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Sabaean
Was an Old South Arabic language spoken in Yemen, and then in Ethiopia, up until the 8th Century AD. It was written in the South Arabian alphabet. The Sabaean language was thought to have been replaced by the Ge'ez language and the South Arabic alphabet evolved into the Ge'ez alphabet; new archaelogical evidence, however, points to the Sabaean and Ge'ez alphabets sharing a common ancestor, rather than Ge'ez being an offshoot of Sabaean.

Salar
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China. The Salar number about 90,000 people, of whom about 70,000 speak the Salar language; the remaining 20,000 speak Chinese. The Salar arrived at their current location in the 14th century, having migrated there from the west, according to a Salar legend from Samarkand. Linguistic evidence points to a possible western Turkic, Oghuz origin of the Salar. Contemporary Salar is heavily influenced by contact with Tibetan and Chinese.

Salishan
(Also Salish) languages are a group of languages of western Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The terms Salish and Salishan are used interchangeably by Salishan linguists and anthropologists. The name Salish is actually the name of the language of Salish tribe in Montana. The name was later extended by linguists to refer to other related languages. Many languages do not have self-designations and instead have specific names for local dialects as the local group was more important culturally than larger tribal relations.

Samaritan Hebrew
Is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew as pronounced and written by the Samaritans. It is written in the Samaritan alphabet, a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (itself a variation on the Phoenician alphabet), whereas all other varieties of Hebrew are written in the later Hebrew alphabet, a variation on the Aramaic alphabet.

Sami
Is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently (and erroneously) believed to be a single language. It is the native tongue of the Sami people. There are several terms used for the Sami languages: Saami, Sámi, Samic, Saamic, Lappish and Lappic. The last two are, along with the term Lapp, considered derogatory by some.

Sâmoan
Or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language in both territories. It is a member of the Austronesian family, and more specifically the Samoic branch of the Polynesian subphylum. There are 370,337 Samoan-speakers worldwide, nearly half of them in Samoa.

Sandawe
Is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe has generally been classified as a Khoisan language since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due at first just to the presence of clicks in the language, though later several morphological similarities with the Khoisan languages of southern Africa were proposed. A recent discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).

Sango
(Also spelt Sangho) is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it has 5 million second-language speakers, but only 400,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns. It is a vehicular language based on the language of the Sango tribe, belonging to the Ngbandi language cluster (including Ngbandi and Yakoma), with many French words.

Sanskrit
Is an Indo-European classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. It is one of the oldest Indo-European languages in the world with a documented history of 3,500 years and boasts a rich tradition of poetry, literature; as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts. Sanskrit is one of the 22 official languages of India. It is being revived as a vernacular in the village of Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka. Today Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, its most ancient text being the Rigveda. It is also the language of Yoga.

Santali
Is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has its own alphabet, known as Ol Cemet', but literacy is very low, between 10 and 30%. Santali is spoken by the Santhals.

Sara
There are several language called Sara.
* The Sara languages of Southern Chad
* Sara language (Indonesia), an Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia.

Saramaccan
Is a creole language spoken by about 24,000 people near the Saramaccan and upper Suriname Rivers in Suriname (formerly also known as Dutch Guyana), and 2,000 in French Guiana. The speakers are mostly descendants of fugitive slaves; they form a group called Saramacca, also spelled Saramaka.

Sardinian
(Sardu, Saldu) is the main language spoken in the island of Sardinia, Italy, remarkable for being the most conservative Neolatine language and for its Paleosardinian substratum.

Sawai
(Also Weda) is a South Halmahera-Western New Guinea language of Austronesian stock spoken in Weda and Gane Timor districts of southern Halmahera, northern Maluku Providence, Indonesia. There are approximately 12,000 speakers.

Scanian
Is a closely related group of dialects spoken in Skåne (Scania). It is considered by some Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Swedish, by other Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Danish. It is however classified as a separate language by SIL International and is assumed to include not only the dialect of Skåne but also those of Halland (halländska), Blekinge (blekingska), and the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk). This larger definition coincides with the extent of Skåneland (Terra Scaniae), a medieval term which has regionalist overtones but also historical substance. The medieval Skånske Lov (Codex Runicus) applied to all four provinces and in the Landsting (Thing), the governing assembly, the four provinces chose and paid homage to the king as a unity.

