Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Z

Zaparoan
(Also Sáparoan, Záparo, Zaparoano, Zaparoana) is a endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with less than 700 speakers.

Zapotec
The Zapotec are an indigenous people of Mexico. Their language group, also called Zapotec, consists of more than fifteen languages.

Zazaki
Is a language spoken by Zazas in eastern Anatolia (Turkey). Is a part of the northwestern group of the Iranian section of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The US State Department "Background Note" lists Zaza as one of the major languages of Turkey, along with Turkish (official), Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, and Arabic.

Zhuang
Is used by the Zhuang people in the People's Republic of China. Most of them live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Zhuang, which belongs to the Tai language group, is an official language in that region. However, use of the language is rapidly declining as the Zhuang assimilate to the Han Chinese. Standardized Zhuang is based on the dialect of Wuming County.

Zulu
Is a language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority (over 95%) of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population) as well as being understood by over 50% of the population. It became one of South Africa's 11 official languages in 1994 at the end of apartheid.

Zuni
(Also Zuñi or Shiwi) is spoken by over 10,000 people in New Mexico and much smaller numbers in parts of Arizona. Its speakers are known as the Zuni.

Zay
Is one of the Ethiopic languages. It is spoken by about 4,880 members of the Zay people on the islands and shores of Lake Zway in southern Ethiopia. It is also known as Zway, or Lak'i/Laqi in the neighboring language Oromo.

Y

Yaeyama
(Yaeyama: yaimamunii) is a language spoken by around 44,650 people in the Yaeyama Islands, south of the Miyako area of the Ryukyus. It is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Miyako. It can be separated into several dialect groupings, named after the islands they are found on: Ishigaki, Iriomote and Taketomi.

Yakut
Is a Turkic language with around 363,000 speakers that is spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. Its speakers are known as the Sakha or the Yakuts.

Yankunytjatjara
(Also Yankuntatjara, Jangkundjara, Kulpantja) is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Wati languages of the large South-West branch of the Pama-Nyungan family. It is one of the varieties of the Western Desert Language.

Yanomami
The name generally refers to a people who live in an area that spans parts of the northwest Amazon Rainforest and southern Orinoco, share the culture, and who speak Yanomaman languages, which include Yanomamö and Sanima. Traditionally, a Yanomami village is a relatively temporary wood and thatch house called a shabono. The shabono is circular in shape and surrounds a central open space. Each family has their own area within the shabono. The Yanomami are known as hunters, fishers, and horticulturists, cultivating as their main crops plantains and cassava in "gardens," areas of the forest cleared for cultivation. They do not have fully agricultural lands as some other tribes do, however.

Yanyuwa
(Also Yanyula, Anyula) language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola (Yanyuwa burrulula) in the Northern Territory, Australia. Yanyuwa, like many Australian Aboriginal languages, is a complex agglutinative language whose grammar is pervaded by a set of sixteen noun classes, whose agreements are complicated and numerous. Yanyuwa is ergative. Yanyuwa is critically endangered, with just four native speakers remaining.

Yapese
Is a language spoken by 6,600 people on the island of Yap (Federated States of Micronesia). It belongs to the Austronesian languages, more specifically to the Oceanic languages. It has been suggested that Yapese may be one of the Admiralty Island languages. Written Yapese uses Latin script. The glottal stop used to be marked with an apostrophe, but that has been replaced with the letter 'q'. This explains the enormous quantity of q's in Yapese place names.

Yaqui
(Yoem Noki), or Yoeme, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 15,000 people, mostly of the border Yaqui tribe, in the region around the Mexican state of Sonora, and by about 350 people in Arizona in the United States.

Yauma
Is spoken in Angola and Zambia in the Kwando River area.

Yavapai
Is a Native American language quite similar to Havasupai and Walapai. It is spoken by the eponymous tribe in Arizona.

Yemenite Hebrew language
Is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. It is believed by some scholars that its phonology was heavily influenced by Yemeni-spoken Arabic. Yet, according to other scholars as well as Yemenite Jewish Rabbis such as Rabbi Yosef Qafah the Temani Hebrew dialect was not influenced by Yemenite Arabic, as this type of Arabic was also spoken by Yemenite Jews and is distinct from the liturgical Hebrew and the coversational Hebrew of the communities.

Yeni
Is an extinct language of Cameroon, formerly spoken around Djeni Mountain in the Nyalang area. All that remains of the language, apparently, is a song remembered by some Sandani-speakers. However, according to Bruce Connell (the first linguist to report its existence, in 1995), comparison of the song's words to neighboring languages suggests that "it was closely related to Cambap, Njerep, and Kasabe.

Yevanic
Otherwise known as Romaniote and Judeo-Greek, was the dialect of the Romaniotes, the group of Greek Jews whose existence in Greece is documented since the Hellenistic period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Hellenistic Koine and includes Hebrew elements as well. It was mutually intelligible with Greek of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used their version of the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts.
There are no longer any native speakers of Yevanic, for the following reasons: the assimilation of the tiny Romaniote communities by the larger Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews, the adoption of Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian through assimilation; the emigration of many of the Romaniotes to Israel and the United States; the ideology of Zionism, which favored Hebrew as the one language for all Jews.

Yi
(Also Moso, Lolo, Noso, etc.) is a family of closely related Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by the Yi people. Although linguists still use the term Lolo or Loloish, the Yi people themselves regard it as pejorative.

Yiddish
Is a Germanic language spoken by about three million people throughout the world, predominantly Ashkenazi Jews. The name Yiddish itself is Yiddish for "Jewish" (compare German jüdisch) and is likely an abbreviated rendition of yidish-taytsh (compare German jüdisch-deutsch) or "Jewish German". Its earliest historical phase (13th-14th centuries), was formerly referred to as Judeo-German. This designation was rejected by Max Weinreich who pointed out that it overlooked the fact that Yiddish from its inception was an autonomous system analogous to other Jewish languages.

Yokutsan
(Also Yokuts) is an endangered language family spoken in the interior of southern California in and around the San Joaquin valley by the Yokut tribe. The speakers of Yokutsan languages were severely affected by disease, missionaries, and the Gold Rush: most are now extinct.

Yonaguni
Is a language spoken by around 1800 people on the island of Yonaguni, in Japan, just east of Taiwan. It is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Yaeyama.

Yoruba
Is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil and Cuba (where it is called Nago). Yoruba is an isolating, tonal language with SVO syntax. Apart from referring to the aggregate of dialects and their speakers, the term Yoruba is used for the standard, written form of the language. Yoruba is classified as a Niger-Congo language of the Yoruboid branch of Defoid, Benue-Congo.

