaki. The Gilaki language is closely related to Mazandarani and the two languages have similar vocabularies. The western and eastern dialects are separated by the Sefid Rud river. According to Ethnologue, there were more than 3 million native speakers of Gilaki in 1993. There are some major grammatical differences between Gilaki and Persian, specially in possessive and adjectives. Unlike Persian, most possessives and adjectives precede the head noun, similar to English.

Gilbertese
Or Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both) is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It is a verb object subject language. Description of the language as Gilbertese or Kiribatese is sometimes considered a relic of colonial days by some I-Kiribati (the people of Kiribati). But as Kiribati is itself a rendition for "Gilberts", most people do not care. The official description is Taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.
About 105,000 people speak Gilbertese, 98,000 of whom live in Kiribati, about 97.2% of the entire population. The others are the inhabitants of Nui (Tuvalu), Rabi (Fiji), Mili (Marshall Islands) and some other islands where I-Kiribati have been relocated (Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) or emigrated (New Zealand and Hawaii mainly).

Goaria
Is a Rajasthani language spoken by some 25,000 people in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The people are predominantly Hindu, and use the Hindi language for worship.

Gorani
Is a small group of Kurds and their dialect of the Kurdish language in Iran and Iraq.

Gothic
Is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths and specifically by the Visigoths. It is known primarily through a translation of the Bible dating from the 4th century, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts.

Greek
Is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest in the Indo-European family if the Anatolian languages are excluded. Today, it is spoken by approximately 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Albania, and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world, such as those in Melbourne, Australia which has the third largest urban Greek population in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki.

Guanche
Is an extinct language spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands. Its ISO 639-3 code is gnc. It has been out of use since the 16th century. Scholars' knowledge of the language is limited to a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by study of placenames and some words borrowed into the Canary Islanders' dialects of Spanish. This makes it nearly impossible to determine its relationships with any certainty; however, most linguists consider Guanche to be related to the Berber languages.

Guaraní
Is an Amerindian language of South America that belongs to the Tupí-Guaraní subfamily. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by 94% of a population which is 95% mestizo[citation needed], and by nearly one million Paraguayan emigrants and their descendants residing in Buenos Aires. It is also spoken by indigenous communities in neighbouring countries, including northern Argentina, eastern Bolivia and southwestern Brazil. It is also a second official language of the Argentine province of Corrientes.
It is the only indigenous language of the Americas whose overwhelming majority of speakers are non-indigenous people. This is an anomaly in the Americas where language shift towards more prestigious official languages (in this case Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry), and also of culturally assimilated, upwardly-mobile Amerindian people.

Gujarati
Is an Indo-European, Indo-Aryan language. It is one of the 22 official language and 14 regional languages spoken in India, and one of the languages spoken in Pakistan. It is a language native to the state of Gujarat in western India and western Pakistan. There are about 46 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide, making it the 23rd most spoken language in the world. Of these, roughly 45.5 million reside in India, 150,000 in Uganda, 250,000 in Tanzania, 50,000 in Kenya and roughly 100,000 in Pakistan. Gujarati is the chief language of India's Gujarat state, as well as the adjacent union territories of formerly Portuguese Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. A considerable population of Gujarati speakers exists in North America and the United Kingdom as well. In the United Kingdom, Leicester (Midlands) and Wembley (North London) are two areas popular with Gujaratis. And in America, states such as New Jersey, New York, California, and Texas are quite popular with Gujaratis. Gujarati was the mother-tongue of Shri Mohandas K. Gandhi, the "father of India" and Quaid-e Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the "father of Pakistan" and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, The iron man of India.

Gula Iro language
is a Bua language spoken by some 3,500 people (as of 1991) north and east of Lake Iro in southern Chad, between the Bola and Salamat rivers. It has four dialects, according to Pairault:
* pátóól, the northernmost and the least comprehensible to speakers of the other dialects, spoken in and around Badi;
* pònààl, by the north shore of the lake, spoken in and around Boum Kabir, Boum Sarher, and Tordjigel;
* tiàààlà, spoken east and south of the lake, including Kouré, Bouni, Tormorhal, and Masidjanga;
* tíítààl, the easternmost, spoken in various villages west of Tamba;
to which SIL adds a fifth, Korintal, spoken in Tieou.

Gusii
(Also known as Kisii or Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in the Kisii district in western Kenya (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken by the Gusii people, numbering about 1.5 million (SIL/Ethnologue 1994). Many Gusii are bilingual in Luo.

Nepali
Is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Burma. It is the official language of Nepal. Roughly half the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a mother tongue, and many other Nepalese speak it as a second language. Nepali goes by various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese (i.e. the language of Nepal).

Gwich’in
Is the Athabaskan language of the Gwich’in indigenous people. It is used principally in the towns of Inuvik, Aklavik, Fort McPherson, and Tsiigehtchic (formerly Arctic Red River) all in the Northwest Territories; as well as Old Crow, Yukon; Beaver, Circle, Fort Yukon, Chalkyitsik, Birch Creek, Arctic Village, and Venetie, Alaska.