Scots
Sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from the Gaelic language of the Highlands, is a West Germanic language used in Scotland, parts of Northern Ireland, and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or Ullans but by speakers simply as Scotch or Scots. Native speakers refer to the language as Scots, Braid Scots (Eng: Broad Scots), or simply Oor ain leid, Wir ain leid, or Wir ain tung (different renderings for Our own language). Some literary forms are often referred to as Lallans.

Scottish Gaelic
Is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. This branch includes also the Irish and Manx languages. It is distinct from the Brythonic branch, which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic are all descended from Old Irish. The language is often described as Scottish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, or Gàidhlig to avoid confusion with the other two Goidelic languages. Outside of Scotland, it is sometimes also called Scottish or Scots. This usage is uncommon in Scotland, because in recent centuries the word Scots has by-and-large been transferred to the Scots language, which developed from the northern form of early Middle English.

Selangor Sign Language (SSL)
Also known as Kuala Lumpur Sign Language (KLSL), is a sign language used in Malaysia. It was originally based on American Sign Language (ASL) but has diverged significantly enough to now be considered a language in its own right. It is used mainly in the state of Selangor, rather than Kuala Lumpur, so the deaf themselves call it Selangor Sign Language. Like Penang Sign Language (PSL), it now mainly used by older people, although many younger people can understand it.

Selkup
Is a language of the Selkups. It is spoken by some 1,570 people (1994 est.) in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers. The Selkup language belongs to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. There are three main dialects in the Selkup language, including the Taz dialect, which became the basis of the Selkup written language in the 1930s, Tym dialect , and Ket dialect. There are 25 vowel and 16 consonant phonemes in the Taz dialect.

Selonian
Was a language appertaining to the Baltic languages group of the Indo-European languages family. This language was spoken by the Selonians, who lived until the 15th century in Middle Eastern Latvia and Northern Lithuania. During the 13th-15th centuries the Selonians lost their language beeng assimilated by Latvians and partly by Lithuanians. The traces of the Selonian language can be still found in the territories Selonians inhabited, especially in the accent and phonetics of the so called Selonian dialect of the Latvian language.

Senaya
Is a modern Eastern Aramaic or Syriac language. It is the language of Assyrians originally from Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan. Most Senaya speakers now live in Tehran and are members of the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Sened
Is an extinct Berber language that was spoken in the nearby towns of Sened and Tmagourt in Southern Tunisia until the mid-twentieth century. In 1911, the whole town of Sened spoke Berber; by 1968, only the elderly did.

Senhaja de Srair
Is a Northern Berber language spoken in the southern part of the Moroccan Rif. It is most closely related to the Atlas languages, but heavily influenced by the neighboring Tarifit language (also Berber.)

Sepedi
Or "Sesotho sa Leboa", is one of the official languages of South Africa, and is spoken by 4,208,980 people (2001 Census Data), mostly in the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo Province and Mpumalanga. Northern Sotho is one of the so-called Bantu languages, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to Setswana and Sesotho (Southern Sotho).

Sephardi Hebrew
Is an offshoot of Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice. Its phonology was influenced by contact languages such as Ladino, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish and Arabic.

Serbian
Is one of the standard versions of the Štokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. The former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language, now split into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standards. The Serbian alphabet is very consistent: one letter per sound with an insignificant number of exceptions. This phonetic principle is represented in the saying: "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic when reforming the Cyrillic spelling of Serbian in the 19th century.

Serbo-Croatian
Or Croato-Serbian (also Croatian or Serbian, Serbian or Croatian), was an official language of Yugoslavia (along with Slovenian, Macedonian). With the breakup of Yugoslavia, its languages followed suit and Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian came to be described as separate languages (Ausbausprachen). Conversely, the term "Serbo-Croatian" went out of use, first from official documents and gradually from linguistic literature. Today, the name Serbo-Croatian is a controversial issue due to history, politics, and the variable meaning of the word language. Many native speakers nowadays find the term politically incorrect or even offensive. Mutually intelligible forms of it continue to be used under different names and standards in today’s Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and are still reasonably well understood in Macedonia and Slovenia.

Sesotho
Is a language spoken in southern Africa. Sesotho is generally classified as a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to four other languages in the Sotho language group, Setswana, Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa), and Serotse.

Seychellois Creole
Also known as Kreol, is the lingua franca of the Seychelles. It shares official language status with English and French, in contrast to Mauritian Creole, which has no official status in Mauritius.

Shimaore
Is one of the two indigeneous languages spoken on the island of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of Comorian, while Shibushi is descended from languages spoken on Madagascar.