Yucatec Maya
Is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, northern Belize and parts of Guatemala. To native speakers, it is known only as Maya - Yucatec is a tag linguists use to distinguish it from other Mayan languages (such as the Quiché language and the Lacandon language). Yucatec is an agglutinative language and so because of this many words in Yucatec can end up being very long. There are a great number of root words, prefixes, suffixes and affixes utilised in Yucatec Mayan.

Yucatec Maya Sign Language
Is used in the Yucatán region in Mexico by both hearing and deaf members of a number of traditional Mayan communities with unusually high numbers of deaf inhabitants. It is a natural complex language, which is not related to Mexican Sign Language, but may have similarities with sign languages found in nearby Guatemala. As the hearing villagers are competent in the sign language, the deaf inhabitants seem to be well integrated in the community - in contrast to the marginalisation of deaf people in the wider community. The spoken language of the community is Yucatec Maya language.

Yuchi
Is the language of the Yuchi people living in the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia and Alabama, in the period of early European colonization. However, speakers of the Yuchi language were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the early 1800s. Due to assimilation into Muscogee and English-speaking culture, only a few elderly speakers of the Yuchi language remain.

Yukaghir
Are a family of related languages spoken in Russia by the Yukaghir, a Mongoloid people in Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. The only two extant members are:
- Northern Yukaghir (also known as Jukagir, Odul, Tundra, Tundre, Yukagir) and
- Southern Yukaghir (also known as Jukagir, Kolym, Kolyma, Odul, Southern Yukagir, Yukagir)

Yupik
The Yupik people speak five distinct languages, depending on their location. The languages differ enough from one another that speakers of different ones cannot understand each other, although they may understand the general idea of a conversation of speakers of another of the languages. The Yupik languages are in the family of Eskimo-Aleut languages. The Aleut and Eskimo languages diverged about 2000 B.C., and the Yupik languages diverged from each other and from Inuktitut about 1000 A.D.

Yurats
Is a Samoyedic language formerly spoken in the Siberian tundra west of the Yenisei River.

Yurok
(Also Weitspekan) is a moribund Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok tribe of northwestern California, USA, most of whom now speak English. The standard reference on the Yurok language is the grammar by Robins (1958).

X

|Xam
Is an extinct Khoisan language of South Africa, part of the !Kwi language group. It was closely related to the N/u language, which still has a few speakers. The bar symbol in the name "|Xam" represents a click like the English interjection tsk! tsk! used to express pity or shame. The "x" represents the ch sound of Scottish loch, German Bach, or Hebrew Chanukkah. Run tsk! Chanukkah together into a single word, and you're very close to the sound of |Xam.

Xhosa
Is one of the official languages of South Africa. It is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, about 18% of the South African population. Click consonants feature prominently in the sounds of this language. Even the name, "Xhosa", begins with a click.

Xiang
Also Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. Xiang is spoken by over 36 million people in China, primarily in Hunan province, and also in over 20 counties in Sichuan, and parts of Guangxi and Guangdong provinces.

!Xóõ
Is a Khoisan language with a very large number of phonemes, the most of any known language. These include many clicks and vowel phonations. !Xóõ is spoken in Botswana (mainly) and Namibia by about 4,200 people as of 2002.

Xu
May refer to any one of several southern African Khoisan languages: !Kung language or Kxoe language. !Kung or !’O!Kung is a group of northern dialects of the Ju dialect continuum, which is generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family. !Kung is spoken in northern Namibia and southern Angola by perhaps 15,000 Saan, though this number is uncertain due to the possibility of double counting populations that go by more than one name. Kxoe is a Khoisan dialect continuum of Namibia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, and a few in Zambia, with some 11,000 speakers. It is learned locally as a second language in Namibia. There is currently a dictionary of the Kxoe language.

W

Waima
(Sometimes known as Roro, though this is strictly the name of one dialect of Waima) is a Nuclear West Central Papuan language of the Oceanic group of Malayo-Polynesian languages, spoken in Papua New Guinea by 15,000 people.

Wakhi Tajiki
Is an Iranian language in the subbranch of Southeastern Iranian languages (see Pamir languages). Wakhi Tajiks are also known as Pamiri Tajiks or Mountain Tajiks. The origin of this language is Wakhan in the extreme northeast of Afghanistan. A very rough estimate of the population of Wakhi Tajiks is 50,000 worldwide. Wakhi people live in four different countries. In the northern areas of Pakistan the Wakhi people mainly live in Gojal, Ishkoman, Darkut, and Broghol. They also live in many parts of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and China. The religion of the Wakhi Tajiks is Shia Ismaili Islam; they are followers of Prince Karim Aga Khan.

Walloon
Is a regional Romance language spoken as a second language by some in Wallonie (Belgium). It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language, and is sometimes considered a French dialect. Walloon should not be confused with Belgian French, which differs from the French of France only in some minor points of vocabulary and pronunciation.

Wáray-Wáray
(Commonly spelled as Waray-Waray; also referred to as Winaray or L(in) eyte-Samarnon) is a language spoken in the provinces of Samar, Northern Samar, Eastern Samar, Leyte (eastern portion), and Biliran in the Philippines. It belongs to the Visayan language family and is related to Cebuano and more closely to Hiligaynon.

Washo
(Also "Washoe") is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washoe on the California-Nevada border in the drainages of Truckee and Carson rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there are very few speakers of Washo today (only 10), there are Washo language programs aimed at increasing the number of proficient speakers. Washo belongs to the Great Basin culture area and is the only non-Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan, Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and California Sprachbunds.

Welsh
Is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales (Cymru), England by some along the Welsh border, and in the Chubut Valley, a Welsh immigrant colony in the Patagonia region of Argentina. There are also speakers of Welsh throughout the world, most notably in the rest of Great Britain, the United States and Australia.

Western Neo-Aramaic
Is a Modern Aramaic language. Today, it is spoken in three villages in the Anti-Lebanon mountains of western Syria. Western Neo-Aramaic is the only living language drawn from the western dialect of Aramaic. All other Neo-Aramaic languages are of the eastern dialect region. Western Neo-Aramaic probably is the surviving remnant of a Western Middle Aramaic dialect which was spoken throughout the Orontes Valley area and into the Anti-Lebanon in the 6th century.

Weyto
Is believed to be an extinct language formerly spoken in the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia by a small group of hippopotamus hunters who now speak Amharic.

Wolof
Is a language spoken in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania, and it is the native language of the ethnic group of the Wolof people. It belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Wolof is the most widely-spoken language in Senegal, spoken not only by members of the Wolof ethnic group (approximately 40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese. Wolof dialects may vary between countries (Senegal and the Gambia) and the rural and urban areas. "Dakar-Wolof", for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, Arabic and English spoken in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

Wu
Is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. It is spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Yongkang and Shaoxing. As of 1991, there are 87 million speakers of Wu Chinese, making it the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin Chinese (which has 800 million speakers).

V

Vafsi
Is an Iranian language spoken in the Vafs village and surrounding area in the Markazi province of Iran. Vafsi belongs to a branch of Iranian languages called the Central Dialects. Vafsi forms a passage from the Central Dialects to the north-western Iranian languages.

Valencian Sign Language
(LSCV or LSPV)
Is a sign language used by people with hearing impairments in Valencia. Some linguists consider LSCV a variant of Spanish Sign Language (LSE), while others believe it is a dialect of the latter. The vocabulary of LSCV is only 72% similar to that of LSE, so some linguists maintain that the former is unique enough to have its own grammar, as is the case with Catalan Sign Language (LSC).

Venda
Also known as Tshivenda or Chivenda, is a Bantu language. The majority of Venda speakers live in South Africa (where Venda is an official language), but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe. Before South Africa became a democratic country, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.

Veps
Spoken by the Vepses, belongs to the Baltic-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric languages. According to the location of the people, the language is divided into three main dialects: Northern Veps (at Lake Onega to the south of Petrozavodsk, to the north of river Syväri, including the Veps Autonomous Rural district), Central Veps (in the Saint Petersburg region), and Southern Veps (in the Vologda Oblast). The Northern dialect is somewhat more distinct than the others, but it is nevertheless possible for the members of the different dialect groups to understand each other. The speakers of the Northern dialect call themselves Ludi, or Ludilainen. Their speech is sometimes classified as a dialect of Karelian.

Vietnamese
Formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese (see Annam) is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of Vietnamese people, who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, the bulk of which are Vietnamese Americans. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese and was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones.

Visayan
The Visayan languages of the Philippines, along with Tagalog and Bikol, are part of the Central Philippine language family. Most Visayan languages are spoken in the Visayas region but they are also spoken in the Bicol Region (particularly in Sorsogon and Masbate), islands south of Luzon such as those that make up Romblon, the northern and western areas of Mindanao, and the province of Sulu located southwest of Mindanao. There are over at least thirty languages that constitute the Visayan language family. The Visayan language with the most speakers is Cebuano, spoken by 20 million people as a native language in Central Visayas, northern and eastern parts of Mindanao. Two other well-known Visayan languages are Hiligaynon, spoken by 7 million in western Visayas and Waray-Waray spoken by 3 million in eastern Visayas.

Votic
Or Votian is the language spoken by the Votes of Ingria. It is closely related to Estonian, it is in the Balto-Finnic subgroup of Finno-Ugric languages. Votic is spoken only in Krakolye and Luzhitsy, two villages in the Kingisepp district, and is close to extinction. In 1989 there were 62 speakers left, the youngest born in 1930. In its 24 December 2005 issue, The Economist wrote that there are only approximately 20 speakers left.

Võro
Is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is often considered a dialect of South Estonian or Estonian, but has its own literary language and is in search of official recognition as an autochthonous regional language of Estonia. Võro language has about 70,000 speakers (Võros) mostly in south-eastern Estonia, in the eight parishes of historical Võru County (Võromaa): Karula, Harglõ, Urvastõ, Rõugõ, Kanepi, Põlva, Räpinä, and Vahtsõliina. These parishes are currently centered (due to redistricting) in Võru and Põlva Counties with parts extending into Valga and Tartu counties. Speakers can also be found in the towns of Tallinn, Tartu and the rest of Estonia.

U

Ubykh
Or Ubyx is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s.

Udmurt
Is a Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Udmurts, native of the Russian constituent republic of Udmurtia, where it is co-official with the Russian language. It is written with a Cyrillic script. It is linguistically closest to Komi and Komi-Permyak.

Ugaritic
Is only known in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit in Syria since its discovery by French archaeologists in 1928. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament in clarifying Hebrew texts and has revealed more of how Judaism used common phrases, literary idioms, and expressions employed by surrounding pagan cultures.

Ukrainian
Is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. It shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Slovak. Ukrainian traces its origins to the Old East Slavic language of the ancient state of Kievan Rus'. The language has persisted despite the two bans by Imperial Russia and political persecution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its broad base among the people of Ukraine, its folklore songs, kobzars, prominent poets like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

Unserdeutsch
("Our German"), or Rabaul Creol German, is a German-based creole language spoken primarily in Papua New Guinea and the northeast of Australia. It was formed among the New Guinean children residing in a German-run orphanage. Fewer than 100 native speakers exist today; 15 in New Britain.

Upper Sorbian
Is a minority language of Germany spoken in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, today part of Saxony.

Urdu
Is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan family that developed under Persian, Turkish, Hindi, and Arabic influence in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (1200-1800). Taken by itself, Urdu is approximately the twentieth most populous natively spoken language in the world, and is the national language of Pakistan as well as one of the 24 national languages of India.

Uripiv
Is a language spoken on Vanuatu. Uripiv is spoken today by about 6,000 people. Literacy rate of Uripiv speakers in their own language is about 10-30%. The language forms a dialect chain with other nearby languages, namely Wala-Rano and Atchin. Uripiv is the most northerly of these languages. Despite the dialect chain, Uripiv still has 85% of its words in common with Atchin, at the opposite (southern) end. Uripiv is classified as an Austronesian language, part of the Malayo-Polynesian bulk of this language group. It falls into the Central Eastern branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages and the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian subbranch of Central Eastern, which includes Uripiv and other Oceanic languages. It is one of the few well-documented languages that uses the rare bilabial trill.

Urum
Is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand people who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in Georgia. The name Urum is derived from the medieval Greek word for Rome designating Constantinople and Greece in general. The Ottoman empire used it to describe non-Muslims within the empire. The initial vowel in Urum is prosthetic: originally Turkic languages did not have r- in word-initial position, and in borrowed words used to add a vowel before it.

Uyghur
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghuristan), formerly also “Sinkiang” and “Chinese Turkestan,” a Central Asian region administered by China. In English, the name of the ethnicity and its language is spelled variously as Uyghur, Uighur, Uygur and Uigur.