Shina
Is a Dardic Language and is spoken by majority of people in Northern Areas of Pakistan. The Valleys include Astore, Chillas, Dareil,Tangier, Gilgit, Puniyal, Ishkoman, Yasin, Gupis, Hunza, Baltistan, and Kohistan. It is also spoken in Kargil and Ladakh valleys of India.

Shona
Is a native language of Zimbabwe; the term is also used to identify those Kintu speaking peoples in Southern Africa who speak one of the Shona languages. Shona proper is an official language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and English. Numbering about 6,225,000, Shona speakers comprise more than 80% of Zimbabwe's population. Shona is also spoken by a substantial number of residents of Mozambique. Other countries that host Shona language speakers are Zambia and Botswana. The total number of Shona speakers is at least 7,000,000.

Shor
Is one of the Turkic languages. It is spoken by around 10,000 people in the Kemerovo Oblast in south-central Siberia. Not all ethnic Shors speak Shor, and the language witnessed a decline from the late thirties to the early nineties. However, the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw signs of Shor lingual revival. The language is now being taught at the Novokuznetsk branch of the Kemerovo State University.

Sicilian
is the Romance language spoken in Sicily and southern Italy. Sicilian dialects (or dialects comprising the Italiano meridionale-estremo language group) are spoken on the island of Sicily (and all of its satellite islands); as well as in the southern and central sections of Calabria ("southern Calabro"); and in the southern parts of Puglia, the Salento (the language is "Salentino") and Campania ("Cilentano"), on the Italian mainland.

Sidamo
Is an Afro-Asiatic language, belonging to the Cushitic sub-phylum. It is spoken in parts of southern Ethiopia. The term Sidamo has also been used by some authors to refer to larger groupings of East Cushitic and even Omotic languages.

Sika
Is a member of the Central Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, and is spoken by around 180,000 people of the Sika ethnic group on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia.

Silesian
Can refer to the Silesian — a dialect of Polish (sometimes considered a separate Western Slavonic language related to Czech and Polish), or the Lower Silesian (a dialect of German). Both are spoken in the region of Silesia.

Sindhi
Is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia, which is now a province of Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 35 million people in Pakistan, and 2.8 million in India; it is also a recognised official language in both of these countries. ?Although the language is predominantly Aryan, it also shows up signs of Dravidan influence, making it unique in its importance and identity. Most Sindhi speakers in Pakistan are concentrated in Sindh. The remaining speakers are found spread throughout the many areas of the world (mainly other parts of India) to which members of an ethnic group migrated when Sindh became a part of Pakistan during the partition of British India in 1947. The language is written using the modified Arabic script. In 1948, the Government of India implemented Devanagari script for the Sindhi language that did not get wide acceptance.

Sindarin
Is an artificial language (or conlang) developed by J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's mythos, it was the Elvish language most commonly spoken in Middle-earth in the Third Age. It was the language of the Sindar, those Teleri which had been left behind on the Great Journey of the Elves. It was derived from an earlier language called Common Telerin. When the Ñoldor returned to Middle-earth, they adopted the Sindarin language, although they believed their native Quenya more beautiful. Sindarin shared common roots with Quenya, and the two languages had many similar words. Sindarin was said to be more changeful than the older tongue, however, and there were a number of regional 'dialects' of the tongue. The Sindarin spoken in Doriath was said to be the highest and most noble form of the language.

Sinhala
Is the language spoken by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The language of the Maldives, Dhivehi, is closely related to Sinhala. There are about 13 million native speakers of Sinhala.

Sioux
Is a Siouan language. Sioux has 3 major regional varieties, with various sub-lects:
- Santee: Santee, Sisseton
- Yankton: Yankton, Yanktonai
- Lakota: Northern Lakota, Southern Lakota


Siraiki
(Also known as Seraiki, Multani and Southern Punjabi) is a language mostly spoken in central Pakistan by approximately 14 million people. It is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Iranian subfamily. Siraiki shows resemblance to both Sindhi and Punjabi languages. The geographic area where it is spoken is primarily located between the provinces of Sindh and the Punjab in Pakistan. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in northern and western Sindh down to the suburbs of Karachi and in the Kachhi plain of Balochistan. It is also known as Derawali in Derajat area.

Skolt Sami
Is a Finno-Ugric, Sami language spoken in Finland and nearby parts of Russia. It has about 400 remaining speakers in Finland. It is written using an official Roman orthography.