Uzbek
Is an Eastern Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 21.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Uzbek belongs to the Qarluq family of Turkic languages, and consequently its lexicon and grammar are most closely linked to the Uighur language, while other influences rose from Persian, Arabic and Russian.

T

Tabasaran
Is a member of the Lezgian subfamily of the Northeast Caucasian languages. It is spoken in the southern parts of the Russian Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Tabasaran speakers live in the basin of Upper Rubas-chai and Upper Chirakh-chai. There are two main dialects: North (Khanag) and South Tabasaran. It has a literary language based on the Southern dialect, one of six in the Dagestan Republic.

Tashelhiyt
Is the largest Berber language of Morocco both by number of speakers (between 8 and 10 million) and by the extent of its area. Tashelhiyt is spoken in Southern Morocco an area ranging from the northern slopes of the High-Atlas to the southern slopes of the Anti-Atlas, bounded to the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The eastern limit of the Tashelhiyt area is difficult to pinpoint because of a smooth transition into Southern Middle Atlas Berber (Tamazight).

Tagalog
Is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines. It is the largest of the Philippine languages in terms of the number of speakers. Being a Malayo-Polynesian language of the larger Austronesian language family, it is related to Indonesian, Malay, Fijian, Maori (of New Zealand), Hawaiian, Malagasy (of Madagascar), Samoan, Tahitian, Chamorro (of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), Tetum (of East Timor), and Paiwan (of Taiwan).

Tahitian
A Tahitic language, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia (along with French). It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Maori, and Hawaiian.

Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL)
Is the sign language most commonly used in Taiwan. It is the native language of some 50,000 people in the nation. Serious linguistic research on TSL began in the 1970s and is continuing at present. The first International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics was held on March 1-2, 2003, at Chung Cheng University in Minhsiung, Chiayi Co., Taiwan.

Tajik
Is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. It is an Indo-European language, more specifically part of the Iranian language group. Speakers of Tajik live mostly in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and western Pakistan (the "Tajik" language spoken by approximately 30,000 people near the Tajikistan border in China is in fact a quite different Pamir language also called Sarikoli). Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. Tajik is an offspring of the Persian language, and belongs - along with Afghanistan's Dari - to the Eastern dialects of Persian. Historically, it was considered the local dialect of Persian spoken by the Tajik ethnic group in Central Asia. The language has diverged somewhat from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran, because of political borders and the influence of Russian. The standard language is based on the north-western dialects of Tajik, which have been influenced by the neighbouring Uzbek language as a result of geographical proximity.

Talossan
Talossan is a Gallo-Romance language, inspired by French, Provençal and Occitan, and very naturalistic (with quite a few irregularities). In an effort to create a kind of "national mythology" for his micronation, Madison discovered in 1985 that one of the Berber sub-tribes of Morocco was called the Talesinnt, and decided that Talossans were inexplicably and inextricably connected somehow to Berbers. This resulted in the Talossan language being inspired by Berber languages.

Talysh
Is a language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is classified as an Iranian language Talysh has two major mutually intelligible dialects — Northern (in Azerbaijan and Iran), and Southern (in Iran). Northern Talysh (the part in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Talish-i Gushtasbi.

Tamil
Is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the eighteenth most spoken language, with over 74 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the official languages of India, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

Tanacross
Is an endangered Athabaskan language spoken by fewer than 60 persons in eastern Interior Alaska.

Tangut
Also known as the Western Xia were a Qiangic-Tibetan people who moved to the highlands of western Sichuan sometime before the 10th century AD. They spoke the Tangut language, a now-extinct Qiangic language (Tibeto-Burman).

Tarifit
Is a Northern Berber language of the Zenati subgroup, spoken mainly in the Moroccan Rif by about 2 million people. Tarifit is a Berber language, belonging to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, and possibly the Rif subgroup of Zenati.

Tat
Is an Iranian language spoken by the Tat ethnic group in Azerbaijan and Russia. There is also a Jewish language called Judeo-Tat that is derived from the Tat language.

Tatar
Is a Turkic language belonging to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. It is spoken by the Tatars.

Tausug
Is a Visayan language spoken in Sulu province in the Philippines. It is also spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Telugu
Belongs to the Dravidian language family but with ample influence from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is the Dravidian language with the greatest number of speakers (including non-native speakers), the second largest spoken language in India after Hindi and one of the 22 official national languages of India.

Tetum
Is an Austronesian language, the basis of the national language of East Timor, Tetun Prasa. This is a creole with many words from Portuguese, with which it has equal status as an official language, as well as Malay or Indonesian.

Thai
Is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai-Kadai language family. The Tai-Kadai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and some linguists have proposed links to the Austroasiatic, Austronesian, or Sino-Tibetan language families. It is a tonal and analytic language. The combination of tonality, a complex orthography, relational markers and a distinctive phonology can make Thai difficult to learn for those who do not already speak a related language.

Tharu
Tharu are indigenious people living in the Terai plains of South Nepal and India. According to Nepal’s 2001 census, there are 1,533,879 ethnic Tharu (6.75% of Nepal's total population) of which 1,331,546 speak one of the seven Tharu dialects as a mother tongue.

Thracian
Was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians in South-Eastern Europe.

Tibetan
Is spoken by Tibetan people across a wide area of eastern Central Asia. Its classical written form is a major regional literary language, particulary in its use as in Buddhist writings. Tibetan is typically classified as a Tibeto-Burman language which in turn is, according to the most widespread theory, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Spoken Tibetan includes numerous regional varieties which, in many cases, are not mutually intelligible. Moreover, the boundaries between Tibetan and certain other Himalayan languages are sometimes unclear. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo, and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects, while other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered closely-related but separate languages. By this definition, Tibetan is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau as well as by approximately 150,000 exile speakers in India and other countries.

Tigre
Is a Semitic language of the North Ethiopic branch, descended from Ge'ez and closely related to Tigrinya. It is spoken by approximately one million people in Eritrea, with a few speakers in Sudan. Tigre is also the name for the people. The Tigre language, speakers and area should not be confused with the Tigray-Tigrinya people who live in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and in Eritrea and who speak Tigrinya.

Tigrinya
Is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea, where it is one of the main working languages (Eritrea does not have official languages), and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, where it also has official status, and among groups of emigrants from these regions, including some of the Beta Israel now living in Israel. Tigrinya should not be confused with the related Tigre language, which is spoken in a region in Eritrea to the west of the region where Tigrinya is spoken.

Tiv
Is spoken by over 6 million people in Nigeria, with a few speakers in Cameroon. Most of the Language's Nigerian speakers are found in Benue State of Nigeria. The language is also widely spoken in the Nigerian States of Plateau, Taraba, Nasarawa as well as the FCT Abuja. It is part of the Southern Bantoid Tivoid family, a branch of Benue-Congo and ultimately of the Niger-Congo phylum.

Tlingit
Is the language of the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada. It is considered to be a branch of the Na-Dené language family. Tlingit is very endangered, with about 500 native speakers still living, essentially all of whom are bilingual or near-bilingual in English. Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the Tlingit language and its culture.

Tobian
Also Tobi is, with English and the Sonsorolese language the language spoken on the Palau islands of Tobi (or Hatobohei), Pulo Anna, Merir, Fana, Helen Reef and Sonsoral (or Sonsorol). It has about 100 speakers over the world.

Tocharian
Is one of the most obscure branches of the group of Indo-European languages. It consisted of two languages, Tocharian A (Turfanian, Arsi, or East Tocharian) and Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian). These languages were spoken roughly from the 6th to 8th centuries; before they became extinct, their speakers were absorbed into the expanding Uyghur tribes. Both languages were once spoken in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia, now the Xinjiang province of China.

Toda
Is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.

Tok Pisin
Is the creole spoken in northern mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG), the National Capital District, and the New Guinea Islands. It is one of the official languages of PNG and the most widely used language in that country, spoken by about 4 million people as a second language and over a hundred thousand as a first language. Tok Pisin is also—perhaps more commonly in English—called New Guinea Pidgin and, largely in academic contexts, Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian.

Tokelauan
Is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1,700 people on the atolls of Tokelau. It is a member of the Samoic family of Polynesian languages. It is, alongside English, the official language of Tokelau. In addition to the population of Tokelau, it is spoken by approximately 2,900 Tokelauan expatriates in New Zealand.

Tonga
Is a Bantu Language primarily spoken by the Tonga tribe of the South, Southern and Western provinces of Zambia and Northern Zimbabwe (although also spoken by the Toka and Leya, as well as many bilingual Zambians and Zimbabweans.) It is one of the major lingua francas in Zambia, after Bemba and Nyanja.

Tongan
Is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has 100,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language.

Tongva
(Also known as the Gabrielino language) is an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who live in and around Los Angeles, California. Tongva is closely related to several other indigenous languages of the area, including the Cahuilla language and the Serrano language. Modern Southern Californian place-names from Tongva include: Pacoima, Tujunga, Topanga, Azusa, the Cahuenga in Cahuenga Pass and the Cucamonga in Rancho Cucamonga.

Trasianka
Is a Belarusian–Russian patois or a kind of interlanguage (from the linguistic point of view). It is often labeled "pidgin" or even "creole", which is not correct by any widespread definition of pidgin or creole language. The motivation for labelling trasianka as "pidgin" or a "creolized (language form)" (cf. Cychun, 2000) relies probably in the fact that the words "pidgin" and "creole" have pejorative, derogatory connotations (among non-experts, but also among a part of linguists in Belarus) as well as the word "trasianka" itself.

Tregami
Or Trigami is a language spoken in the villages of Gambir and Katar in the Nurestan Province of Afghanistan. Tregami belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is on the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. Ethnologue estimates its speakers at 1,000 (1994). It's speakers are overwhelmingly Muslim, and literacy rates are low: below 1% for people who have it as a first language, and between 5% to 15% for people who have it as a second language. It has a lexical similarity of approximately 76% to 80% with the Waigali language.

Tsat
(Also known as Utsat, Utset, Huihui, Hui, or Hainan Cham) is a language spoken on Hainan Island in China by the Utsuls. Tsat is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within the Austronesian language family, and is related to the Cham languages, originally from the coast of present-day Vietnam. Unusually for a Malayo-Polynesian language, Tsat has developed into a solidly tonal language, probably as a result of areal linguistic effects and contact with Chinese, Hlai/Li, and the other tonal languages of Hainan.

Tsez
Is a Northeast Caucasian language with about 7000 speakers spoken by the Tsez, a muslimic people in the mountainous Tsunta district of southern and western Dagestan, Russia. The name derives from the Tsez word for eagle.

Tshiluba
(Also called Luba-Kasai and Luba-Lulua) is a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is a national language.

Tshivenda
Is a Bantu language. The majority of Venda speakers live in South Africa (where Venda is an official language), but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe. Before South Africa became a democratic country, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa.

Tsimshian
(Pronounced Sim-SHE-an), translated as "People Inside the Skeena River," are a Native American and First Nation people who live around Terrace, Prince Rupert, and Kitimat, on the north coast of British Columbia and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. Currently there are about 10,000 Tsimshians, of which about 1,300 live in Alaska. Canadian Tsimshian live along the Skeena and Nass rivers, as well as the many inlets and islands on the coast. The Tsimshian obtained food through fishing (halibut and salmon) and hunting (seals, sea lions and sea otters).

Tsonga
Or Xitsonga language is spoken in southern Africa by the Tsonga people, also known as the Shangaan. Tsonga belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo languages. Tsonga is spoken by about 1,646,000 people in South Africa's Limpopo province, as well as 1.5 million people in Mozambique, and 19,000 people in Swaziland. There are also 5 000 speakers in Zimbabwe.

Tswana
Also known as Setswana, is a Bantu language. Tswana is the national and majority language of Botswana, whose people are the Batswana (singular Motswana). The majority of Tswana speakers are in South Africa (where it is an official language), but there are also speakers in Zimbabwe and Namibia. Internationally there are about 4 million speakers. Before South Africa became a multi-racial democracy, the bantustan of Bophuthatswana was set up to cover the Tswana speakers of South Africa. Setswana is a Bantu language, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is most closely related to two other languages in the Sotho language group, Sesotho (Southern Sotho) and Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa). It has also been known as Beetjuans, Chuana (hence Bechuanaland), Coana, Cuana, and Sechuana.

Tu
The Tu language (also known as Mongour, Monguor, and Mongor) is closely related to Mongolian. It is not a written language. It is spoken by the Tu people.

Tuareg
Or Tamasheq/Tamajaq/Tamahaq is a Berber language or family of closely related languages spoken by the Tuareg, in parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso (with a few speakers, the Kinnin, even in Chad.) They are quite mutually comprehensible, and are commonly regarded as a single language (as for instance by Karl Prasse); they are distinguished mainly by a few sound shifts (notably affecting the pronunciation of original z and h.) They are unusually conservative in some respects; they retain two short vowels where northern Berber languages have one or none, and have a much lower proportion of Arabic loanwords than most Berber languages. They are traditionally written in the indigenous Tifinagh alphabet; however, the Arabic alphabet is commonly used in some areas (and has been since medieval times), while the Latin alphabet is official in Mali and Niger.

Tulu
Is an Dravidian language of India with fewer than two million speakers. Most of its speakers are in the districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in the west of the state of Karnataka. Its also spoken in most part of Kasargod district of Kerala. The original written script of the language, similar to Malayalam script, is rarely used today. It is normally written in the Kannada script.

Tumbuka
Is a Bantu language which is spoken in parts of Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania. The language of the Tumbuka is called chiTumbuka - the 'chi' in front of Tumbuka meaning 'the language of', similar to 'ki' in kiSwahili or 'se' in seTswana. The World Almanac (1998) estimates approximately 2,000,000 Tumbuka speakers exist in the aforementioned three countries.

Old Tupi
Is an extinct Tupian language which was spoken by the native people from Brazil, mostly those who lived close to the sea. The language belongs to the Tupi-Guarani language subfamily. It enjoyed a brief period of literacy, in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries but was later suppressed to extinction, leaving only one modern descendant: Nheengatu.

Tupinikin
Is a language which is spoken by 800 Indian tribesmen in Espirito Santo and Bahia, Brazil. The language belongs to Tupi-Guarani language subfamily.

Turkish
Is a Turkic language spoken natively in Turkey, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece and other countries of the former Ottoman Empire, as well as by several million emigrants in the European Union. The number of native speakers is uncertain, primarily due to a lack of minority language data from Turkey. The figure of 60 million used here assumes that Turkish is the mother tongue of 80% of the Turkish population, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder. However, the vast majority of the linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language.

Turkmen
Is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 3,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran (2,000,000), Afghanistan (500,000), and Turkey (1,000). Up to 50% of speakers in Turkmenistan also claim a good knowledge of Russian.

Turoyo
Is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It is traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. From the word turo, meaning 'mountain', turoyo is the mountain tongue of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey. A far older name for the language is Surayt, and it is used by a number of speakers of the language in preference to Turoyo. The etymology of this name is difficult, but is probably linked to the word 'Syriac'.

Tuvaluan
Is a Nuclear Polynesian language of the Ellicean group spoken in Tuvalu. It is more or less distantly related to all other Polynesian languages, such as Hawai'ian, Maori, Tahitian, Samoan, and Tongan, and most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian Outliers in Northern and Central Melanesia. Tuvaluan has borrowed considerably from Samoan, the language of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are about 11000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide.

Tuvan
Also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is one of the Turkic languages. It is spoken by around 200,000 people in the Republic of Tuva in south-central Siberia. The language borrows a great number of roots from the Mongolian language and more recently from the Russian language. There are small diaspora groups of Tuvans that speak distinct dialects of Tuvan in the People's Republic of China and in Mongolia.

S

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.

R

Rajasthani
Is one of the prominent languages of Indo-Aryan language family. It is spoken by around eighty million persons (total number of speakers 36 million as of Census of India, 2001) in Rajasthan and other states of India, and has eight major dialects: Bagri, Shekhawati, Mewati, Dhundhari, Harauti, Marwari, Mewari, and Wagri. Most of these dialects of Rajasthani are chiefly spoken in the state of Rajasthan and adjacent parts of Gujarat, in the Malwa and Nimar regions of western Madhya Pradesh, and the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sind. Rajasthani language is classified in the Central Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages, which also includes Hindi and Urdu. Some of the Rajasthani dialects are considered by some to be dialects of Hindi; however, many linguists agree that Rajasthani is a different language from Hindi at Phonological, Morphological, Syntactical and lexical level.
Some Rajasthani dialects are given below: Dhatki, Goaria, Loarki, Marwari, Mewari, Bagri, Gade Lohar, Gujari, Harauti, Malvi, Nimadi.

Ratagnon
(Also transliterated as Latagnon or Datagnon) is a language spoken by the Ratagnon people, an indigenous group from Occidental Mindoro. Its speakers are shifting to Tagalog, and it is nearly extinct.

Réunion Creole
Reunionese Creole, or bourbonnais is a creole language spoken on Réunion Island. It is derived mainly from French and a few terms from other languages (Indian, Chinese...).

Romanian
Is the fifth of the Romance languages in terms of number of speakers. It is spoken as a first language by somewhere around 24 to 26 million people, and enjoys official status in Romania, Moldova and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia). The official form of the Moldovan language in the Republic of Moldova is identical to the official form of Romanian save for a minor rule in spelling. Romanian is also an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations (such as the Latin Union and the European Union – the latter as of 2007).

Romansh
(Also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is a Romance language, believed to have descended from the vulgar Latin spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, somewhat resembles Italian and French. It is spoken by about 50,000-70,000 people in the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), of which about 35,000 speak it as their first language. Spoken by fewer than 1% of Switzerland's 7.4 million inhabitants, it is the smallest of Switzerland's national languages in terms of number of speakers, about half the size of Switzerland's largest community of speakers of a non-official language, Serbo-Croatian with some 111,000 speakers.

Romani
(Or Romany) is the language of the Roma and Sinti, peoples often referred to in English as "Gypsies". The Indo-Aryan Romani language should not be confused with either Romanian (spoken by Romanians), or Romansh (spoken in parts of southeastern Switzerland), both of which are Romance languages.

Romblomanon
Is the language in Romblon. It includes the dialects Sibuyanon, Inunhan or Onhan, and Bantoanon or Asi.

Rotokas
Is a language (part of the East Papuan language family) spoken by some 4000 people in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. There are at least three dialects of the language: Central Rotokas ("Rotokas Proper"), Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia. Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic inventories and for having perhaps the smallest modern alphabet.

Runyankole
(Also Runyankore) is a Bantu language spoken by the Ankole tribe of Southwestern Uganda. There are approximately 1 million native speakers, mainly found in the Mbarara District.

Russenorsk
Or Russonorsk (Norwegian for "Russo-Norwegian") was a pidgin language combining elements of Russian and Norwegian, created by traders and whalers from northern Norway and the Russian Kola peninsula. As is common in the development of pidgins and trade languages, the interaction of seamen, fishermen, and traders with no common language necessitated the creation of some minimal form of communication. Like all pidgins, Russenorsk was not a complex system of communication. It had a rudimentary grammar and a restricted vocabulary mostly composed of words essential to Arctic fishing and trade (fish, weather, etc.) and did not particularly deal with unrelated issues (music, politics, etc.).

Russian
Is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages. Within the Slavic family, Russian is one of three living members of the East Slavic group, the other two being Belarusian and Ukrainian.

Russian Sign Language
Is the sign language of the deaf community in Russia. It has a grammar unlike the (spoken or written) Russian language, although there is a "signed Russian" which has been used on television in interpreted news programs. The Moscow Bilingual School for the Deaf, which uses Russian Sign Language in classrooms, was opened in 1992.

Ruthenian
Was a historic East Slavic language, spoken after 1569 in the East Slavic territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Having evolved from the Old East Slavic language, Ruthenian was the ancestor of modern Belarusian. It is sometimes also called "Old Belarusian" (Belarusian starabjelaruskaja mova) or even "West Russian" (Russian zapadnorusskij jazyk).

Q

Qashqai
(Also spelled Ghashghai, Qashqa'i, Qashqay, and Kashkai) is a Turkic language. It is spoken by the Qashqai, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers varies, but Ethnologue gives a figure of one and a half million. The Qashqai language is closely related to Azerbaijani, and some linguists consider it to be a dialect of that language. Unlike Azerbaijani, Qashqai still uses the Arabic alphabet (or, more specifically, the Persian modification of it). Many Qashqai also speak Persian.

Quebec Sign Language
Known in French as Langue des signes québécoise and typically abbreviated LSQ, is a sign language used in Canada. Most LSQ users are located in Quebec, but a few are scattered in major cities in the rest of the country. LSQ is closely related to both American Sign Language and French Sign Language. Due to segregation by gender in deaf education, males and females use slightly different forms of LSQ. The female form was influenced more by ASL while the male form was more influenced by LSF. Although ASL is used in Anglophone parts of Quebec, it is unusual for a deaf child to learn both ASL and LSQ.

Quechua
(Runa Simi) is a Native American language of South America. It was the language of the Inca Empire, and is today spoken in various dialects by some 10 million people throughout South America, including Peru and Bolivia, southern Colombia and Ecuador, north-western Argentina and northern Chile. It is the most widely spoken of all American Indian languages. Quechua is a very regular agglutinative language, with a normal sentence order of SOV (subject-object-verb). Its large number of infixes and suffixes change both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning, allowing great expressiveness. Notable grammatical features include bipersonal conjugation (verbs agree with both subject and object), evidentiality (indication of the source and veracity of knowledge), a topic particle, and suffixes indicating who benefits from an action and the speaker's attitude toward it.
There are two main dialect groups.
Quechua I or Waywash is spoken in Peru's central highlands. It is the most archaic and diverse branch of Quechua, such that its dialects have been often considered a different tongue.
Quechua II or Wanp'una (Traveler) is divided into three branches: Yunkay Quechua is spoken sporadically in Peru's occidental highlands; Northern Quechua (also known as Quichua or Runashimi) is mainly spoken in Colombia and Ecuador; Southern Quechua, spoken in Peru's southern highlands, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, is today's most important branch because it has the largest number of speakers and because of its cultural and literary legacy.

P

Pahari
(Also known as Pahaari), is a general term for various dialects spoken in the Indian part of the central Himalayan range. The word is derived from 'pahar' or 'pahad' meaning 'mountain'. The term 'Pahaari/Pahari' in Hindi, Urdu, or Punjabi means "language of the mountain people". Pahari dialects are found in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal (traditionally called Uttarakhand). Western Pahari (Himachali) dialects include: Pothohari/Potwari, Kangri, Kullu, Mandyali, etc. The dialects spoken in Uttaranchal/Uttarakhand include Garhwali, Kumaoni and others. Garhwali itself has many dialects spoken in different parts of the state, like Jaunsari, Jadhi, etc. In the UK the language is referred to colloquially as "mawri twaree" (mine and yours).

Pahlavi
The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sassanid Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. The word Pahlavi, referring to the script of Middle Persian, itself is a borrowing from Parthian (parthau "Parthian" ? pahlaw; the semivowel glide r changes to l, a common occurrence in language evolution). The word originally referred to the language spoken by the Parthians, and later came to be applied to the script used to write Middle Persian, which was derived from the Aramaic alphabet. Middle Persian Pahlavi script was derived from Aramaic independently, although Inscriptional MP Pahlavi is quite similar to Inscriptional Parthian Pahlavi.

Palauan
(Also spelled Belauan) is the language spoken on Palau. It is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, and is considered to be one of two languages in Micronesia (the other being Chamorro) belonging to the Western Malayo-Polynesian group, all others considered to be members of the Micronesian subgroup of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian.

Pali
Is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. It is most famous as the Liturgical language in which the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism (also known as the Pali Canon or in Pali the Tipitaka) were written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BCE. Pali has been written in a variety of scripts, from Brahmi, Devanagari and other Indic scripts through to a romanised (western) form devised by T. W. Rhys Davids of the Pali Text Society.

Pangasinan
Belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian languages branch of the Austronesian languages family. Pangasinan is spoken by more than two million people in the province of Pangasinan, in other Pangasinan communities in the Philippines, and by a significant number of Pangasinan immigrants in the United States. Pangasinan is the primary language in the province of Pangasinan, located on the west central area of the island of Luzon along the Lingayen Gulf. It is the dominant language in central Pangasinan.

Papiamento
Or Papiamentu is the primary language spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (the so-called ABC islands). It is also well known by people in Saba, St Eustatius, and the Sint Maarten islands. Papiamento is a creole language whose lexicon is drawn firstly from Portuguese (about 60%) and some Spanish language and from Dutch (about 25%). The remainder (15%) comes from West African languages, Arawak, and other languages.

Pashto
Is the language spoken by the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the western provinces of Pakistan.

Pecheneg
Is the extinct Oghuz Turkic language spoken by the Pechenegs in Eastern Europe. It went extinct by the 12th century.

Pemon
Or Pemong (in Spanish: Pemón) is a Cariban language spoken mainly in Venezuela, specifically in the regions Bolivar State, Gran Sabana, an estimated 4,800 people in Venezuela speak Pemon. To some extent Pemon is also spoken in Brazil and Guyana (1000+ people).

Pennsylvania German
Or more commonly (but less accurately) Pennsylvania Dutch, and increasingly Deitsch (Deitsch, Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsch, Pennsilfaani-Deitsch, Pennsilweni-Deitsch, Pennsilfaanisch), is a High German variety spoken by 150,000 to 250,000 people in North America. Speakers of the language can be found today mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in the United States, and Ontario, Canada. The majority of speakers are either Amish or Old Order Mennonite, although this was not the case a few generations ago.

Persian
Is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere.

Palula
Also known as Phalura and as Ashretiwar, is spoken by 7,000 to 15,000 people in Ashret and Biori Valleys, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. A variety of this language is spoken in Village Sau in Afghanistan. The Phalura Language has had some documentation by George Morgenstierne (1926), Kendall Decker (1992), and Henrik Liljegrin (2005). It is classified as a Dardic Language but this is more of a geographical classification than a linguistic one. In some villages, Palula is believed to be a dying language, as most speakers are converting to the more widelty spoken Khowar language. However, in other areas Palula is a strong, vibrant and growing language, as the population in those areas increases.

Phoenician
Was a language originally spoken in the coastal region then called Put in Phoenician, Canaan in Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic, and Phoenicia in Greek and Latin. Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. This area includes modern-day Lebanon, coastal Syria and northern Israel.

Phrygian
Was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, a people who probably migrated from Thrace to Asia Minor in the Bronze Age, possibly during the Sea Peoples migrations of ca 1200 BC. Phrygian is attested by two corpora, one from around 800 BC and later (Paleo-Phrygian), and then after a period of several centuries from around the beginning of the Common Era (Neo-Phrygian). The Palaeo-Phrygian corpus is further divided (geographically) into inscriptions of Midas-city (M, W), Gordion, Central (C), Bithynia (B), Pteria (P), Tyana (T), Daskyleion (Dask), Bayindir (Bay), and "various" (Dd, documents divers). The Mysian inscriptions seem to be in a separate dialect (in an alphabet with an additional letter, "Mysian s").

Phuthi
Is a Bantu Nguni language variety with Sotho influence spoken in scattered communities in the Eastern Cape / Lesotho borderland. It is part of the Swati dialect continuum. The origins of this language can be traced back for about 300 years. Their most notable leader was Chief Morisi (born in 1775) that died on Morisi mountain after a skirmish with the British, Boers and Basotho forces because of alleged stolen livestock. This event caused the people to disperse all over the mountainous region in order to escape capture by the colonial powers of the time. It is estimated that around 20 000 people in South Africa and Lesotho use Phuthi as their home language.

Picard
Is a language closely related to French, and as such is one of the larger group of Romance languages. It is spoken in two regions in the far north of France – Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie – and in parts of the Belgian region Wallonia (but is clearly distinct from the Walloon language). Picard is known by several different names. Residents of Picardie call it picard; but in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and it is more commonly known as chti or chtimi, or in and around the town Valenciennes as rouchi; or simply as patois by Northerners in general. Linguists group all of these under the name Picard. Indeed, whether it is called patois, picard, or chti, it is the same language, and in general the variety spoken in Picardie is understood by speakers in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and vice versa.

Pictish
Is the extinct language of the Picts. Evidence of the language is limited to place names and to the names of people found on monuments and the contemporary records. At its height, it may have been spoken from Shetland down to Fife.

Pirahã
Is a language spoken by the Pirahã — an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, who live along the Maici river, a tributary of the Amazon. The Pirahã language has a number of unusual linguistic features. One of them, a seeming lack of number words, makes Pirahã a fascinating test case of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and more generally of the link between language and cognition.

Plautdietsch
Or Mennonite Low German, is a language spoken by the Mennonites who trace their roots to the Low Countries and north Germany, but who adopted an East Low German dialect while they were refugees in the Vistula delta area of Royal Prussia (later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), beginning in the early-to-mid 1500s. Beginning in the late 1700s, when the region became part of the Kingdom of Prussia, many Mennonites left and created new colonies north of the Black Sea (present-day Ukraine), in an area that Russia had recently acquired in one of the Russo-Turkish Wars (see Russian Mennonites). Many Mennonites migrated to North America — especially Canada and the United States — and Latin America — especially Paraguay and Mexico, — most of them live as rural settlers and added some Spanish and Portuguese words to their own language.

Polabian
Which became extinct in the 18th century, was a group of Slavic dialects spoken in present-day northern Germany: Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern parts of Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein. It was one of the Lechitic languages. The name derives from the name of Polabian tribes, which in turn derives from the name of the Elbe river in Slavic languages: Laba in Polish and Labe in Czech.

Polish
Is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland.

Portuguese
Is an Indo-European language of the Romance branch. It originated in what is today Galicia (in Spain) and northern Portugal. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, co-official with Chinese in the Chinese S.A.R. of Macau, and co-official with Tetum in East Timor.

Potiguara
Is a language which is spoken by 6000 Indian tribesmen in Paraíba, Pôsto Nísia Brasileira on the Baía da Traição, in the municipality of Mamanguape, Brazil. The language belongs to Tupi-Guarani language subfamily.

Proto-Indo-European
Is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, believed to have been spoken around 4000 BC in Central Asia (according to the Kurgan hypothesis) or millennia before that in Anatolia (according to the Anatolian hypothesis). The existence of such a language is generally accepted by linguists, though there has been debate about many specific details. All Indo-European languages are inflected languages (although many modern Indo-European languages, including Modern English, have lost much of their inflection). By comparative reconstruction, it is quite likely that at least the latest stage of the common PIE mother languages (Late PIE) was an inflectional language, which was more suffixing than prefixing.

Provençal
Is one of several dialects of the Occitan language, which is spoken by a minority of people in southern France and other areas of France. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in the former province of Provence as well as south of Dauphiné and the Nîmes region in Languedoc and the upper valleys of Piedmont, Italy (Val Maira, Val Varacha, Val d'Estura, Entraigas, Limon, Vinai, Pignerol, Sestriera). "Provençal" is also the customary name given to the older version of the langue d'oc used by the troubadours of medieval literature, corresponding to Old French or langue d'oil of the northern areas of France.

Pucikwar
Is an extinct language of the Andaman Islands, India, spoken by the A-Pucikwar people.

Punjabi
Is the language of the Punjabi people and the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan. It is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Iranian subfamily. Uniquely for an Indo-European language, Punjabi is a tonal language where the tones arose as a reinterpretation of different consonant series in terms of pitch. In terms of morphological complexity, it is an agglutinative language and words are usually ordered 'Subject Object Verb'.