Slavey
Is an Athabaskan language spoken among the Slavey First Nations people of Canada. The language can be written using Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or the Roman alphabet. Slavey was the native language spoken by the fictional band in the Canadian television series, North of 60. Nick Sibbeston, a former Premier of the Northwest Territories, was a Slavey language and cultural consultant for the show.

Slovak
Is an Indo-European language belonging to the West Slavic languages (together with Czech, Polish and Sorbian). Slovak is especially close to Czech.

Slovenian
Belongs to the family of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately 2 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. Slovenian is one of the few languages to have preserved the dual grammatical number from Proto-Indo-European. Also, Slovenian and Slovak are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slovenskii in old Slavonic).

Soddo
Is a Gurage language spoken by about 300,000 people in southeastern Ethiopia. It is a South Ethiopian Semitic language of the Northern Gurage subfamily.

Somali
Is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. It is spoken mostly in Somalia and adjacent parts of Djibouti (majority), Ethiopia, and Kenya. Its speakers are known as Somalis. Because of the civil war and diaspora, speakers are found all over the world. The exact number of speakers is unknown but is estimated to be between 15 and 25 million.

Sonjo
Is a Bantu language spoken in northern Tanzania, 30-40 miles west of Lake Natron. Ethnolinguistically, it is a displaced member of Guthrie’s E50 group, most other members of which are found in Central Kenya. Within that group, it is most closely related to Gikuyu. The Sonjo people number about 30,000; many of them are bilingual in Swahili, the local language of education. Sonjo is largely undescribed.

Sonsorolese
Is a language spoken in Palau and the Northern Mariana Islands, by 600 people. It is an Austronesian language.

Soqotri
Is the native language of the island of Socotra off the southern coast of Yemen. It is a south Semitic language. Since women are forbidden to leave the island, Soqotri speakers are only rarely found in the Yemeni mainland. This makes the language isolated from the rest of Yemen. The Arabic language is also spoken there as well as the Soqotri.

Sorbian languages
Are classified under the West Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. They are the native languages of the Sorbian people, a Slavic minority in eastern Germany. The language has also historically been known as Wendish or Lusatian. There are two literary languages: Upper Sorbian (hornjoserbsce), spoken by about 55,000 people in Saxony, and Lower Sorbian (dolnoserbski) spoken by about 14,000 people in Brandenburg. The area where the two languages are spoken is known as Lusatia (Lužica in Upper Sorbian, Lužyca in Lower Sorbian, or Lausitz in German).

Southern Sami
Is divided into two main dialects: Southern Sami sensu stricto and Ume Sami. The latter is spoken in the Ume River Valley and has some characteristics in common with Lule and Northern Sami. Southern Sami is a seriously endangered language. The last strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Snåsa and Hattfjelldal in Norway where there still are a few hundred speakers.

South Estonian
Is a language or a language group which belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Contemporary South Estonian languages are Võro, Seto, Mulgi and Tartu. Nowadays South Estonian is used most often as an umbrella notion for these four languages. In Estonian traditional dialectology South Estonian languages are considered dialects of South Estonian dialect group.

Spanish
(Español) or Castilian (castellano) is an Iberian Romance language. It is the most widely spoken Romance language and is listed by different sources as the fourth, third or second most spoken language in the world. Spanish is spoken by 360 million people in countries where it is an official language (2005 data), by almost 32 million as first language where it is an unofficial language (28 million in the US [1], 2000 data) and by over 100 million people as second language. Currently (2006), almost 500 million people speak Spanish.

Sranan
Is a creole language spoken as a native language by approximatly 120,000 people in Suriname. Sranan was previously referred to as the less politically correct taki-taki, nengre or negerengels (Dutch, "negro-English"). Since this language is shared between the English-, Dutch-, Javanese- and Hindustani-speaking communities, many Surinamese speak it as a second language.

Sucite
Is a Senufo language spoken in southwestern Burkina Faso by approximately 35 000 people. Sucite is a close neighbour of Supyire, spoken in southeastern Mali. Sucite is sometimes regarded as the northern extension of Supyire. The two dialects are, according to Garber (1987), ‘quite mutually intelligible’. Sometimes speakers of Sucite will even refer to themselves as speaking Supyire. Another closely related lect is Mamara (also known as Minyanka).

Suba
Is the language of Kenya's Suba people. As the Suba number very few to begin with (under 30,000), and the majority have begun speaking Dholuo (the language of the neighbouring Luo people) as their main language, Suba is on the verge of extinction. The remaining speakers are mostly elderly residents on the island of Mfangano. However, efforts have been made to renew teaching of the language (as of 2004), with a goal of having half the Suba population speaking the language within ten years.

Sudovian
(Otherwise known as Jatvingian or Yotvingian) is an extinct western Baltic language in Northeastern Europe. Closely related to the Old Prussian language, it was formerly spoken southwest of the Nemunas river, in Galindia and Sudovia in East Prussia and southwest Lithuania. Sudovia and Galindia were two of the twelve original Prussian lands. Although not actually a separate language, Sudovian/Jatvingian diverged as a dialect in the 10th century, and has been documented in writing. It was at once more archaic, and more closely influenced by Germanic languages, than other Baltic dialects, as exemplified by the loanword from Germanic, virdan, "word" -- that preserves the neutral case ending -an, absent from Latvian and Lithuanian.

Sumerian
The Sumerian language of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 2000 BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial and scientific language in Mesopotamia until about 1 AD. Then, it was forgotten until the 19th century. Sumerian is distinguished from other languages of the area such as Hebrew, Akkadian, which also comprises Babylonian and Assyrian, and Aramaic, which are Semitic languages, and Elamite, which may be an Elamo-Dravidian language.

Sundanese
(Basa Sunda, literally "language of Sunda") is the language of about 27,000,000 people from the western third of Java or about 15% of Indonesian population. It is classified in Austronesian - Malayo-Polynesian - Western Malayo-Polynesian - Sundic language family and has several dialects based on the locations of the people: Banten, Bogor, Priangan and Cirebon.

Supyire
Is a Senufo language spoken in southeastern Mali in the Sikasso Region. Its speakers, the Supyire people, number 364 000 according to SIL/Ethnologue. Supyire belongs to the Northern Senufo group and is classified under the Suppire-Mamara languages along with Sucite and Mamara (Minyanka).

Surigaonon
Is a local Philippine language spoken in the province of Surigao del Norte, and some portion of Agusan del Norte especially those towns near the Mainit Lake. It is related to Butuanon and Tausug languages.

Svan
Is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia. The Svan language is divided into the following dialects and sub-dialects:
- Upper Bal (about 15,000 speakers): Ushgul, Kala, Ipar, Mulakh, Mestia, Lenzer, Latal.
- Lower Bal (about 12,000 speakers): Becho, Tskhumar, Etser, Par, Chubekh, Lakham.
- Lashkh.
- Lentekh: Kheled, Khopur, Rtskhmelur, Cholur


Swabian
Is one of the Alemannic dialects of High German, spoken in the region of Swabia. Swabia covers much of Germany's southwestern Bundesland (state) of Baden-Württemberg (including the capital Stuttgart and the rural area known as the Swabian Alb) and the southwest of the Bundesland Bavaria. The dialect ranges from a 'standard' Swabian, spoken in Stuttgart, to slightly differing and 'thicker' forms found in smaller towns in the countryside. Older people can often tell the exact village a person comes from merely by hearing his or her accent.

Swahili
Is a Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people who inhabit a 1500 km stretch of the East African coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. It is spoken by over 50 million people , of whom there are approximately five million first-language speakers and thirty to fifty million second-language speakers. Swahili has become a lingua franca for East Africa and surrounding areas.

Swati
(Also known as siSwati, Swazi and Seswati) is a Bantu language of the Nguni Group spoken in Swaziland and South Africa. It has 1.5 million speakers and is taught in schools. It is an official language of Swaziland (along with English) and one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. Although often referred to as Swazi, that is the name of the language and people in Zulu. There are four dialects being Shiselweni, Hhoho, Nandzini, and Shiselweni. It is most commonly related to Xhosa, Zulu, and Ndebele in the near by regions.

Swedish
Is a North Germanic language (also called Scandinavian languages) spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands, by more than nine million people. It is mutually intelligible with two of the other Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian. Swedish is distinguished by its prosody, which differs considerably between varieties. It includes both lexical stress and tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory, with nine separate vowels that are distinguished by quantity and to some degree quality, making up a total of 17 vowel phonemes. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, a sound found in many dialects, including the more prestigious forms of the standard language. Though similar to other sounds with distinct labial qualities, it has so far not been found in any other language.

Swiss German
Is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are called Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein which are closely associated to Switzerland's.

Syriac
Is an Eastern Aramaic language that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. It was a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the second to the eighth century AD. At its broadest definition, Syriac is often used to refer to all Eastern Aramaic languages spoken by various Christian groups; at its most specific, it refers to the classical language of Edessa, which became the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity.