Nafaanra
Is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Côte d'Ivoire, east of Bondouko. It is spoken by approximately 61,000 people (GILLBT 2003). Its speakers call themselves Nafana; others call them Banda or Mfantera. Like other Senufo languages, Nafaanra is a tonal language. It is somewhat of an outlier in the Senufo language group, with the geographically closest relatives, the Southern Senufo Tagwana-Djimini languages, approximately 200 kilometres to the west, on the other side of Comoé National Park.
Nahuatl
Is a term applied to some members of the Aztecan or Nahuan sub-branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, indigenous to central Mexico. Under the "Law of Linguistic Rights" it is recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico.
Often the term Nahuatl is used specifically with reference to the language called Classical Nahuatl, which was the administrative language of the Aztec empire but it was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures, like the Tepanceca, Acolcuah, Tlaxcalteca, Xochimilc, etc. and possibly was one of the languages spoken in Teotihuacan. As the Nahua groups became predominant, It was used as a lingua franca in much of Mesoamerica from the 12th century AD until the late 16th century, at which time its prominence and influence were interrupted by the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Nàmá
Previously called Hottentot, is the most populous and widespread of the Khoisan languages. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa by the Namaqua, Damara, and Hai?om, as well as smaller ethnic groups such as the ?Khomani. The name for Nama speakers, Khoekhoen, is from the Nama word khoe "person", with reduplication and the suffix -n to indicate the plural. According to Ethnologue, there were 250,000 speakers as of 1998.
Nauruan
(Dorerin Naoero) is an Austronesian language spoken in Nauru. It is estimated that it has 7,000 speakers, approximately 50% of the population. Almost all speakers are bilingual in English. It is a member of the Micronesian family of Austronesian languages.
Navajo
(Also Navaho) (in Navajo: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock) spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people (Diné). It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages (the majority of Athabaskan languages are spoken in northwest Canada and Alaska). Navajo claims more speakers than any other Native American or First Nation language north of the US-Mexico border, with more than 100,000 native speakers, and this number is actually increasing with time. During World War II, a code based on Navajo was used by code talkers to send secure military messages over radio.
Ndau
Is one of the Shona dialects. It is spoken by people from the region of "Chipinge". Some of its words are very similar to that of Ndebele and often this dialect can sound very different from that of basic Shona.
Southern Ndebele language
Is an African language belonging to the Nguni group of Bantu languages, and spoken by the amaNdebele (the Ndebele people of South Africa). There are two dialects of Southern Ndebele in South Africa:
* the Northern Transvaal Ndebele or Nrebele,
* and the Southern Transvaal Ndebele.
Ndonga
Is one of the languages spoken in Africa. This is one of the Bantu languages, and is mainly spoken in Namibia and some parts of Angola. Total number of Ndonga speakers are estimated to be roughly 690,000. Grouped with the closely related Kuanyama, it is also called 'Otjiwambo', 'Oshiwambo' or 'Owambo'.
Neapolitan
Is a Romance language spoken in the city and region of Naples, Campania (Neapolitan: Nàpule, Italian: Napoli), as well as throughout most of southern Italy including the Gaeta and Sora districts of southern Lazio, the southern part of Ascoli province in Marche, most of Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, northern Calabria, and northern and central Apulia.
Nenets
Is a language spoken by the Nenets people in northern Russia. It belongs to the Samoyedic languages which form the Uralic language family with the Finno-Ugric languages. There are two major dialects - Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets - with low mutual intelligibility between the two. Most Nenetses speak Tundra Nenets.
Nepal Bhasa
Is one of the major languages of Nepal. It is one of the roughly five hundred Sino-Tibetan languages in the world, and belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of this family. It is the only Tibeto-Burman language to be written in the Devanagari script.
Nepali
Is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and some parts of India and Burma. It is the official language of Nepal. Roughly half the population of Nepal speaks Nepali as a mother tongue, and many other Nepalese speak it as a second language. Nepali goes by various names. English speakers generally call it Nepali or Nepalese.
New Zealand Sign Language
Or NZSL is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006, alongside Maori and English. It is the first official sign language in the world. New Zealand Sign Language has its roots in British Sign Language (BSL), and may be technically considered a dialect of British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL). Like other natural sign languages, it was devised by and for Deaf people, with no linguistic connection to a spoken or written language, and it is fully capable of expressing anything a fluent signer wants to say. It is linguistically unrelated to American Sign Language. It uses the same two-handed manual alphabet as British Sign Language and Auslan, Australian Sign Language.
Nganasan
Is a language of the Nganasan people. It is spoken by some 1063 (1989 est.) or 750 people (1970 est.) in the southwestern and central parts of the Taymyr Peninsula. The Nganasan language belongs to the northern Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. There are two main dialects in the Nganasan language: Avam dialect and Vadeyev dialect. There is no Nganasan written language. Phonetic features of the Nganasan language include 18 vowel and 20 consonant phonemes and an abundance of diphthongs.
Ngumba
Is a language of Cameroon, spoken in the south along the coast and at the border with Equatorial Guinea by some 70 000 members of the Ngumba ethnic group. Ngumba is a tonal language. As a Narrow Bantu language, it has noun class system. The Ngumba noun class system is somewhat reduced, having retained only 6 genders (a gender being a pairing of a singular and a plural noun class).
Língua Geral
Is the name of two distinct linguae francae spoken in Brazil, the língua geral paulista, now extinct; and the língua geral amazônica whose modern descendant is Nheengatu. Both were simplified versions of languages spoken by Tupi Indians. Portuguese colonizers arrived in Brazil in the 16th century and, faced with an indigenous population which spoke many languages, sought a means to establish effective communication among the many groups. The two languages were used in the Jesuit missions and by early colonists; and came to be used by black slaves and other Indian groups.
Nicaraguan Sign Language
(Or ISN, Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua or Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense) is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It is of particular interest to linguists because it offers a unique opportunity to study the "birth" of a new language.
Nicobarese languages
Form an isolated group of six closely-related Mon-Khmer languages from the Austro-Asiatic language family, which are spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers (22,100 native). The majority of Nicobarese speakers use the Car language. The morphological similarities between Nicobarese languages and Austronesian languages have been used to help support the Austric hypothesis.
Niellim
Is a Bua language spoken by some 5,000 people (as of 1993) along the Chari River in southern Chad. It is mainly spoken in two areas: one around the city of Sarh (to which many - perhaps most - speakers have migrated) and one, its traditional home, further north, between about 9°30' and 9°50 N, corresponding to the former chiefdoms of Pra, Niellim, and Niou. Niellim borders on several languages of diverse families - in particular Sara, Ndam, and Laal - and is influenced by the local lingua franca, Baguirmi; it has itself strongly influenced Laal. It is notably homogeneous. As a small minority in Chad, its speakers usually have to learn other languages, mostly (as of 1974) Baguirmi, Sara, Arabic, and Bua.
Nigerian Pidgin
Is a dialect of English spoken as a kind of lingua franca across Nigeria that is referred to simply as "Pidgin", "Broken English" or "Brokan". It is not considered a creole language since there are no "native" speakers, although children do learn it early. Its superstrate is English with Hausa, Yorùbá and Igbo as the main substrate languages. Nigerian Pidgin is also spoken across West Africa, in countries such as Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cameroon.
Niuean
Is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Maori, Samoan, and Hawai'ian. Together, Tongan and Niuean form the Tongic subgroup of the Polynesian languages. Niuean also has a number of influences from Samoan and Eastern Polynesian languages.
Nivkh
Or Gilyak (ethnonym: Nivxi) is a language spoken in Outer Manchuria, in the basin of the Amgun, a tributary of the Amur, along the lower reaches of the Amur and on the northern half of Sakhalin. 'Gilyak' is the Manchu appellation. Its speakers are known as the Nivkhs. Gilyak is a language isolate, i.e., it does not appear to be related to any other language. For classification convenience, it is included in the group of Paleosiberian languages. Recently it was included in the controversial Eurasiatic languages hypothesis by Joseph Greenberg.
Nogai
Is a language spoken in southwestern Russia. Three distinct dialects are recognized: Qara-Nogay (Black or Northern Nogay), spoken in Dagestan; Nogai Proper, in Stavropol; and Aqnogay (White or Western Nogay), by the Kuban River, its tributaries in Karachay-Cherkessia, and in the Mineralnye Vody District. Qara-Nogay and Nogai Proper are very close linguistically, while Aqnogay shows more differences.
Norfuk
Is the language spoken on Norfolk Island by the local residents. It is a blend of English of the 1700s and Tahitian originally introduced by settlers from the Pitcairn Islands who spoke Pitkern. The language itself does not have words to express some concepts; some therefore describe it as a Cant, similar to a Pidgin, or as a Creole language. Some Islanders believe that the only solution is to create a committee charged with creating new words in Norfuk rather than simply adopting English words for new technological advances. For example, Norfuk recently adopted the word Kompyuuta, a Norfuk-ised version of Computer. Processes similar to this exist in relation to other regional or minority languages around the world, such as the Maori language in New Zealand and the Icelandic language. Some minority languages already have official bodies (such as New Zealand's Maori Language Commission) creating new words.
Norman
Is a Romance language, one of the Oïl languages. The name Norman-French is sometimes used to describe not only the modern Norman language, but also the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England.
Norn
Is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken on the Shetland Islands and Orkney Islands, off the north coast of mainland Scotland. After the islands were returned to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, its use was discouraged by the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland (the national church), and it was gradually replaced by Scots over time.
Northern
Or North Sami (also written Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. It can be divided into a three major dialect groups: Torne, Finnmark and Sea Sami. All together, North Sami spreads out across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Depending on the survey, this estimate can bring the population of North Sami speakers to be somewhere between 15,000 speakers and 25,000 speakers.
Northern Sotho
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).
Norwegian
Is a Germanic language spoken in Norway. Norwegian is closely related to and generally mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish. Together with these two languages as well as Faroese and Icelandic, Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Native speakers of Norwegian are, for the most part, quite proficient in understanding Danish and Swedish in spoken as well as written form. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, and Norway's literary history.
N/u
Or N/uu is a Khoisan language spoken by the ‡Khomani people in South Africa. N/u belongs to the Ta’a-Kwi language family, with /Xam being its closest relative. The slash symbol in these names represents a click like the English interjection tsk! tsk! used to express pity or shame; "N/u" is pronounced like noo, with a tsk pronounced in the middle of the en.
Nuer
Is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer tribe in southern Sudan.
Nuristani languages
Are said to represent the third and by far the smallest branch of the Indo-Iranian languages. The recognition of its independent status came much later than that of the other two branches. As the term "Indo-Iranian" is well established, there is resistance to any change in the nomenclature. They were not described in the literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region was Kafiristan and the languages were termed Kafiiri or Kafiristani, but the terms have been replaced by the present ones as being less pejorative, for kafir means "infidel".
Nuxálk
(Also Bella Coola) is a Salishan language spoken in the vicinity of the Canadian town Bella Coola, British Columbia by approximately 20-30 elders. Until recently, the language was also called Bella Coola, but the native designation Nuxálk is now preferred. Though the number of truly fluent speakers has not increased, the language is now taught in both the Provincial (British Columbia – B.C.) school system and the Nuxálk Nation's own school – Acwsalcta. Nuxálk language classes, if taken to at least the Grade 11 level, are considered adequate second language qualifications for entry to the major B.C. universities.
Nyabwa
(Or Nyaboa) language is a Kru language spoken in Côte d'Ivoire.
Nyah Kur
Is an Austroasiatic language spoken by a remnant of the Mon people of Dvaravati, the Nyah Kur people, who live in present-day Thailand. Known as Chao-bon in Thai, it is spoken by a few thousand people in the central and northeastern provinces. Being the only languages of the Monic branch of the Mon-Khmer language family, Mon and Nyah Kur are very closely related. The speakers of Nyah Kur are the descendants of those Mon who did not flee west when the Khmer overran their empire in the 9th and 11th centuries. Consequently, modern Mon and Nyah Kur have both developed directly from Old Mon independently for almost a millennium.
Nyagnumarta
Is spoken by Indigenous Australians in the region of Western Australia to the south and east of Lake Waukarlykarly, including Eighty Mile Beach, and part of the Great Sandy Desert inland to near Telfer.
Nynorsk
(Literally New Norwegian) is one of the two officially sanctioned written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. It's used as the primary written language by just over 10% of Norwegian speakers in Norway. Nynorsk is also the Norwegian linguistic term for Modern Norwegian, which is the language spoken in Norway since the mid 1500s. In this sense Nynorsk covers all modern Norwegian dialects and all modern Norwegian orthographies, including Nynorsk, Høgnorsk, Bokmål and Riksmål. This sense of the word is described further in the article Modern Norwegian and is not used below.
Nyoro
Is a local language of Nyoro in Uganda. It belongs to the Niger-Congo family, Benue-Congo subgroup, Bantu branch (Nyoro-Ganda group). Has probably two dialects: Orunyoro and Rutagwenda. A standardized orthography was established in 1947.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
M
Ancient Macedonian
Was the tongue of the Ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in Macedon during the 1st millennium BC, and is believed to have disappeared some time before the start of the Common Era. It is believed to have been spoken predominantly in the inland regions away from the coast. It is as yet undetermined whether the language was a separate yet sibling language which was most closely related to Greek, a dialect of Greek or an independent Indo-European language not especially close to Greek.
Macedonian
Is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. It is also officially recognized in the District of Korçë in Albania. Macedonian is also spoken in Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and in the Macedonian diaspora in Western Europe, North America and Australia.
Macedo-Romanian
Is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe. Its speakers are called Aromanians. It was formed after the Romanization of the Balkans and shares many features with Romanian, having similar grammar and morphology. The most important dissimilarity between Romanian and Aromanian is the vocabulary, which in the case of the former has been influenced to a greater extent by its neighbouring Slavic languages, while Aromanian has borrowed much vocabulary from the Greek language with which it has been in close contact throughout its history.
Magadhi
(Also known as Magahi) is a language spoken in India. Magadhi is closely related to Bhojpuri and Maithili and these languages are sometimes referred to as a single language, Bihari. These languages, together with several other related languages, are known as the Bihari languages, which form a sub-group of the Eastern Zone group of Indo-Aryan languages. Magadhi has approximately 13 million speakers. It is spoken primarily spoken in the Magadh area of Bihar state. This area includes Patna, Gaya, Nalanda, and other surrounding districts. It is also spoken in some areas of Hazaribagh, Giridih, Palamau, Munger, and Bhagalpur, with some speakers in the Malda District of West Bengal. It is generally written using Devanagari script.
Maguindanaon
Is an Austronesian language spoken by majority of the population of Maguindanao Province in the Philippines. It is also spoken by sizable minorities in different parts of Mindanao such as the cities of Zamboanga, Davao, and General Santos, and the provinces of North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga-Sibugay, as well as metropolitan Manila in the National Capital Region.
Mahicans
(Also Mohicans) are a Native American tribe who were living in and around the Hudson Valley at the time of their first contact with Europeans in 1609. Over the next hundred years, tensions between the Mahicans and the Mohawks as well as the Europeans caused the Mahicans to migrate eastward; many settled in what would eventually become the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. For this reason this group of Mahicans has also frequently been known as the Stockbridge Indians. The now extinct Mahican language belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family.
Mahl
Also known locally as Maliku Bas, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the people of Minicoy (Maliku), India. It is very similar to (and mutually intelligible with) Dhivehi, the official language of Maldives, but differentiated in name for political reasons. Linguists agree that Mahl is an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Hindi, Marathi and its most closest sister is Sinhalese. Dhivehi represents the southernmost Indo-Aryan language and even the southern most Indo-European language. Together with the closely related Sinhalese, Mahl (Divehi) establishes a special sub group within the West and Southwest group of the Modern Indo-Aryan languages.
Maithili
Is of the family of Indo-Aryan languages, which are part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken in the Indian state of Bihar and in the eastern Terai region of Nepal. It is considered by many to be a dialect of Hindi, and thus not a separate language. Nevertheless, a movement to give the language official status in the Indian Constitution so that it could be used in education, government, and other official contexts, resulted in Maithili being given official status in 2003.
Makassar
(Sometimes spelled Makasar or Macassar) is both a language and a writing system used by the people in South Sulawesi island (Celebes) in Indonesia. The Makassar language is a member of the Austronesian language family, and closely related to Buginese. Although Makassarese is now often written with the Roman alphabet, it is still widely written in its own distinctive script, also called Lontara, which once was used also to write important documents in Bugis and Mandar, two related language from Sulawesi.
Makhuwa-Meetto
(Also known as Meto or Imeetto) is a Bantu language spoken by about 800,000 people in northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania. It is a member of the Makhuwa group (P.30 in Guthrie's classification).
Makua
Is a Bantu language spoken by 5 million Makua people, who live north of the Zambezi River in Mozambique. It is the most important indigenous language of Mozambique.
Malagasy
Is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, spoken on Madagascar, where it is an official language. The Malagasy language is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The name Malagasy is also used to refer to the indigenous people of Madagascar, who make up some 36 tribes and are of mixed Indonesian and African descent.
Malay
Also known locally as Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in the Malay peninsula, southern Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, and parts of the coast of Borneo. It is an official language of Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. It is also used as a working language in East Timor. It is very similar to (and mutually intelligible with) Bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia, but differentiated in name for political reasons. The official standard for Malay, as agreed upon by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, is the form spoken in the Riau Islands just south of Singapore, long considered the birthplace of the Malay language.
Malayalam
Is the language of the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, spoken by around 30 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayalee" (or sometimes a "Keraleeyan" or "Keralite"). Malayalam is also spoken in the Lakshadweep Islands of India. It belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil. Malayalam has a script of its own.
Malaysian Sign Language
Or Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia (BIM), is the sign language in every day use in many parts of Malaysia. MSL has many dialects, differing from state to state. American Sign Language (ASL) has had a strong influence on MSL, but the two are different enough to be considered separate languages. Other sign languages in use in Malaysia are Penang Sign Language (PSL), Selangor Sign Language (SSL or KLSL), and Kod Tangan Bahasa Malaysia or Manually Coded Malay (KTBM), and Chinese Sign Languages.
Maldivian
Is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 300,000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the official language of the country and in the island of Minicoy (Maliku) in neighbouring India where it is known as Mahl. Dhivehi is thought to be a descendent of Maharashtri, one of the Prakrit languages which developed from Sanskrit. Dhivehi is closely related to Sinhala. Many languages have influenced the development of Dhivehi through the ages, Arabic being one of the main ones. Others include Sinhala, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, French, Persian, Portuguese, and English.
Maltese
Is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. It is derived from, and most closely related to, Arabic. Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic. Maltese also shares similarities with other North African Arabic dialects; however in the course of Malta's recent history, the language has adopted many loanwords, and even phonetic and phonological features, from Southern Italian, Sicilian, and English. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form. It is also the only Semitic language native to a geopolitically European country, although, geophysically, Malta is generally regarded as forming part of the African continental plate.
Malvi
Is the language of the Malwa region of India, with more than a million speakers. The language is also sometimes known as Malavi, Ujjaini, etc. Malvi is classified with the Rajasthani languages, with Nimadi, spoken in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan, being its closest cousin. The dialects of Malvi are, in alphabetical order, Bachadi, Bhoyari, Dholewari, Hoshangabadi, Jamral, Katiyai, Malvi Proper, Patvi, Rangari, Rangri and Sondwari. A survey in 2001 found only 4 dialects: Ujjaini (Ujjain, Indore, Dewas, Sehore districts), Rajawadi (Ratlam, Mandsaur, Neemuch districts), Umadwadi (Rajgarh district) and Sondhwadi (Jhalawar District, Rajasthan). About 55% of the population of Malwa can converse in Hindi, which is the official language of the Madhya Pradesh state, and literacy rate in second language (Hindi) is about 40%
Mam
Is a member of the Mamean branch of the Mayan language family. It is spoken by the Mam people of the highlands of western Guatemala. There are at least three major divisions in the language: Northern Mam spoken in the province of Huehuetenango, Southern Mam spoken in and around Quetzaltenango and Central Mam spoken in and around San Marcos. Because of a lack of literacy skills and interaction, the language can vary widely from village to village, even though the villages may be separated by just a few miles. Nonetheless, all native speakers of the Mam language are typically able to understand one another, though perhaps with some difficulty.
Manchu
Is a member of the Tungusic languages of Altaic family; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 100 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. However, there are about 40,000 speakers of Sibe (Xibo), which is in almost every respect identical to classical Manchu. However, Sibe speakers, who live in far western Xinjiang, are ethnically distinct from Manchus and lay claim as well to the distinctiveness of their language.
Mandaic
Is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion; a vernacular form is still spoken by a small community in Iran around Ahwaz. It is a variety of Aramaic, notable for its use of vowel letters and the striking amount of Iranian influence in its grammar and lexicon.
Mandarin
Or Beifanghua or Guanhua is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
Mandinka
Is a Mandé language spoken by some 1.2 million Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly similar to Bambara.
Meithei
(Also Manipuri, Meetei, Meitei, Meiteilon) is the predominant language and lingua-franca in the state of Manipur, in northeastern India. It is the official language in government offices. Meithei is also spoken in Assam, Bangladesh, Tripura, and Myanmar Meithei has proven to be a large integrating factor among all ethnic groups in Manipur who use it to communicate among themselves.
Mansi
Also known as Vogul language (obsolete), is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in Khantia-Mansia, along the Ob River and its tributaries, and parts of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1970 census, there were some 4,000 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.
Manx
(Gaelg or Gailck), also known as Manx Gaelic, is a Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man. It is a descendant of Old Irish, particularly similar to the old East Ulster and Galloway dialects.
Manyika
Is a sub-dialect of the Shona language. Largely spoken by the manyika people in the eastern part of Zimbabwe and across the border in Mozambique. Manyika differs from the more predominant Zezuru dialect in a variety of small ways. Certain variations in local vocabulary and word prefixes exist. For example the prefix 'va-' (used in Shona before male names to signify seniority and respect) is instead 'sa-' in the Manyika language.
Maori
Or Te Reo Maori, commonly shortened to Te Reo (literally the language) is an official language of New Zealand. An Eastern Polynesian language, it is closely related to Tahitian and the languages of the Cook Islands; slightly less closely to Hawaiian and Marquesan; and more distantly to the languages of Western Polynesia, including Samoan, Niuean and Tongan.
Mapudungun
(Also Mapudungu, Araucano, Araukano, Mapuche, Araucanian) is a language isolate spoken in central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche (mapu is 'earth' and che means 'people') people. It is also known as Mapudungu, Araucano (the name given to the Mapuche people by the Spanish, it sometimes has a negative connotation) and Mapuche. Its speakers number 440,000, with 400,000 in the Central Valley of Chile and 40,000 in the Argentinian region of Patagonia. Some 200,000 people use the language regularly.
Maranao
Is an Austronesian language spoken in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur in the Philippines.
Marathi
Is one of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Maharashtrian people of Western India. It serves as the official language of the state of Maharashtra, with roughly ninety million native speakers in this state. Marathi is at least one thousand years old, and derives its grammar and syntax from the older Sanskrit. The Marathi language is also known as Maharashtri, Maharathi, Malhatee or Marthi.
Mari
Spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group and is part of the Volgaic subgroup of the Finnic languages together with Mordvin (though this relationship is contested; see Klima 2004 for discussion). It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vjatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari are found also in the Tatarstan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions.
Maria
Is a Dravidian language spoken in India. And also is a Manubaran language spoken in the "bird's tail" of Papua New Guinea.
Marquesan
Is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines. The North Marquesan dialects are spoken on the islands of Ua Pu and Nuku Hiva, and South Marquesan dialects on the islands of Hiva `Oa, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva.
Marshallese
Or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.
Masbatenyo
Is a Visayan language spoken by more that 600,000 people, primarily in the province of Masbate in the Philippines.
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL)
Is a sign language (now extinct), once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S, from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. It was remarkable for its use by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is also notable for the role it played in the development of American Sign Language.
Masaba
(Lumasaaba) sometimes Lugisu, after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by about 750,000 people in eastern Uganda in the administrative region of Bugisu on the border to Kenya. The language is closely related to, and mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken in western Kenya. Its speakers, formerly known as the Bagisu, prefer to be called Bamasaba. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon. Like other Bantu languages, Masaba has a large set of prefixes used as noun classifiers. This is similar to how gender is used in many Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there is around eighteen different noun classes, most of them rather only generally defined. The language is tonal and has a quite complex verb morphology.
Mator
Or Motor is a Uralic language belonging to the southern group of the Samoyedic languages. The other Southern Samoyedic languages include Selkup and Kamassian.
Mauritian Creole
Is a creole language or dialect from Mauritius. Almost all of its vocabulary stems from French while the rest of the words come from diverse backgrounds such as English and Portuguese. It is the lingua franca of the country although standard French is widely understood and learnt. It is spoken widely by Mauritians throughout all parts of the island by all classes of people. However, for administrative purposes, the French language predominates whereas in places like Parliament, Court or academic institutions, a combination of the English and French languages is used.
Maya
May refer to:
Mayan languages, a group of related languages spoken by the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica
Yucatec Maya language, specifically, is frequently referred to simply as Maya language
Maya language (Brazil), an unclassified language of Brazil that may be related to the Panoan languages.
Mazandarani
Or Tabari is an ancient Iranian language of the northwestern branch. Spoken in Iran's Mazandaran province, it is claimed to be unintelligible with respect to Persian. Among the living Iranian languages, Mazandarani boasts one of the longest written traditions from the 10th to 15th centuries. The rich literature of this language includes books such as Marzban Nameh (later translated to Persian) and the poetry of Amir Pazevari. The usage of Mazandarani, however, has been in decline. Its literary and administrative rank was lost to Persian perhaps long before the ultimate integration of Mazandaran into the national administration in the early 17th century. An overwhelming majority of the population of the Mazandaran Province are now bilingual, also speaking Persian.
Meänkieli
Is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but due to historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish both the official and informal name is tornedalsfinska ("Torne Valley Finnish").
Megleno-Romanian
(Known as Vlaheshte by speakers and Moglenitic, Meglenitic or Megleno-Romanian by linguists) is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian, spoken in the Moglená region of Greece, in a few villages in Republic of Macedonia and a village in Romania. Spoken by the Moglenite Vlachs, it is considered an endangered language.
Megrelian
Or Mingrelian is a language spoken in northwest Georgia. The language was also called Iverian (Georgian iveriuli ena) in the early 20th century.
Mehri
Or Mahri is a Semitic language spoken by minority populations in the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman and is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian Peninsula before the spread of Arabic along with the Islamic religion in the 7th century AD. It is also spoken today in Kuwait by guest workers originally from these areas. Given the dominance of the Arabic language in the region and bilingualism with Arabic among Mehri speakers, Mehri is at risk of extinction. It is primarily a spoken language with little existing in print and almost no literacy in the written form among native speakers.
Menominee
Is an Algonquian language spoken on the Menominee Nation lands in Northern Wisconsin in the United States. Menominee is a highly endangered language, with only a handful of elderly speakers left. According to a 1997 report by the Menominee Historic Preservation Office, 39 people speak Menominee as their first language, 26 as their second language, and 65 others have learned some of it for the purpose of understanding the language and/or teaching it to others.
Mentawai
Is a Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai-people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra. The dialects of the language include: Simalegi, Sakalagan, Silabu, Taikaku, Saumanganja, North Siberut, South Siberut, Sipura, Pagai.
Meroitic
Was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (about 300 BC-400 AD), and is now extinct. It was written in the Meroitic alphabet. It is not very well understood due to the paucity of bilingual texts; the few words whose meanings have been confirmed are inadequate to determine its genetic affiliation, but some linguists have tentatively suggested that it may be Nilo-Saharan, while others see it as a language isolate.
Merya
Was the Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Merya tribe, which lived in what is today the Moscow region. Next to nothing is known about the language, but it was probably related to the other Finno-Ugric languages of the region. Meryan probably became extinct in the Middle ages, as the Meryas were assimilated by the Slavs. Traces of the language can be found in place names, such as the rivers Moskva < moska "litter, crud", and Volga < valk(ea) "white".
Mescalero
(Or Mescalero Apache) is a Native American tribe of Southern Athabaskan heritage currently living on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in southcentral New Mexico where they live with other Chiricahua and Lipan Apaches. The Reorganization Act of 1936 consolidated the tribes onto this reservation, which currently has an Apache population of 4000. The population is integrated with the rest of Lincoln County, New Mexico and nearby Ruidoso, New Mexico, which include ranching and tourism as major sources of income. The Mescalero language is an Southern Athabaskan language which is a subfamily of the Athabaskan and Na-Dené families. Mescalero lies on the southwestern branch of this subfamily and is very closely related to Chiricahua and more distantly related to Navajo and Western Apache.
Messapian
(Also known as Messapic) is an extinct Indo-European language of South-eastern Italy, once spoken in the regions of Apulia and Calabria. It was spoken by the Messapians, Iapyges and other Iapygian tribes in the region. The language, a centum language, has been preserved in about 260 inscriptions dating from the 6th to the 1st century BC.
Miami
Is a Native American language formerly spoken in the United States, primarily in northern Indiana and Ohio by members of the Miami tribe. Miami is a Central Algonquian language of the Algic phylum. It is part of a larger language grouping referred to as Miami-Illinois, and is extensively documented in written materials for over 200 years. The language is currently considered extinct, although efforts are underway to revive it.
Michif
(Also Mitchif, Mechif, Michif-Cree, Métif, Métchif) is the language of the Métis people of Canada and the northern United States, who are the descendants of First Nations women (mainly Cree, Nakota and Ojibwe) and fur trade workers of European ancestry (mainly French Canadians). Michif emerged over two hundred years ago as a mixed language (similar to a creole but noticeably different). The language solidified sometime between 1820 and 1840. Michif combines Cree and Canadian French, with some additional borrowing from English and First Nation languages such as Ojibwe and Assiniboine.
Mi'kmaq
Is an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by around 7,300 Mi'kmaq in Canada, and another 1,200 in United States, out of a total ethnic Mi'kmaq population of roughly 20,000.
Minangkabau
Is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Minangkabau-people of West Sumatra, in the western part of Riau and in several cities throughout Indonesia by migrated Minangkabau, who often trade or have a restaurant. It is also spoken in a part of Malaysia.
Mlahsö
Is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Mlahsö is closely related to the Turoyo language. It was spoken in the villages of Mlahsó and `Ansha near Lice, Diyarbakir, Turkey. The name of the village and the language comes from the Syriac word melho, 'salt'. The literary Syriac name for the language is Mlahthoyo. The native speakers of Mlahsö referred to their language simply as Suryö, or Syriac.
Moabite
Is an extinct Hebrew Canaanite dialect, spoken in Moab (modern-day northwestern Jordan) in the early first millennium BC. Most of our knowledge about Moabite comes from the Mesha Stele, as well as the El-Kerak Stela; this is sufficient to show that it was extremely similar to Biblical Hebrew, despite a few differences.
Mobilian Jargon
Was a pidgin trade language used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the Gulf of Mexico around the time of European settlement of the region. The name refers to the Mobile Indians of the central Gulf Coast. Mobilian was used from Florida westward as far as Texas to facilitate trade between tribes speaking different languages. European exploring parties, such as that of de Soto, often had Mobilian-speaking guides along as interpreters. Mobilian is a pidginized form of Choctaw and Chickasaw that also contains elements of Algonquian and colonial languages including English, Spanish, and French. It has a simplified syllable and sound structure and a simplified grammar as compared to Choctaw, its primary parent language.
Moghol
Is a Mongolic language spoken in Afghanistan by a few people around Herat. In the 1970s, when the German scholar Michael Weiers did fieldwork on the language, only a small number of people, mostly over the age of 40, knew the language, and in general, their knowledge of the language was passive. In all likelihood the Moghol language has fallen into desuetude.
Mohawk
Is a Native American language spoken in the United States and Canada. It is part of the Iroquoian family. Mohawk has two major dialects, Akwesasne and Kahnawake; the differences between them are largely phonological (e.g., Akwesasne has /l/ while Kahnawake has /r/).
Mohegans
Are a Native American tribe originally from southeastern Connecticut. Their descendants live in southeast Connecticut and Wisconsin, but are also situated throughout New England. The tribe was formed after Chief Uncas and his allies split from the Pequot tribe. The Pequot chief Sassacus began a war with the English, but Chief Uncas had a worthwhile trade with the English. He wanted no war with these people and formed a new tribe. These two branches thenceforward faced each other with continuing hostility. In the following war Uncas advanced himself as a true ally of the English, and was a great force toward the destruction of his erstwhile people. But Sassacus and some other Pequots managed to flee from the massacre. He went with his followers back to the Mahicans, with whom he hoped to hide. However, the Mahicans, in the meantime, had become subject to the Mohawks, who had conquered them. The Mohawks beheaded Sassacus and sent his head to Hartford, Connecticut as proof of their loyalty.
Mokshan
Is spoken in West part of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent Penza, Ryazan, Tambov, Saratov, Samara, Orenburg oblasts, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan republics, Siberia, Far East of Russia and also in Armenia and USA. The number of speakers is around 500,000. It is currently written using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language and Latin alphabet. In Mordovia, it is co-official with the Erzya language and Russian language. The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of Finno-Volgaic languages a sub-branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is related to the Erzya language, but is quite distinct in its phonetics, vocabulary and grammar.
Molengue
(Also called Balengue, Molendji) is a Bantu language of southern Equatorial Guinea, spoken between Bata and the Gabon border near the coast. The speakers have come under increasing Fang influence. The Ethnologue describes it as a member of the B subgroup of Northwest Bantu, while Echegaray is more specific, saying that it is linguistically a member of the Sheke group.
Mon
Is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Myanmar and Thailand.
Mongolian
Is the best-known member of the Mongolic language family, and the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia. If the Altaic theory is correct, then Mongolian also belongs to the larger Altaic language family. It is also spoken in some of the surrounding areas in provinces of China and the Russian Federation. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the Khalkha (or Halh) dialect, while those in China speak the Chahar, Oyirad, and Barghu-Buryat dialect groups.
Mono
May refer to:
- Mono language (Congo), an Adamawa-Ubangi language spoken by 65,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Mono language (Solomon Islands), an South New Ireland-Northwest Solomonic language spoken on the Solomon Islands by fewer than 4000 people.
- Mono language (Native American), an endangered Native American language of the California River basin in the United States.
Motu
Is one of many Central Papuan languages spoken by the Motuans, native habitants of Papua New Guinea. After Tok Pisin and English, it is the third most commonly spoken language of the more than 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. Motu developed as a trade language in the Papuan region, in the South-East of the main island of New Guinea. It is still common today in the region, particularly around the capital, Port Moresby. Motu is classified as one of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, and bears some linguistic similarities to the other Micronesian languages. Its sound also bears a resemblance to some of the Polynesian languages.
Mpre
Is a language spoken or once spoken in the village of Butie (8°52'N 1°15'W) in Ghana, near the confluence of the Black and White Voltas. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article. It bears no close resemblance to its neighbours; it may be a Niger-Congo language, or a language isolate.
Mundari
Is a Munda language of the Austro-Asiatic language family, and is closely related to Santali. Mundari is primarily spoken by Munda tribal people in east India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Munji
Is a Pamir Language spoken in Badakshan in Afghanistan. It is similar to Yidgha which is spoken in the Upper Lutkuh Valley of Chitral, west of Garam Chishma in Pakistan.
Muromian
Was the Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Muromian tribe, in what is today the Murom region in Russia. Very little is known about the language, but it was probably closely related to the Mordvinic languages Moksha and Erzya. Muromian probably became extinct in the Middle ages, as the Muromians were assimilated by the Slavs.
Was the tongue of the Ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in Macedon during the 1st millennium BC, and is believed to have disappeared some time before the start of the Common Era. It is believed to have been spoken predominantly in the inland regions away from the coast. It is as yet undetermined whether the language was a separate yet sibling language which was most closely related to Greek, a dialect of Greek or an independent Indo-European language not especially close to Greek.
Macedonian
Is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. It is also officially recognized in the District of Korçë in Albania. Macedonian is also spoken in Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and in the Macedonian diaspora in Western Europe, North America and Australia.
Macedo-Romanian
Is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe. Its speakers are called Aromanians. It was formed after the Romanization of the Balkans and shares many features with Romanian, having similar grammar and morphology. The most important dissimilarity between Romanian and Aromanian is the vocabulary, which in the case of the former has been influenced to a greater extent by its neighbouring Slavic languages, while Aromanian has borrowed much vocabulary from the Greek language with which it has been in close contact throughout its history.
Magadhi
(Also known as Magahi) is a language spoken in India. Magadhi is closely related to Bhojpuri and Maithili and these languages are sometimes referred to as a single language, Bihari. These languages, together with several other related languages, are known as the Bihari languages, which form a sub-group of the Eastern Zone group of Indo-Aryan languages. Magadhi has approximately 13 million speakers. It is spoken primarily spoken in the Magadh area of Bihar state. This area includes Patna, Gaya, Nalanda, and other surrounding districts. It is also spoken in some areas of Hazaribagh, Giridih, Palamau, Munger, and Bhagalpur, with some speakers in the Malda District of West Bengal. It is generally written using Devanagari script.
Maguindanaon
Is an Austronesian language spoken by majority of the population of Maguindanao Province in the Philippines. It is also spoken by sizable minorities in different parts of Mindanao such as the cities of Zamboanga, Davao, and General Santos, and the provinces of North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga-Sibugay, as well as metropolitan Manila in the National Capital Region.
Mahicans
(Also Mohicans) are a Native American tribe who were living in and around the Hudson Valley at the time of their first contact with Europeans in 1609. Over the next hundred years, tensions between the Mahicans and the Mohawks as well as the Europeans caused the Mahicans to migrate eastward; many settled in what would eventually become the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. For this reason this group of Mahicans has also frequently been known as the Stockbridge Indians. The now extinct Mahican language belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family.
Mahl
Also known locally as Maliku Bas, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the people of Minicoy (Maliku), India. It is very similar to (and mutually intelligible with) Dhivehi, the official language of Maldives, but differentiated in name for political reasons. Linguists agree that Mahl is an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Hindi, Marathi and its most closest sister is Sinhalese. Dhivehi represents the southernmost Indo-Aryan language and even the southern most Indo-European language. Together with the closely related Sinhalese, Mahl (Divehi) establishes a special sub group within the West and Southwest group of the Modern Indo-Aryan languages.
Maithili
Is of the family of Indo-Aryan languages, which are part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken in the Indian state of Bihar and in the eastern Terai region of Nepal. It is considered by many to be a dialect of Hindi, and thus not a separate language. Nevertheless, a movement to give the language official status in the Indian Constitution so that it could be used in education, government, and other official contexts, resulted in Maithili being given official status in 2003.
Makassar
(Sometimes spelled Makasar or Macassar) is both a language and a writing system used by the people in South Sulawesi island (Celebes) in Indonesia. The Makassar language is a member of the Austronesian language family, and closely related to Buginese. Although Makassarese is now often written with the Roman alphabet, it is still widely written in its own distinctive script, also called Lontara, which once was used also to write important documents in Bugis and Mandar, two related language from Sulawesi.
Makhuwa-Meetto
(Also known as Meto or Imeetto) is a Bantu language spoken by about 800,000 people in northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania. It is a member of the Makhuwa group (P.30 in Guthrie's classification).
Makua
Is a Bantu language spoken by 5 million Makua people, who live north of the Zambezi River in Mozambique. It is the most important indigenous language of Mozambique.
Malagasy
Is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, spoken on Madagascar, where it is an official language. The Malagasy language is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The name Malagasy is also used to refer to the indigenous people of Madagascar, who make up some 36 tribes and are of mixed Indonesian and African descent.
Malay
Also known locally as Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in the Malay peninsula, southern Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, and parts of the coast of Borneo. It is an official language of Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. It is also used as a working language in East Timor. It is very similar to (and mutually intelligible with) Bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia, but differentiated in name for political reasons. The official standard for Malay, as agreed upon by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, is the form spoken in the Riau Islands just south of Singapore, long considered the birthplace of the Malay language.
Malayalam
Is the language of the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, spoken by around 30 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayalee" (or sometimes a "Keraleeyan" or "Keralite"). Malayalam is also spoken in the Lakshadweep Islands of India. It belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil. Malayalam has a script of its own.
Malaysian Sign Language
Or Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia (BIM), is the sign language in every day use in many parts of Malaysia. MSL has many dialects, differing from state to state. American Sign Language (ASL) has had a strong influence on MSL, but the two are different enough to be considered separate languages. Other sign languages in use in Malaysia are Penang Sign Language (PSL), Selangor Sign Language (SSL or KLSL), and Kod Tangan Bahasa Malaysia or Manually Coded Malay (KTBM), and Chinese Sign Languages.
Maldivian
Is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 300,000 people in the Republic of Maldives where it is the official language of the country and in the island of Minicoy (Maliku) in neighbouring India where it is known as Mahl. Dhivehi is thought to be a descendent of Maharashtri, one of the Prakrit languages which developed from Sanskrit. Dhivehi is closely related to Sinhala. Many languages have influenced the development of Dhivehi through the ages, Arabic being one of the main ones. Others include Sinhala, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, French, Persian, Portuguese, and English.
Maltese
Is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is the national language of Malta, and an official language of the European Union. It is derived from, and most closely related to, Arabic. Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic. Maltese also shares similarities with other North African Arabic dialects; however in the course of Malta's recent history, the language has adopted many loanwords, and even phonetic and phonological features, from Southern Italian, Sicilian, and English. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form. It is also the only Semitic language native to a geopolitically European country, although, geophysically, Malta is generally regarded as forming part of the African continental plate.
Malvi
Is the language of the Malwa region of India, with more than a million speakers. The language is also sometimes known as Malavi, Ujjaini, etc. Malvi is classified with the Rajasthani languages, with Nimadi, spoken in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan, being its closest cousin. The dialects of Malvi are, in alphabetical order, Bachadi, Bhoyari, Dholewari, Hoshangabadi, Jamral, Katiyai, Malvi Proper, Patvi, Rangari, Rangri and Sondwari. A survey in 2001 found only 4 dialects: Ujjaini (Ujjain, Indore, Dewas, Sehore districts), Rajawadi (Ratlam, Mandsaur, Neemuch districts), Umadwadi (Rajgarh district) and Sondhwadi (Jhalawar District, Rajasthan). About 55% of the population of Malwa can converse in Hindi, which is the official language of the Madhya Pradesh state, and literacy rate in second language (Hindi) is about 40%
Mam
Is a member of the Mamean branch of the Mayan language family. It is spoken by the Mam people of the highlands of western Guatemala. There are at least three major divisions in the language: Northern Mam spoken in the province of Huehuetenango, Southern Mam spoken in and around Quetzaltenango and Central Mam spoken in and around San Marcos. Because of a lack of literacy skills and interaction, the language can vary widely from village to village, even though the villages may be separated by just a few miles. Nonetheless, all native speakers of the Mam language are typically able to understand one another, though perhaps with some difficulty.
Manchu
Is a member of the Tungusic languages of Altaic family; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 100 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. However, there are about 40,000 speakers of Sibe (Xibo), which is in almost every respect identical to classical Manchu. However, Sibe speakers, who live in far western Xinjiang, are ethnically distinct from Manchus and lay claim as well to the distinctiveness of their language.
Mandaic
Is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion; a vernacular form is still spoken by a small community in Iran around Ahwaz. It is a variety of Aramaic, notable for its use of vowel letters and the striking amount of Iranian influence in its grammar and lexicon.
Mandarin
Or Beifanghua or Guanhua is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
Mandinka
Is a Mandé language spoken by some 1.2 million Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly similar to Bambara.
Meithei
(Also Manipuri, Meetei, Meitei, Meiteilon) is the predominant language and lingua-franca in the state of Manipur, in northeastern India. It is the official language in government offices. Meithei is also spoken in Assam, Bangladesh, Tripura, and Myanmar Meithei has proven to be a large integrating factor among all ethnic groups in Manipur who use it to communicate among themselves.
Mansi
Also known as Vogul language (obsolete), is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in Khantia-Mansia, along the Ob River and its tributaries, and parts of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1970 census, there were some 4,000 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.
Manx
(Gaelg or Gailck), also known as Manx Gaelic, is a Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man. It is a descendant of Old Irish, particularly similar to the old East Ulster and Galloway dialects.
Manyika
Is a sub-dialect of the Shona language. Largely spoken by the manyika people in the eastern part of Zimbabwe and across the border in Mozambique. Manyika differs from the more predominant Zezuru dialect in a variety of small ways. Certain variations in local vocabulary and word prefixes exist. For example the prefix 'va-' (used in Shona before male names to signify seniority and respect) is instead 'sa-' in the Manyika language.
Maori
Or Te Reo Maori, commonly shortened to Te Reo (literally the language) is an official language of New Zealand. An Eastern Polynesian language, it is closely related to Tahitian and the languages of the Cook Islands; slightly less closely to Hawaiian and Marquesan; and more distantly to the languages of Western Polynesia, including Samoan, Niuean and Tongan.
Mapudungun
(Also Mapudungu, Araucano, Araukano, Mapuche, Araucanian) is a language isolate spoken in central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche (mapu is 'earth' and che means 'people') people. It is also known as Mapudungu, Araucano (the name given to the Mapuche people by the Spanish, it sometimes has a negative connotation) and Mapuche. Its speakers number 440,000, with 400,000 in the Central Valley of Chile and 40,000 in the Argentinian region of Patagonia. Some 200,000 people use the language regularly.
Maranao
Is an Austronesian language spoken in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur in the Philippines.
Marathi
Is one of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Maharashtrian people of Western India. It serves as the official language of the state of Maharashtra, with roughly ninety million native speakers in this state. Marathi is at least one thousand years old, and derives its grammar and syntax from the older Sanskrit. The Marathi language is also known as Maharashtri, Maharathi, Malhatee or Marthi.
Mari
Spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group and is part of the Volgaic subgroup of the Finnic languages together with Mordvin (though this relationship is contested; see Klima 2004 for discussion). It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vjatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari are found also in the Tatarstan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions.
Maria
Is a Dravidian language spoken in India. And also is a Manubaran language spoken in the "bird's tail" of Papua New Guinea.
Marquesan
Is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines. The North Marquesan dialects are spoken on the islands of Ua Pu and Nuku Hiva, and South Marquesan dialects on the islands of Hiva `Oa, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva.
Marshallese
Or Ebon is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands.
Masbatenyo
Is a Visayan language spoken by more that 600,000 people, primarily in the province of Masbate in the Philippines.
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL)
Is a sign language (now extinct), once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S, from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. It was remarkable for its use by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is also notable for the role it played in the development of American Sign Language.
Masaba
(Lumasaaba) sometimes Lugisu, after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by about 750,000 people in eastern Uganda in the administrative region of Bugisu on the border to Kenya. The language is closely related to, and mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken in western Kenya. Its speakers, formerly known as the Bagisu, prefer to be called Bamasaba. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon. Like other Bantu languages, Masaba has a large set of prefixes used as noun classifiers. This is similar to how gender is used in many Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there is around eighteen different noun classes, most of them rather only generally defined. The language is tonal and has a quite complex verb morphology.
Mator
Or Motor is a Uralic language belonging to the southern group of the Samoyedic languages. The other Southern Samoyedic languages include Selkup and Kamassian.
Mauritian Creole
Is a creole language or dialect from Mauritius. Almost all of its vocabulary stems from French while the rest of the words come from diverse backgrounds such as English and Portuguese. It is the lingua franca of the country although standard French is widely understood and learnt. It is spoken widely by Mauritians throughout all parts of the island by all classes of people. However, for administrative purposes, the French language predominates whereas in places like Parliament, Court or academic institutions, a combination of the English and French languages is used.
Maya
May refer to:
Mayan languages, a group of related languages spoken by the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica
Yucatec Maya language, specifically, is frequently referred to simply as Maya language
Maya language (Brazil), an unclassified language of Brazil that may be related to the Panoan languages.
Mazandarani
Or Tabari is an ancient Iranian language of the northwestern branch. Spoken in Iran's Mazandaran province, it is claimed to be unintelligible with respect to Persian. Among the living Iranian languages, Mazandarani boasts one of the longest written traditions from the 10th to 15th centuries. The rich literature of this language includes books such as Marzban Nameh (later translated to Persian) and the poetry of Amir Pazevari. The usage of Mazandarani, however, has been in decline. Its literary and administrative rank was lost to Persian perhaps long before the ultimate integration of Mazandaran into the national administration in the early 17th century. An overwhelming majority of the population of the Mazandaran Province are now bilingual, also speaking Persian.
Meänkieli
Is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but due to historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish both the official and informal name is tornedalsfinska ("Torne Valley Finnish").
Megleno-Romanian
(Known as Vlaheshte by speakers and Moglenitic, Meglenitic or Megleno-Romanian by linguists) is a Romance language, similar to Aromanian, spoken in the Moglená region of Greece, in a few villages in Republic of Macedonia and a village in Romania. Spoken by the Moglenite Vlachs, it is considered an endangered language.
Megrelian
Or Mingrelian is a language spoken in northwest Georgia. The language was also called Iverian (Georgian iveriuli ena) in the early 20th century.
Mehri
Or Mahri is a Semitic language spoken by minority populations in the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman and is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian Peninsula before the spread of Arabic along with the Islamic religion in the 7th century AD. It is also spoken today in Kuwait by guest workers originally from these areas. Given the dominance of the Arabic language in the region and bilingualism with Arabic among Mehri speakers, Mehri is at risk of extinction. It is primarily a spoken language with little existing in print and almost no literacy in the written form among native speakers.
Menominee
Is an Algonquian language spoken on the Menominee Nation lands in Northern Wisconsin in the United States. Menominee is a highly endangered language, with only a handful of elderly speakers left. According to a 1997 report by the Menominee Historic Preservation Office, 39 people speak Menominee as their first language, 26 as their second language, and 65 others have learned some of it for the purpose of understanding the language and/or teaching it to others.
Mentawai
Is a Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai-people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra. The dialects of the language include: Simalegi, Sakalagan, Silabu, Taikaku, Saumanganja, North Siberut, South Siberut, Sipura, Pagai.
Meroitic
Was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (about 300 BC-400 AD), and is now extinct. It was written in the Meroitic alphabet. It is not very well understood due to the paucity of bilingual texts; the few words whose meanings have been confirmed are inadequate to determine its genetic affiliation, but some linguists have tentatively suggested that it may be Nilo-Saharan, while others see it as a language isolate.
Merya
Was the Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Merya tribe, which lived in what is today the Moscow region. Next to nothing is known about the language, but it was probably related to the other Finno-Ugric languages of the region. Meryan probably became extinct in the Middle ages, as the Meryas were assimilated by the Slavs. Traces of the language can be found in place names, such as the rivers Moskva < moska "litter, crud", and Volga < valk(ea) "white".
Mescalero
(Or Mescalero Apache) is a Native American tribe of Southern Athabaskan heritage currently living on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in southcentral New Mexico where they live with other Chiricahua and Lipan Apaches. The Reorganization Act of 1936 consolidated the tribes onto this reservation, which currently has an Apache population of 4000. The population is integrated with the rest of Lincoln County, New Mexico and nearby Ruidoso, New Mexico, which include ranching and tourism as major sources of income. The Mescalero language is an Southern Athabaskan language which is a subfamily of the Athabaskan and Na-Dené families. Mescalero lies on the southwestern branch of this subfamily and is very closely related to Chiricahua and more distantly related to Navajo and Western Apache.
Messapian
(Also known as Messapic) is an extinct Indo-European language of South-eastern Italy, once spoken in the regions of Apulia and Calabria. It was spoken by the Messapians, Iapyges and other Iapygian tribes in the region. The language, a centum language, has been preserved in about 260 inscriptions dating from the 6th to the 1st century BC.
Miami
Is a Native American language formerly spoken in the United States, primarily in northern Indiana and Ohio by members of the Miami tribe. Miami is a Central Algonquian language of the Algic phylum. It is part of a larger language grouping referred to as Miami-Illinois, and is extensively documented in written materials for over 200 years. The language is currently considered extinct, although efforts are underway to revive it.
Michif
(Also Mitchif, Mechif, Michif-Cree, Métif, Métchif) is the language of the Métis people of Canada and the northern United States, who are the descendants of First Nations women (mainly Cree, Nakota and Ojibwe) and fur trade workers of European ancestry (mainly French Canadians). Michif emerged over two hundred years ago as a mixed language (similar to a creole but noticeably different). The language solidified sometime between 1820 and 1840. Michif combines Cree and Canadian French, with some additional borrowing from English and First Nation languages such as Ojibwe and Assiniboine.
Mi'kmaq
Is an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by around 7,300 Mi'kmaq in Canada, and another 1,200 in United States, out of a total ethnic Mi'kmaq population of roughly 20,000.
Minangkabau
Is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Minangkabau-people of West Sumatra, in the western part of Riau and in several cities throughout Indonesia by migrated Minangkabau, who often trade or have a restaurant. It is also spoken in a part of Malaysia.
Mlahsö
Is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Mlahsö is closely related to the Turoyo language. It was spoken in the villages of Mlahsó and `Ansha near Lice, Diyarbakir, Turkey. The name of the village and the language comes from the Syriac word melho, 'salt'. The literary Syriac name for the language is Mlahthoyo. The native speakers of Mlahsö referred to their language simply as Suryö, or Syriac.
Moabite
Is an extinct Hebrew Canaanite dialect, spoken in Moab (modern-day northwestern Jordan) in the early first millennium BC. Most of our knowledge about Moabite comes from the Mesha Stele, as well as the El-Kerak Stela; this is sufficient to show that it was extremely similar to Biblical Hebrew, despite a few differences.
Mobilian Jargon
Was a pidgin trade language used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the Gulf of Mexico around the time of European settlement of the region. The name refers to the Mobile Indians of the central Gulf Coast. Mobilian was used from Florida westward as far as Texas to facilitate trade between tribes speaking different languages. European exploring parties, such as that of de Soto, often had Mobilian-speaking guides along as interpreters. Mobilian is a pidginized form of Choctaw and Chickasaw that also contains elements of Algonquian and colonial languages including English, Spanish, and French. It has a simplified syllable and sound structure and a simplified grammar as compared to Choctaw, its primary parent language.
Moghol
Is a Mongolic language spoken in Afghanistan by a few people around Herat. In the 1970s, when the German scholar Michael Weiers did fieldwork on the language, only a small number of people, mostly over the age of 40, knew the language, and in general, their knowledge of the language was passive. In all likelihood the Moghol language has fallen into desuetude.
Mohawk
Is a Native American language spoken in the United States and Canada. It is part of the Iroquoian family. Mohawk has two major dialects, Akwesasne and Kahnawake; the differences between them are largely phonological (e.g., Akwesasne has /l/ while Kahnawake has /r/).
Mohegans
Are a Native American tribe originally from southeastern Connecticut. Their descendants live in southeast Connecticut and Wisconsin, but are also situated throughout New England. The tribe was formed after Chief Uncas and his allies split from the Pequot tribe. The Pequot chief Sassacus began a war with the English, but Chief Uncas had a worthwhile trade with the English. He wanted no war with these people and formed a new tribe. These two branches thenceforward faced each other with continuing hostility. In the following war Uncas advanced himself as a true ally of the English, and was a great force toward the destruction of his erstwhile people. But Sassacus and some other Pequots managed to flee from the massacre. He went with his followers back to the Mahicans, with whom he hoped to hide. However, the Mahicans, in the meantime, had become subject to the Mohawks, who had conquered them. The Mohawks beheaded Sassacus and sent his head to Hartford, Connecticut as proof of their loyalty.
Mokshan
Is spoken in West part of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent Penza, Ryazan, Tambov, Saratov, Samara, Orenburg oblasts, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan republics, Siberia, Far East of Russia and also in Armenia and USA. The number of speakers is around 500,000. It is currently written using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language and Latin alphabet. In Mordovia, it is co-official with the Erzya language and Russian language. The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of Finno-Volgaic languages a sub-branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is related to the Erzya language, but is quite distinct in its phonetics, vocabulary and grammar.
Molengue
(Also called Balengue, Molendji) is a Bantu language of southern Equatorial Guinea, spoken between Bata and the Gabon border near the coast. The speakers have come under increasing Fang influence. The Ethnologue describes it as a member of the B subgroup of Northwest Bantu, while Echegaray is more specific, saying that it is linguistically a member of the Sheke group.
Mon
Is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Myanmar and Thailand.
Mongolian
Is the best-known member of the Mongolic language family, and the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia. If the Altaic theory is correct, then Mongolian also belongs to the larger Altaic language family. It is also spoken in some of the surrounding areas in provinces of China and the Russian Federation. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the Khalkha (or Halh) dialect, while those in China speak the Chahar, Oyirad, and Barghu-Buryat dialect groups.
Mono
May refer to:
- Mono language (Congo), an Adamawa-Ubangi language spoken by 65,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Mono language (Solomon Islands), an South New Ireland-Northwest Solomonic language spoken on the Solomon Islands by fewer than 4000 people.
- Mono language (Native American), an endangered Native American language of the California River basin in the United States.
Motu
Is one of many Central Papuan languages spoken by the Motuans, native habitants of Papua New Guinea. After Tok Pisin and English, it is the third most commonly spoken language of the more than 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. Motu developed as a trade language in the Papuan region, in the South-East of the main island of New Guinea. It is still common today in the region, particularly around the capital, Port Moresby. Motu is classified as one of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, and bears some linguistic similarities to the other Micronesian languages. Its sound also bears a resemblance to some of the Polynesian languages.
Mpre
Is a language spoken or once spoken in the village of Butie (8°52'N 1°15'W) in Ghana, near the confluence of the Black and White Voltas. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article. It bears no close resemblance to its neighbours; it may be a Niger-Congo language, or a language isolate.
Mundari
Is a Munda language of the Austro-Asiatic language family, and is closely related to Santali. Mundari is primarily spoken by Munda tribal people in east India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Munji
Is a Pamir Language spoken in Badakshan in Afghanistan. It is similar to Yidgha which is spoken in the Upper Lutkuh Valley of Chitral, west of Garam Chishma in Pakistan.
Muromian
Was the Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Muromian tribe, in what is today the Murom region in Russia. Very little is known about the language, but it was probably closely related to the Mordvinic languages Moksha and Erzya. Muromian probably became extinct in the Middle ages, as the Muromians were assimilated by the Slavs.
L
Laal
Is a still-unclassified language spoken by 749 people (as of 2000) in three villages in the Moyen-Chari prefecture of Chad on opposite banks of the Chari River, called Gori (lá), Damtar (?ual), and Mailao. It may be a language isolate, in which case it would represent an isolated survival of an earlier language group of central Africa. It is unwritten (except in transcription by linguists). According to SIL-Chad member David Faris, it is in danger of extinction, with most people under 25 shifting to the locally more widespread Baguirmi language.
Ladakhi
Is the predominant language in the Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India. Ladakhi is closely related to Tibetan, and Ladakh shares many cultural similarities with Tibet, including Tibetan Buddhism. Ladakhi has approximately 100,000 speakers in India, and perhaps 12,000 speakers in the Tibet region of China. Ladahki has three main dialects, Ladakhi proper (also called Leh, after the capital of Ladakh), Shamma, and Nubra. Ladakhi is romanised in a similar way to Hindi, the most important thing to remember being that the "Th" represents a "T" sound with a bit more air.
Ladin
(Ladino in Italian, Ladin in Ladin, Ladinisch in German) is a Rhaetian language spoken in the Dolomite mountains in Italy, between the regions of Trentino-South Tyrol and Veneto. It presents connections with the Swiss Romansh and Friulian. It is officially recognized in Italy and has some official rights in the region of Trentino-South Tyrol, while it does not have official status in the province of Belluno (Veneto region).
Ladino
Is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew. The relationship of Ladino to Castilian Spanish is comparable to that of Yiddish to German. Speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, for example, in (or from) Thessaloniki and Istanbul. (Note that the Ladino speakers are almost exclusively elderly and few in numbers, and it is in danger of extinction as it is not passed down to younger generations anymore).
Lakota
(Also Lakhota, Teton, Teton Sioux) is the largest of the three languages of the Sioux, of the Siouan family. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages, and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language. The Lakota language represents one of the largest Native American language speech communities left in the United States, with approximately 8,000-9,000 speakers living mostly in northern plains states of North and South Dakota.
Lao
Is the official language of Laos. It is a tonal language of the Tai family, and is so closely related to the Isan language of the northeast region of Thailand that the two are often classed as one language. The writing system of Lao is an abugida (a writing system composed of signs denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel) and is closely related to the writing system used in Thai.
Lappish
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 Lappish languages: Saami, Sámi, Samic, Saamic, Sami and Lappic. The last two are, along with the term Lapp, considered derogatory by some.
Latin
Is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained wide usage as the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. An inflectional and synthetic language, Latin relies little on word order, conveying meaning through a system of affixes attached to word stems. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely used alphabet in the world. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used—drawing heavily on Greek roots—to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is part of the Classics.
Latvian
Sometimes referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. Latvian belongs to the Eastern Baltic sub-group of the Baltic language group in the Indo-European language family. Of the Baltic languages, only Latvian and its closest relative Lithuanian remain. However, while related, the Latvian and Lithuanian vocabularies vary greatly from each other and are not mutually intelligible.
Laz
Is spoken by an ethnic group of the same name on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 500,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border (officially called Lazistan until 1925), and about 30,000 in Georgia.
Lenape
(Also called Delaware) is a language in the Algonquian language family spoken by the Lenape people. It had two main dialects, Munsee and Unami. Sometimes the two are treated as separate languages, for example in the Ethnologue. Lenape is a word in the Unami dialect whose most literal translation into English would be "the people". (The common schoolbook term, Lenni-Lenape is not correct, but translates as, "the original people"). The Lenape names for the area they inhabited were Scheyischbi, which means, "the place bordering the ocean," and Lenapehoking, meaning "place where the people live," although the latter is not universally accepted as historical.
Lepontic
Is an extinct Celtic language, the language of the Lepontii, that was spoken in parts of Cisalpine Gaul between 700 BC and 400 BC. Sometimes called Cisalpine Celtic, it is considered a dialect of the Gaulish language and thus a Continental Celtic language (Eska 1998). The language is only known from a few inscriptions discovered that were written in the alphabet of Lugano, one of five main varieties of Northern Italic alphabets, derived from the Etruscan alphabet. These inscriptions were found in an area centered around Lugano, including Lago di Como and Lago Maggiore. Similar scripts were used for writing the Rhaetic and Venetic languages, and the Germanic runic alphabets probably derive from a script belonging to this group.
Lezgi
Also called Lezgian, is a language spoken by the Lezgins who live in southern Dagestan (a republic of Russia) and northern Azerbaijan. Lezgi belongs to the Lezgian group of the Northeast Caucasian (Dagestan) language family.
Ligbi
Is a Mande language spoken in Ghana in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo region. Ligbi is spoken by approximately 10 000 speakers. It is a geographical outlier to its language family, fairly closely related to Bambara/Jula and to Vai and Kono. A small population of Ligbi speakers (4 000) is reported to live in Cote d'Ivoire (Vanderaa 1991). Ligbi is also known as Wela, Hwela or Numu. The latter of these refers to a subsection of the Ligbi people; Numu is Dyula for 'blacksmith'.
Limburgish
Is a group of Franconian varieties, spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, near the common Dutch/Belgian/German border. The area in which it is spoken roughly fits within a wide circle from Venlo to Cologne to Aachen to Maastricht to Hasselt and back to Venlo . In Germany it is common to consider the Limburgish dialects as belonging to the Low Franconian languages; in The Netherlands and Belgium however all these are seen as West Middle German or even simply High German. This difference is caused by a difference in definition: the linguists of the Low Countries define a Low German dialect as one that has not taken part in the first three phases of the High German consonant shift at all.
Lingala
Is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers. It is classed C.36D under the Guthrie system for classifying Bantu languages and C.40 under the SIL system.
Lipan Apache
Are also known as Nde buffalo hunters, called by anthropologists and historians for many years as Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, and other names. Today it is known that the Cuelgahen Nde Lipan Apache of Texas comprise the descendents of the Tall Grass People known as Lipan Apache — Apache following Chiefs Cuelga de Castro, John Castro, and Ramon Castro. Lipan Apache is also a Southern Athabaskan language spoken by Meredith Begay, Ted Rodriguez, and others on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. The general consensus of the Lipan Apache Committee on the same reservation is that linguistic and anthropological considerations of their cultural extinction are mistaken and incorrect.
Lishana Deni
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in the town of Zakho and its surrounding villages in northern Iraq, on the border with Turkey. Most speakers now live in and around Jerusalem. The name Lishana Deni means 'our language', and is similar to names used by other Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects (Lishan Didan, Lishanid Noshan). Other popular names for the language are Lishan Hozaye, 'the language of the Jews', and Kurdit, 'Kurdish'. Scholarly sources tend simply to refer to Lishana Deni as Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
Lishán Didán
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in Iranian Azerbaijan, in the region of Lake Urmia, from Salmas to Mahabad. Most speakers now live in Israel. The name Lishán Didán means 'our language'; other variations are Lishanán, 'our-language', and Lishanid Nash Didán, 'the language of our selves'. As this causes some confusion with similarly named dialects (Lishana Deni, Lishanid Noshan), scholarly sources tend simply to use a more descriptive name, like Persian Azerbaijani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. To distinguish it from other dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Lishán Didán is sometimes called Lakhlokhi (literally 'to-you(f)-to-you(m)') or Galihalu ('mine-yours'), demonstrating different use of prepositions and pronominal suffixes.
Lishanid Noshan
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in southern and eastern Iraqi Kurdistan, in the region of Arbil. Most speakers now live in Israel. Lishanid Noshan means 'the language of our selves'; speakers often also call it Lishana Didan, which means 'our language'. However, as similar names are used by most of the dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, scholarly sources tend to call it Arbil Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Other popular names for the language are Hula'ula, 'Jewish', Galigalu, 'mine-yours' (noting the difference in grammar from other dialects), and Kurdit, 'Kurdish'.
Lithuanian
Is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). The Lithuanian name for the language is lietuviu kalba. Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages (along with Latvian). The Baltic languages form their own distinct branch of the Indo-European languages. The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Aukštaitian (Aukštaiciu, Highland Lithuanian) and Samogitian (Samogitian, Žemaiciu/Žemaitiu, Lowland Lithuanian).
Livonian
Belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is now spoken by only about 35 people, 10 of them fluently. It is related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and Estonian. The native land of the Livonian people is Livonia, located in Latvia, north of the Kurzeme peninsula. It is a highly endangered language. Some of the ethnic Livonians learn or have learnt the language in order to revive it. This is problematic because ethnic Livonians are nowhere in the majority and have little opportunity to use the language. Its orthography is a derivation of both Latvian and Estonian orthography.
Lobedu
(Also Lovedu or Selobedu) is a Bantu language regarded as a dialect of Northern Sotho (Sepedi). It exists only in an unwritten form and the standard Northern Sotho language and orthography is usually used for teaching and writing by this language community. The monarch associated with this language community is Queen Modjadji (also known as the Rain Queen). Lobedu is mainly spoken in the area of Duiwelskloof in the Limpopo Province (former Northern Province). Its speakers are known as the Balobedu.
Lotha
Is spoken by approximately 80,000 people in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland. It is centered in the small district of Wokha (capital Wokha). This district has many villages such as Merapani, Englan, Pakti and others, where the language is widely spoken and studied. It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, which are primarily concentrated in that region. The language resembles its northern neighbor Ao, as well as the Meithei language spoken in the state of Manipur.
Low German
Is a name for the regional language varieties of the Low Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany, and eastern Netherlands. Also, there are some speakers in the coastal areas of Poland, and immigrant communities in several places of the world, for instance in Canada. In the Southern Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some German minority communities, but the Low German and North Frisian dialects of Denmark ought to be considered moribund, if not extinct, at this time.
Lower Sorbian
Is a Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. It is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. Signs in this region are usually bilingual, and Cottbus has a Gymnasium where the language of instruction is Lower Sorbian.
Lozi
Also known as Silozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language (of the Niger-Congo language family) that is spoken by the Lozi people, primarily in southwestern Zambia and in surrounding countries. Lozi and its dialects are spoken and understood by approximately six percent of the population of Zambia. There are many Lozi speakers in the area around the city of Livingstone in Zambia. The Lozi language developed from a mixture of two languages: Luyana and Kololo. The Luyana people originally migrated south from the Luba-Lunda empire in the Katanga area of the Congo River basin, either late in the 17th century or early in the 18th century. The language they spoke, therefore, was closely related to Luba and Lunda. They settled on the floodplains of the Upper Zambezi River in what is now western Zambia and developed a kingdom.
Ludic
Or Ludian is a Baltic Finnic language in the Uralic language family. It is spoken by 3 000 people in the Republic of Karelia.
Luganda
Also known as Ganda, is a Bantu language and is spoken mainly in the Buganda region of Uganda by a population of over three million people. With 100,000 second language speakers, it is the most widely spoken second language in Uganda next to English. The language is used in some primary schools in Buganda as pupils begin to learn English, the official language of Uganda.
Lummi
Is actually a dialect of a language called North Straits Salish.
Lunda
Also known as Chilunda, is a Bantu language (of the larger Niger-Congo family) that is spoken in Zambia, Angola and, to a lesser extent, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lunda and its dialects are spoken and understood by perhaps 2.6% of Zambians (1986 estimate), and the language is used overwhelmingly in the northern part of that country.
Luri
Is a southwestern Iranian language and is mainly spoken by the Lurs and Bakhtiari people in the Iranian provinces of Lorestan, Ilam, Chahar Mahaal and Bakhtiari, Kohkiluyeh and Buyer Ahmad and parts of Khuzestan.
Lushootseed
Is the language or dialect continuum of several Salish Native American groups of modern-day Washington state. Lushootseed is a member of two main divisions of the Salishan language group, Coast Salish and Interior Salish. Lushootseed, like its neighbour Twana, is in the Southern Coast Salish subgroup of the Salishan family of languages. The language was spoken by many Puget Sound region peoples, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Squaxin Island Tribe, Nisqually, and Puyallup in the south and the Snohomish, Skagit, and Swinomish in the north.
Lusoga
Is a Bantu language spoken in the Busoga region of Uganda by approximately 1 500 000 people.
Luxembourgish
Or Luxembourgian (Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuergesch, French: Luxembourgeois, German: Luxemburgisch, Walloon: Lussimbordjwès) is a West Germanic language spoken in Luxembourg. It was proclaimed one of the three official languages of Luxembourg in 1984. There are about 300,000 people who speak Luxembourgish worldwide.
Lydian
Was an Indo-European language that was spoken in the state of Lydia in Western Anatolia, present-day Turkey. It is now considered definitely to belong to the Anatolian subgroup of Indo-European, but occupies a unique position within this group due to a number of features not shared with the other Anatolian languages. It is not presently known whether these represent unique developments in pre-Lydian or the retention of archaic features lost in the other Anatolian languages. (Melchert 2004)
Is a still-unclassified language spoken by 749 people (as of 2000) in three villages in the Moyen-Chari prefecture of Chad on opposite banks of the Chari River, called Gori (lá), Damtar (?ual), and Mailao. It may be a language isolate, in which case it would represent an isolated survival of an earlier language group of central Africa. It is unwritten (except in transcription by linguists). According to SIL-Chad member David Faris, it is in danger of extinction, with most people under 25 shifting to the locally more widespread Baguirmi language.
Ladakhi
Is the predominant language in the Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India. Ladakhi is closely related to Tibetan, and Ladakh shares many cultural similarities with Tibet, including Tibetan Buddhism. Ladakhi has approximately 100,000 speakers in India, and perhaps 12,000 speakers in the Tibet region of China. Ladahki has three main dialects, Ladakhi proper (also called Leh, after the capital of Ladakh), Shamma, and Nubra. Ladakhi is romanised in a similar way to Hindi, the most important thing to remember being that the "Th" represents a "T" sound with a bit more air.
Ladin
(Ladino in Italian, Ladin in Ladin, Ladinisch in German) is a Rhaetian language spoken in the Dolomite mountains in Italy, between the regions of Trentino-South Tyrol and Veneto. It presents connections with the Swiss Romansh and Friulian. It is officially recognized in Italy and has some official rights in the region of Trentino-South Tyrol, while it does not have official status in the province of Belluno (Veneto region).
Ladino
Is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew. The relationship of Ladino to Castilian Spanish is comparable to that of Yiddish to German. Speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, for example, in (or from) Thessaloniki and Istanbul. (Note that the Ladino speakers are almost exclusively elderly and few in numbers, and it is in danger of extinction as it is not passed down to younger generations anymore).
Lakota
(Also Lakhota, Teton, Teton Sioux) is the largest of the three languages of the Sioux, of the Siouan family. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages, and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language. The Lakota language represents one of the largest Native American language speech communities left in the United States, with approximately 8,000-9,000 speakers living mostly in northern plains states of North and South Dakota.
Lao
Is the official language of Laos. It is a tonal language of the Tai family, and is so closely related to the Isan language of the northeast region of Thailand that the two are often classed as one language. The writing system of Lao is an abugida (a writing system composed of signs denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel) and is closely related to the writing system used in Thai.
Lappish
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 Lappish languages: Saami, Sámi, Samic, Saamic, Sami and Lappic. The last two are, along with the term Lapp, considered derogatory by some.
Latin
Is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained wide usage as the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. An inflectional and synthetic language, Latin relies little on word order, conveying meaning through a system of affixes attached to word stems. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely used alphabet in the world. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used—drawing heavily on Greek roots—to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is part of the Classics.
Latvian
Sometimes referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. Latvian belongs to the Eastern Baltic sub-group of the Baltic language group in the Indo-European language family. Of the Baltic languages, only Latvian and its closest relative Lithuanian remain. However, while related, the Latvian and Lithuanian vocabularies vary greatly from each other and are not mutually intelligible.
Laz
Is spoken by an ethnic group of the same name on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 500,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border (officially called Lazistan until 1925), and about 30,000 in Georgia.
Lenape
(Also called Delaware) is a language in the Algonquian language family spoken by the Lenape people. It had two main dialects, Munsee and Unami. Sometimes the two are treated as separate languages, for example in the Ethnologue. Lenape is a word in the Unami dialect whose most literal translation into English would be "the people". (The common schoolbook term, Lenni-Lenape is not correct, but translates as, "the original people"). The Lenape names for the area they inhabited were Scheyischbi, which means, "the place bordering the ocean," and Lenapehoking, meaning "place where the people live," although the latter is not universally accepted as historical.
Lepontic
Is an extinct Celtic language, the language of the Lepontii, that was spoken in parts of Cisalpine Gaul between 700 BC and 400 BC. Sometimes called Cisalpine Celtic, it is considered a dialect of the Gaulish language and thus a Continental Celtic language (Eska 1998). The language is only known from a few inscriptions discovered that were written in the alphabet of Lugano, one of five main varieties of Northern Italic alphabets, derived from the Etruscan alphabet. These inscriptions were found in an area centered around Lugano, including Lago di Como and Lago Maggiore. Similar scripts were used for writing the Rhaetic and Venetic languages, and the Germanic runic alphabets probably derive from a script belonging to this group.
Lezgi
Also called Lezgian, is a language spoken by the Lezgins who live in southern Dagestan (a republic of Russia) and northern Azerbaijan. Lezgi belongs to the Lezgian group of the Northeast Caucasian (Dagestan) language family.
Ligbi
Is a Mande language spoken in Ghana in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo region. Ligbi is spoken by approximately 10 000 speakers. It is a geographical outlier to its language family, fairly closely related to Bambara/Jula and to Vai and Kono. A small population of Ligbi speakers (4 000) is reported to live in Cote d'Ivoire (Vanderaa 1991). Ligbi is also known as Wela, Hwela or Numu. The latter of these refers to a subsection of the Ligbi people; Numu is Dyula for 'blacksmith'.
Limburgish
Is a group of Franconian varieties, spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, near the common Dutch/Belgian/German border. The area in which it is spoken roughly fits within a wide circle from Venlo to Cologne to Aachen to Maastricht to Hasselt and back to Venlo . In Germany it is common to consider the Limburgish dialects as belonging to the Low Franconian languages; in The Netherlands and Belgium however all these are seen as West Middle German or even simply High German. This difference is caused by a difference in definition: the linguists of the Low Countries define a Low German dialect as one that has not taken part in the first three phases of the High German consonant shift at all.
Lingala
Is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers. It is classed C.36D under the Guthrie system for classifying Bantu languages and C.40 under the SIL system.
Lipan Apache
Are also known as Nde buffalo hunters, called by anthropologists and historians for many years as Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, and other names. Today it is known that the Cuelgahen Nde Lipan Apache of Texas comprise the descendents of the Tall Grass People known as Lipan Apache — Apache following Chiefs Cuelga de Castro, John Castro, and Ramon Castro. Lipan Apache is also a Southern Athabaskan language spoken by Meredith Begay, Ted Rodriguez, and others on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. The general consensus of the Lipan Apache Committee on the same reservation is that linguistic and anthropological considerations of their cultural extinction are mistaken and incorrect.
Lishana Deni
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in the town of Zakho and its surrounding villages in northern Iraq, on the border with Turkey. Most speakers now live in and around Jerusalem. The name Lishana Deni means 'our language', and is similar to names used by other Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects (Lishan Didan, Lishanid Noshan). Other popular names for the language are Lishan Hozaye, 'the language of the Jews', and Kurdit, 'Kurdish'. Scholarly sources tend simply to refer to Lishana Deni as Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
Lishán Didán
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in Iranian Azerbaijan, in the region of Lake Urmia, from Salmas to Mahabad. Most speakers now live in Israel. The name Lishán Didán means 'our language'; other variations are Lishanán, 'our-language', and Lishanid Nash Didán, 'the language of our selves'. As this causes some confusion with similarly named dialects (Lishana Deni, Lishanid Noshan), scholarly sources tend simply to use a more descriptive name, like Persian Azerbaijani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. To distinguish it from other dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Lishán Didán is sometimes called Lakhlokhi (literally 'to-you(f)-to-you(m)') or Galihalu ('mine-yours'), demonstrating different use of prepositions and pronominal suffixes.
Lishanid Noshan
Is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in southern and eastern Iraqi Kurdistan, in the region of Arbil. Most speakers now live in Israel. Lishanid Noshan means 'the language of our selves'; speakers often also call it Lishana Didan, which means 'our language'. However, as similar names are used by most of the dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, scholarly sources tend to call it Arbil Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Other popular names for the language are Hula'ula, 'Jewish', Galigalu, 'mine-yours' (noting the difference in grammar from other dialects), and Kurdit, 'Kurdish'.
Lithuanian
Is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). The Lithuanian name for the language is lietuviu kalba. Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages (along with Latvian). The Baltic languages form their own distinct branch of the Indo-European languages. The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Aukštaitian (Aukštaiciu, Highland Lithuanian) and Samogitian (Samogitian, Žemaiciu/Žemaitiu, Lowland Lithuanian).
Livonian
Belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is now spoken by only about 35 people, 10 of them fluently. It is related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and Estonian. The native land of the Livonian people is Livonia, located in Latvia, north of the Kurzeme peninsula. It is a highly endangered language. Some of the ethnic Livonians learn or have learnt the language in order to revive it. This is problematic because ethnic Livonians are nowhere in the majority and have little opportunity to use the language. Its orthography is a derivation of both Latvian and Estonian orthography.
Lobedu
(Also Lovedu or Selobedu) is a Bantu language regarded as a dialect of Northern Sotho (Sepedi). It exists only in an unwritten form and the standard Northern Sotho language and orthography is usually used for teaching and writing by this language community. The monarch associated with this language community is Queen Modjadji (also known as the Rain Queen). Lobedu is mainly spoken in the area of Duiwelskloof in the Limpopo Province (former Northern Province). Its speakers are known as the Balobedu.
Lotha
Is spoken by approximately 80,000 people in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland. It is centered in the small district of Wokha (capital Wokha). This district has many villages such as Merapani, Englan, Pakti and others, where the language is widely spoken and studied. It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, which are primarily concentrated in that region. The language resembles its northern neighbor Ao, as well as the Meithei language spoken in the state of Manipur.
Low German
Is a name for the regional language varieties of the Low Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany, and eastern Netherlands. Also, there are some speakers in the coastal areas of Poland, and immigrant communities in several places of the world, for instance in Canada. In the Southern Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some German minority communities, but the Low German and North Frisian dialects of Denmark ought to be considered moribund, if not extinct, at this time.
Lower Sorbian
Is a Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. It is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. Signs in this region are usually bilingual, and Cottbus has a Gymnasium where the language of instruction is Lower Sorbian.
Lozi
Also known as Silozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language (of the Niger-Congo language family) that is spoken by the Lozi people, primarily in southwestern Zambia and in surrounding countries. Lozi and its dialects are spoken and understood by approximately six percent of the population of Zambia. There are many Lozi speakers in the area around the city of Livingstone in Zambia. The Lozi language developed from a mixture of two languages: Luyana and Kololo. The Luyana people originally migrated south from the Luba-Lunda empire in the Katanga area of the Congo River basin, either late in the 17th century or early in the 18th century. The language they spoke, therefore, was closely related to Luba and Lunda. They settled on the floodplains of the Upper Zambezi River in what is now western Zambia and developed a kingdom.
Ludic
Or Ludian is a Baltic Finnic language in the Uralic language family. It is spoken by 3 000 people in the Republic of Karelia.
Luganda
Also known as Ganda, is a Bantu language and is spoken mainly in the Buganda region of Uganda by a population of over three million people. With 100,000 second language speakers, it is the most widely spoken second language in Uganda next to English. The language is used in some primary schools in Buganda as pupils begin to learn English, the official language of Uganda.
Lummi
Is actually a dialect of a language called North Straits Salish.
Lunda
Also known as Chilunda, is a Bantu language (of the larger Niger-Congo family) that is spoken in Zambia, Angola and, to a lesser extent, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lunda and its dialects are spoken and understood by perhaps 2.6% of Zambians (1986 estimate), and the language is used overwhelmingly in the northern part of that country.
Luri
Is a southwestern Iranian language and is mainly spoken by the Lurs and Bakhtiari people in the Iranian provinces of Lorestan, Ilam, Chahar Mahaal and Bakhtiari, Kohkiluyeh and Buyer Ahmad and parts of Khuzestan.
Lushootseed
Is the language or dialect continuum of several Salish Native American groups of modern-day Washington state. Lushootseed is a member of two main divisions of the Salishan language group, Coast Salish and Interior Salish. Lushootseed, like its neighbour Twana, is in the Southern Coast Salish subgroup of the Salishan family of languages. The language was spoken by many Puget Sound region peoples, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Squaxin Island Tribe, Nisqually, and Puyallup in the south and the Snohomish, Skagit, and Swinomish in the north.
Lusoga
Is a Bantu language spoken in the Busoga region of Uganda by approximately 1 500 000 people.
Luxembourgish
Or Luxembourgian (Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuergesch, French: Luxembourgeois, German: Luxemburgisch, Walloon: Lussimbordjwès) is a West Germanic language spoken in Luxembourg. It was proclaimed one of the three official languages of Luxembourg in 1984. There are about 300,000 people who speak Luxembourgish worldwide.
Lydian
Was an Indo-European language that was spoken in the state of Lydia in Western Anatolia, present-day Turkey. It is now considered definitely to belong to the Anatolian subgroup of Indo-European, but occupies a unique position within this group due to a number of features not shared with the other Anatolian languages. It is not presently known whether these represent unique developments in pre-Lydian or the retention of archaic features lost in the other Anatolian languages. (Melchert 2004)
K
Kabardian
Is closely related to the Adyghe language, both members of the Northwest Caucasian language family, mainly spoken in Georgia, Turkey, and the Kabardino-Balkar Republic of Russia. It has 48 consonant phonemes (of which an amazing 22 are fricatives), but just two phonemic vowels. It is one of very few languages to possess a clear phonemic distinction between ejective affricates and ejective fricatives.
The Kabardian language has two major dialects, Besleney and Terek (the latter being the literary standard). Some argue that Kabardian is only a dialect of an overarching Circassian language that also includes the various Adyghe dialects.
Kabyle
Is a Berber language spoken by the Kabyle people. There are 3,123,000 speakers worldwide, the majority in Algeria, where there are more 2,000,000 speakers.
Kabyle was (with some exceptions) rarely written before the 20th century; however, in recent years a small but increasing body of literature has been printed. The originally oral poetry of Si Mohand and Ait Menguellet are particularly notable in this respect.
Kalaallisut
(Also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. The language, like its relatives, is highly polysynthetic and ergative. There are almost no compound words, but mostly derivations. Greenland has three main dialects: North, West and East Greenlandic; West Greenlandic, the largest dialect, is called Kalaallisut. The northern dialect, Inuktun, spoken around the city of Qaanaaq (Thule) is more closely related to Canadian Inuktitut. Kalaallisut is spoken by about 54,000 people, which is more than all the other Eskimo-Aleut languages combined.
Kalasha
Is an Indo-European language in the Indo-Iranian branch, further classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral Group. However, this Dardic classification is questionable because it has been shown that only 53% of the commonly used words in Kalasha have cognates in Khowar language.
Kalasha is spoken by the Kalash People who reside in the remote valleys of Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur, which are west of Ayun, which is ten miles down the river from Chitral Town, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. The Kalash have their own religion, with gods and goddesses. Most have been converted to Islam, but there are still about 3,000 believers in old religion. There are an estimated 6,000 speakers of Kalasha, of which 3,000 still follow the Kalash religion and the other 3,000 have converted to Islam.
Kalmyk
Is the language of the Kalmyks, spoken in Kalmykia (Russian Federation), Western China and Western Mongolia. There are about 160,000 Kalmyk speakers in each country. Kalmyk belongs to the Kalmyk-Oirat subgroup of the Mongolic languages. It also has some elements in common with the Uralic and Turkic languages, sometimes speculated to be a member of the disputed Altaic or Ural-Altaic language family. This reflects Kalmyk's origin as the common language of the Oirats, a union of four Kalmyk tribes that absorbed some Ugric and Turkic tribes during their expansion westward.
Kalto
Or Nahali is a language isolate spoken in west-central India (in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra) by around 5,000 people. The language has many loans from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Munda languages, but much of its vocabulary cannot be related to other language families. Kuiper (1962) conjectured that it is unrelated to any other Indian language but, even if that is so, its vocabulary has over the millennia been heavily influenced, in turn by Munda, Dravidian and latterly, Indo-European Marathi. In Victorian times the Kalto (then known disparagingly as "Nahals" or "Nihals") were among the most notorious of the wild jungle tribes that lived by plunder. Just after 1800 an Arab princeling of the Moghul empire led a punitive expedition against them that destroyed their tribal independence.
Kamchadal
Also sometimes known as Itelmen, is a language belonging to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family traditionally spoken in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Fewer than 100 native speakers, mostly elderly, in a few settlements in the southwest of the Koryak Autonomous Region, remained in 1993. The 2002 Russian census counts 3180 ethnic Itelmen, virtually all of which are now monolingual in Russian. However, there are attempts to revive the language, and it is being taught in a number of schools in the region.
Kankanai
Or Kankanaey, is a language widely used by Cordillerans particularly people from the Mountain Province and several from the Benguet province
Kannada
Is one of the major Dravidian languages of southern India and one of the oldest languages in India. Speakers of its various dialects number roughly 50 million people. It is the state language of Karnataka, one of the four southern states in India. It is written using the Kannada script.
Kaonde
Also known as Chikaonde and Kawonde, is a Bantu language (of the larger Niger-Congo family) that is spoken primarily in Zambia but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kaonde and its dialects are spoken and understood by perhaps 350,000 people or more. It is estimated that approximately 3% of Zambians are native Kaonde speakers. Kaonde speakers overwhelmingly live in the north western part of Zambia. Fewer numbers of Kaonde speakers live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kapampangan
Kapampangan is a Northern Philippine language within the Austronesian language family. The position of Kapampangan among the Northern Philippine language family is not clear. It's been grouped by SIL as a member of the geographically disjointed Bashiic-Central Luzon-Northern Mindoro language subfamily. This includes languages like Ivatan (spoken north of Luzon), Yami (spoken in Taiwan), and Iraya of the island of Mindoro. Kapampangan's closest relatives are the Sambal languages of Zambales province and the Bolinao language spoken in the city of Bolinao, Pangasinan.
Karachay-Balkar
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay, and Balkar.
Karaim
Is a Turkic language with Hebrew influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish or Ladino. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites (also known as Karaims and Qarays) - ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in Crimea, Lithuania and western Ukraine. It has very few remaining active speakers. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai and Halych. In Crimea Karaim is written in Cyrillic script, while in Trakai a variant of the Latin alphabet is in use.
Karakalpak
Is a Northwestern Turkic language mainly spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan), as well as Kazakhs, Bashkirs and Nogay. Karakalpaks who live in the wiloyatlar of Uzbekistan tend to speak local Uzbek dialects. Karakalpak was written in the Arabic alphabet and in Persian until 1928, in the Latin alphabet (with additional characters) from 1928 to 1940, after which the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced. Following Uzbek independence in 1991 the decision was made to drop Cyrillic and to revert to the Latin alphabet. Whilst the use of Latin script is now widespread in Tashkent, its introduction into Karakalpakstan remains gradual.
Karelian
Is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. It belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, and is distinguished from standard Finnish by some important extensions to the phonology and the lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century Finnish. There is no standard Karelian language, but each writer writes in their own dialectal form. The script is the Latin alphabet as used for Finnish with letters added.
Kashmiri
Is a Dardic language spoken primarily in Kashmir, a South Asian region now split between India, Pakistan and China. It has about 4,611,000 speakers. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Kashmiri has remained a spoken language up to the present times, though some manuscripts were written in the past in the Sharada script, and then in Perso-Arabic script. Currently, Kashmiri is written in Perso-Arabic script with some modifications. The earliest literary composition in Kashmiri that has survived is the poetry of Lalleshvari, a 14th century mystic poetess.
Kashubian
Is one of the Lechitic languages, which are a group of Slavic languages. It is assumed that it evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called Kashubians, in the region of Pomerania on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula and Oder rivers. It is closely related to Slovincian, and both of them are Pomeranian language dialects. Many Polish linguists still call it a dialect of Polish.
Kawi
Is a language from the islands of Java, Bali and Lombok. It is actually a literary language based on Old Javanese, but heavily interlarded with Sanskrit loanwords. The language has its own unique alphabets for writing, including Tulisan Bali, a script that evolved from Pallava script. Kawi is extinct as a spoken language, but is still used in Bali, Lombok and to some extent in Java as a literary language. It is also the main language used for the Lombok cultural practice of reading and writing literature on the leaves of the lontar palm.
Kazakh
Also Kazak, Qazaq, Khazakh, Kosach, and Kaisak is a Western Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak. Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.
Kemi Sami
Is a Sami language that was originally spoken in the southernmost district of Finnish Lapland as far south as the Sami siidas around Kuusamo. A complex of local variants which had a distinct identity from other Sami dialects, but existed in a linguistic continuum between Inari Sami and Skolt Sami (some Kemi groups sounded more like Inari, and some more like Skolt, due to geographic proximity). Extinct now for over 100 years, few written examples of Kemi Sami survive.
Kerek
Is a language of Russia that belongs to the northern branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. It was formerly considered to be a dialect of Chukchi, but is now recognised as a separate language closer to Koryak. It is now very close to extinction, and the Kerek ethnic group now speaks Chukchi.
Ket
Formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family, spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Kets. Attempts have been made by Soviet scholars to establish a relationship with either Burushaski or the Sino-Tibetan languages, and it frequently forms part of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. The language is threatened with extinction—the number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language has dropped from 1,225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, is believed to have recently gone extinct.
Khakas
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 78,500, of whom 60,168 speak the Khakas language; most people are bilingual in Russian. Traditionally, the Khakas language is divided into several closely related dialects, which take their names from the different tribes: Sagay, Kacha, Koybal, Beltir, and Kyzyl. In fact, these names represent former administrative units rather than tribal or linguistic groups. The people speaking all these dialects simply referred to themselves as Tadar (i.e. Tatar). Shor, which was later on recognised as a Khakas dialect, is spoken by people who originally came from Shoria, currently the Kemerovo region.
Khalaj
Is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic family of languages. There were approximately 17,000 speakers of this language as of 1968.
Kham
Is a language complex of Bodic Tibeto-Burmese lects spoken in the remoter highlands of Rapti Zone and Dhaulagiri Zone, western Nepal by the four northern clans of the Magar tribe, called collectively Kham Magars or Northern Magars.
Khanty
Or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khantia-Mansia, Yamalia, Alexandrovsky and Kargosoksky Districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1970 census, there were over 14,000 Khanty-speaking people in Russia. The Khanty and Mansi languages are the Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) members of the Finno-Ugric languages. The Khanty language is known to have a large number of dialects. The western group of dialects includes the Obdorian, Ob’, and Irtysh dialects. The eastern group of dialects includes the Surgut and Vakh-Vasyugan dialects, which, in turn, are subdivided into thirteen other dialects. All these dialects significantly differ from each other by their phonetical, morphological, and lexical features.
Khasi
Is an Austro-Asiatic language spoken primarily in Meghalaya state in India. Khasi is part of the Mon-Khmer group of languages, and is distantly related to the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family, which is found in east-central India. Although most of the 865,000 Khasi speakers are found in Meghalaya state, the language is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam bordering with Meghalaya and by a sizable population of people living in Bangladesh, close to the Indian border.
Khazar
Is the language spoken by the medieval Khazar tribe, a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia. It is also referred to as Khazarian, Khazaric, or Khazari. It was long debated to what branch of the Turkic languages the Khazar tongue belonged, or even if it was a Turkic language at all. Some scholars postulated Iranian or Caucasic linguistic affiliation. Arab scholars of the Middle Ages classified Khazar as similar to, yet distinct from, the type of Turkic spoken by other Turks with whom they were familiar, such as the Oghuz. They noted, however, that both the Khazar tongue and the more common forms of Turkic were widely spoken in Khazaria.
Khmer
Is one of the main Austroasiatic languages. Sanskrit and Pali have had considerable influence on the language, through the vehicles of Buddhism and Hinduism. As result of their geographic proximity, the Khmer language has influenced Thai and Laotian and vice versa.
Khmu
Is the language of the Khmu people of the northern Laos region. Alternate names include Kmhmu, Khmu', Khamu, Kamu, Kammu, Khamuk, Kamhmu, Khomu, Mou, Pouteng, Pu Thenh, Tenh, Theng, Lao Terng. Linguistically, the Khmu belong to the Khmuic branch of the Mon-Khmer family of languages.
Kichagga
Is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the people of Tanzania, South of Mount Kilimanjaro. It is one of a group of closely related languages spoken in that area. Kichaga has various dialects including Vunjo, Rombo, Machame, Uru, Kibosho and Oldi Moshi.
Kildin Sami
(Also spelled Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish) is a Sami language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. Kildin Sami has an official Cyrillic script.
Kimatuumbi
Also known as Matumbi, is a language spoken in Tanzania in the Kipatimu region of the Kilwa district, south of the Rufiji river. It is a Bantu language, P13 in Guthrie's classification. Kimatuumbi is closely related to the Ngindo, Mbunga, Rufiji and Ndengereko languages. It is spoken by about 70 000 people, according to the Ethnologue.
Kinaray-a
Is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Antique Province in the Philippines. It is also spoken in parts of Iloilo. Due to regional proximity, media and television stations, Kinaray-a speakers can understand Hiligaynon speakers but not vice versa. It is a misconception among some Hiligaynon speakers that Kinaray-a is a variation of Hiligaynon; the reality is that the two belong to two different, but related, language subgroups. It belongs to the Visayan language family.
Kinyarwanda
Is the chief spoken language in Rwanda. It is also spoken in the east of DRC and in the south of Uganda (Bufumbira-area). Kinyarwanda is a tonal language of the Bantu language family (Guthrie D61). Kinyarwanda is closely related to Kirundi spoken in the neighboring country, Burundi and to Giha of western Tanzania. The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Hutu outnumbering the latter two groups
Kiribati
Is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It is a verb object subject language. Description of the language as Gilbertese or Kiribatese is sometimes considered a relic of colonial days by some I-Kiribati (the people of Kiribati). But as Kiribati is itself a rendition for "Gilberts", most people do not care. The official description is Taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.
Kirombo
(Also Rombo) is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken by approximately 300,000 people (1992 UBS). It is spoken in the Chaga area of the Kilimanjaro region. Kirombo is closely related to the other Chaga languages Vunjo, Moshi, and Machame languages, with which it is said to form a dialect continuum.
Kirundi
(Also written Rundi) is a Bantu language (D62 in Guthrie's classification) spoken by some 6 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. 85% of the speakers are Hutu, 15% are Tutsi. Kirundi is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the main language of neighbouring country Rwanda and to Giha, a language spoken in western Tanzania. Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are mutually intelligible.
Kivunjo
(Also Vunjo) is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken by approximately 300,000 people (1992 UBS). It is spoken in the Chaga area of the Kilimanjaro region. Kivunjo is closely related to the other Chaga languages Rombo, Moshi, and Machame languages, with which it is said to form a dialect continuum.
Klallam
(Also Clallam) is a Straits Salishan language spoken by Klallam peoples. Klallam is spoken at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Klallam is closely related to the Northern Straits dialects (including Saanich).
Kodava Takk
Is the original language of the south Karnataka district of Kodagu. The language is often called Coorgi or Coorg language in English. The number of speakers is estimated at around 300,000. It is the primary language of Kodavas, but a large portion of other communities and tribes in Kodagu also use Kodava Thakk. It belongs to the Dravidian languages family, and is related to and influenced by Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. Kodava Takk also has words which do not sound similar to words in other Indian languages. Kodava Takk has no written script and usually Kannada script is used to write it.
Komi
Also known as Zyrian, or Komi-Zyrian, is a language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. Komi belongs to the Finno-Permic group of the Finno-Ugric languages. Of the several dialects found within Komi, two major dialects are recognized, although the differences are not great: Komi-Zyrian, the largest group, which serves as the literary basis within the Komi Republic; and Komi-Yazva, spoken by a small, isolated group of Komi to the east of Perm Krai and south of the Komi Republic. Permyak (also called Komi-Permyak) is spoken in Komi-Permyak, where it has literary status.
Konkani
Is an Indo-Aryan language, although it includes a wealth of words derived from various Dravidian languages. It started as a vernacular of Sanskrit, with inevitable corruption of the words. It has been relatively free of influence of any other language except a little of Portuguese (in the last few centuries) and some Kannada (supposedly during the Kadamba period of 12-14th centuries). Konkani is not a dialect of Marathi. History has established that even when the Konkani language had reached maturity, the Marathi language was not even born.
The Konkani language is spoken widely in the Konkan region consisting of Goa, south coastal Maharashtra, coastal Karnataka and Kerala, each region having a unique dialect and pronunciation style.
Kongo
Or Kikongo is the Bantu language spoken by the Bakongo people living in the tropical forests of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola. It was the base for Kituba, a Bantu creole and lingua franca throughout much of western central Africa. It was spoken by many Africans from the region who were taken into slavery and sold to the Americas. For this reason, while Kikongo still is spoken in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola, Creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of African derived religions in Brazil, Jamaica and Cuba, and is one of the sources of the Gullah peoples language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kikongo, with perhaps two million more who use it as a second language.
Korandje
Is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the oasis of Tabelbala by no more than a few thousand people; its name, Kora-n-dje, means "village's language". While retaining a basically Songhay structure, it is extremely heavily influenced by Berber and Arabic; Lacroix estimates that only 40% of its vocabulary is Songhay, with another 30% each from Arabic and Berber.
Korean
Is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also one of the two official languages (the other is Standard Mandarin) in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently the Philippines. The genealogical classification of Korean is debated. Many linguists place it in the Altaic language family; some others consider it to be a language isolate. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Some vocabulary has been imported from Chinese, or created on Chinese models.
Korowai
Also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua (i.e. the southeastern part of the western part of New Guinea). Their numbers are very roughly estimated at about 3,000. Until the 1970s, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves and some immediately neighboring tribes. Only a few of them have become literate thus far. They are one of few surviving tribes in the world to engage in cannibalism.
Koryak
Is a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language spoken by circa 5,200 people (2001) (Koryak) in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in the region called Koryakia. It is mostly a language spoken by Koryaks. Its close relative, the Chukchi language, is spoken by about twice that number. The language together with Chukchi, Kerek, Alutor and Itelmen forms the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. The Chukchi and Koryaks form a cultural unit with an economy based on reindeer herding and both have autonomy within the Russian Federation.
Kosraean
Also sometimes called Kusaiean, is the language spoken on the islands of Kosrae (Kusaie), Caroline Islands, and Nauru. In 2001 there were approximately 8,000 speakers.
Koyra Chiini
Or Western Songhay, is a variety of Songhai in Mali, spoken by about 200,000 people (as of 1999) along the Niger River in Timbuktu and upriver from it in the towns of Diré, Tonka, Goundam, and Niafunké, as well as in the Saharan town of Araouane to its north. In this area, Koyra Chiini is the dominant language and the lingua franca, although minorities speaking Hassaniya Arabic, Tamashek, and Fulani are found.
Koy Sanjaq Surat
Is a modern Eastern Aramaic or Syriac language. Speakers of the language call it simply Surat, or 'Syriac'. It is spoken in the town of Koy Sanjaq and its nearby village of Armota in the province of Arbil in northeastern Iraq. The speakers of Koy Sanjaq Surat are traditionally Chaldean Catholics. Koy Sanjaq Surat seems to be related to Senaya, which is spoken by Chaldean Christians who originally lived east of Koy Sanjaq, in the city of Sanandaj in Iran. Not enough is known about the language to make any definite comment, but it seems that Koy Sanjaq Surat may have developed as the language of Chaldean settlers from Sanandaj. It does not appear to be intelligible with Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, which is spoken by correligionists further north, or with the Jewish Neo-Aramaic language of Lishanid Noshan which was traditionally spoken by the Jews of Koy Sanjaq.
Krymchak
Is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes referred to as Judeo-Crimean Tatar. Like most Jewish languages, it contains a large number of Hebrew loanwords. Before the Soviet era it was written using Hebrew characters. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s this language was written with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet (a variant of the Latin alphabet), like Crimean Tatar and Karaim). Now it is written in Cyrillic script.
The community was decimated during the Holocaust. Only about a thousand Krymchak people remain in Crimea. Nowadays the language is almost extinct. Today it is a native language for only three persons, all of an advanced age, and about a hundred can speak it.
Kujargé
Is spoken in seven villages in Chad near Jebel Mirra (11°45'N 22°15'E) and in Sudan in villages scattered along the lower Wadi Salih and Wadi Azum. It is estimated to have about 1000 speakers (as of 1983). The language is classified by Paul Newman as a member of the Mubi subgroup of Chadic; however, Lionel Bender argues that its classification is still uncertain, on the basis that it shows much fewer roots in common with the other Mubi languages than they do with each other. The name is derived from Sudanese Arabic kujur "sorcerer", because of their reputation for witchcraft. The speakers mainly live by hunting and gathering.
Kumaoni
Variously used to signify the people or the local dialect of Kumaon Division of Uttaranchal, a region in the Indian Himalayas.
Kumyk
(Also Qumuq, Kumuk, Kumuklar, and Kumyki) (?????) is a Turkic language, spoken by about 200 thousands speakers (the Kumyks) in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation. Yirçi Qazaq (born 1839) is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature. First regular newspapers and magazines 1917-18. Kumyk was written using Arabic script until 1928, Latin script was used in 1928-1938, and Cyrillic since then. It has been strongly influenced by Azeri and Dargwa, as well as by Russian during last century.
Kumzari
Is an Iranian language spoken by the members of the Shihuh tribe in the Kumzar coast of Musandam Peninsula, northern Oman. This is the only Iranian language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Kumzaris can also be found in towns of Dibah and Khasab, as well as various villages and the Larak Island. Speakers are descendants of fishermen that inhabited the coast of Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The language is a development of early Modern Persian and is closely related to the Minabi dialect of southern Balochistan. The majority of vocabulary, as well as the grammatical and syntactic structure of the language, is Iranian, although a large number of Arabic words exist in the everyday speech. Despite the fact that it is spoken by the Persian Gulf fishermen, its phonology bears closer resemblance with the Persian language dialects of Fars province in Iran and is thought to be mutually understandable by the speakers of Luri.
Kurdish
is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurdish is an official language in Iraq while it is banned in Syria. Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media. In Iran, though it is used in the local media and newspapers, only a few schools are permitted to teach the language. The Iranian government allows very limited higher education in Kurdish, and therefore, many Kurds have left for Iraq where they can study in their native language.
The Kurdish language belongs to the western sub-group of the Iranian languages which belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages family. The most closely related languages to Kurdish are Persian and Pashto.
Kurukh
Belongs to the Dravidian family, and is most closely related to Brahui and Malto (Paharia). It is spoken by the Oraon, a tribal (Adivasi) people of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, India. It is also the only Dravidian language indigenous to Bangladesh.
Kwanyama
Is a Bantu language mainly spoken in Angola and some parts of Namibia (together with Ndonga). The language is spoken by about 421,000 people in Angola and 713,919 in Namibia. The language is also known by other names like Ochikwanyama, Kuanyama, Kwanjama, Kwancama, Cuanhama, Ovambo and Humba. Grouped with the closely related Ndonga, it is also called 'Otjiwambo', 'Oshiwambo' or 'Owambo'. The borders between different languages and dialects in the area are less strict than in for example Western Europe.
Kyrgyz
Is a Northwestern Turkic language, and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz is spoken by about 3 million people in Kyrgyzstan, China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey (Asia), Uzbekistan, Pakistan (Chitral) and Russia. Kyrgyz is written in modified Cyrillic (Kyrgyzstan) and modified Arabic (China) scripts. A Latin script was used between 1928 and 1940 in Kyrgyzstan. After Kyrgyzstan gained independence in 1991, there was a popular idea among some of the Kyrgyz politicians to return Kyrgyz language back to the Latin alphabet, but this plan has never been implemented.
Is closely related to the Adyghe language, both members of the Northwest Caucasian language family, mainly spoken in Georgia, Turkey, and the Kabardino-Balkar Republic of Russia. It has 48 consonant phonemes (of which an amazing 22 are fricatives), but just two phonemic vowels. It is one of very few languages to possess a clear phonemic distinction between ejective affricates and ejective fricatives.
The Kabardian language has two major dialects, Besleney and Terek (the latter being the literary standard). Some argue that Kabardian is only a dialect of an overarching Circassian language that also includes the various Adyghe dialects.
Kabyle
Is a Berber language spoken by the Kabyle people. There are 3,123,000 speakers worldwide, the majority in Algeria, where there are more 2,000,000 speakers.
Kabyle was (with some exceptions) rarely written before the 20th century; however, in recent years a small but increasing body of literature has been printed. The originally oral poetry of Si Mohand and Ait Menguellet are particularly notable in this respect.
Kalaallisut
(Also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. The language, like its relatives, is highly polysynthetic and ergative. There are almost no compound words, but mostly derivations. Greenland has three main dialects: North, West and East Greenlandic; West Greenlandic, the largest dialect, is called Kalaallisut. The northern dialect, Inuktun, spoken around the city of Qaanaaq (Thule) is more closely related to Canadian Inuktitut. Kalaallisut is spoken by about 54,000 people, which is more than all the other Eskimo-Aleut languages combined.
Kalasha
Is an Indo-European language in the Indo-Iranian branch, further classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral Group. However, this Dardic classification is questionable because it has been shown that only 53% of the commonly used words in Kalasha have cognates in Khowar language.
Kalasha is spoken by the Kalash People who reside in the remote valleys of Bumboret, Birir and Rumbur, which are west of Ayun, which is ten miles down the river from Chitral Town, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. The Kalash have their own religion, with gods and goddesses. Most have been converted to Islam, but there are still about 3,000 believers in old religion. There are an estimated 6,000 speakers of Kalasha, of which 3,000 still follow the Kalash religion and the other 3,000 have converted to Islam.
Kalmyk
Is the language of the Kalmyks, spoken in Kalmykia (Russian Federation), Western China and Western Mongolia. There are about 160,000 Kalmyk speakers in each country. Kalmyk belongs to the Kalmyk-Oirat subgroup of the Mongolic languages. It also has some elements in common with the Uralic and Turkic languages, sometimes speculated to be a member of the disputed Altaic or Ural-Altaic language family. This reflects Kalmyk's origin as the common language of the Oirats, a union of four Kalmyk tribes that absorbed some Ugric and Turkic tribes during their expansion westward.
Kalto
Or Nahali is a language isolate spoken in west-central India (in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra) by around 5,000 people. The language has many loans from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Munda languages, but much of its vocabulary cannot be related to other language families. Kuiper (1962) conjectured that it is unrelated to any other Indian language but, even if that is so, its vocabulary has over the millennia been heavily influenced, in turn by Munda, Dravidian and latterly, Indo-European Marathi. In Victorian times the Kalto (then known disparagingly as "Nahals" or "Nihals") were among the most notorious of the wild jungle tribes that lived by plunder. Just after 1800 an Arab princeling of the Moghul empire led a punitive expedition against them that destroyed their tribal independence.
Kamchadal
Also sometimes known as Itelmen, is a language belonging to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family traditionally spoken in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Fewer than 100 native speakers, mostly elderly, in a few settlements in the southwest of the Koryak Autonomous Region, remained in 1993. The 2002 Russian census counts 3180 ethnic Itelmen, virtually all of which are now monolingual in Russian. However, there are attempts to revive the language, and it is being taught in a number of schools in the region.
Kankanai
Or Kankanaey, is a language widely used by Cordillerans particularly people from the Mountain Province and several from the Benguet province
Kannada
Is one of the major Dravidian languages of southern India and one of the oldest languages in India. Speakers of its various dialects number roughly 50 million people. It is the state language of Karnataka, one of the four southern states in India. It is written using the Kannada script.
Kaonde
Also known as Chikaonde and Kawonde, is a Bantu language (of the larger Niger-Congo family) that is spoken primarily in Zambia but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kaonde and its dialects are spoken and understood by perhaps 350,000 people or more. It is estimated that approximately 3% of Zambians are native Kaonde speakers. Kaonde speakers overwhelmingly live in the north western part of Zambia. Fewer numbers of Kaonde speakers live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kapampangan
Kapampangan is a Northern Philippine language within the Austronesian language family. The position of Kapampangan among the Northern Philippine language family is not clear. It's been grouped by SIL as a member of the geographically disjointed Bashiic-Central Luzon-Northern Mindoro language subfamily. This includes languages like Ivatan (spoken north of Luzon), Yami (spoken in Taiwan), and Iraya of the island of Mindoro. Kapampangan's closest relatives are the Sambal languages of Zambales province and the Bolinao language spoken in the city of Bolinao, Pangasinan.
Karachay-Balkar
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay, and Balkar.
Karaim
Is a Turkic language with Hebrew influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish or Ladino. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites (also known as Karaims and Qarays) - ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in Crimea, Lithuania and western Ukraine. It has very few remaining active speakers. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai and Halych. In Crimea Karaim is written in Cyrillic script, while in Trakai a variant of the Latin alphabet is in use.
Karakalpak
Is a Northwestern Turkic language mainly spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan), as well as Kazakhs, Bashkirs and Nogay. Karakalpaks who live in the wiloyatlar of Uzbekistan tend to speak local Uzbek dialects. Karakalpak was written in the Arabic alphabet and in Persian until 1928, in the Latin alphabet (with additional characters) from 1928 to 1940, after which the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced. Following Uzbek independence in 1991 the decision was made to drop Cyrillic and to revert to the Latin alphabet. Whilst the use of Latin script is now widespread in Tashkent, its introduction into Karakalpakstan remains gradual.
Karelian
Is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. It belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, and is distinguished from standard Finnish by some important extensions to the phonology and the lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century Finnish. There is no standard Karelian language, but each writer writes in their own dialectal form. The script is the Latin alphabet as used for Finnish with letters added.
Kashmiri
Is a Dardic language spoken primarily in Kashmir, a South Asian region now split between India, Pakistan and China. It has about 4,611,000 speakers. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Kashmiri has remained a spoken language up to the present times, though some manuscripts were written in the past in the Sharada script, and then in Perso-Arabic script. Currently, Kashmiri is written in Perso-Arabic script with some modifications. The earliest literary composition in Kashmiri that has survived is the poetry of Lalleshvari, a 14th century mystic poetess.
Kashubian
Is one of the Lechitic languages, which are a group of Slavic languages. It is assumed that it evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called Kashubians, in the region of Pomerania on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula and Oder rivers. It is closely related to Slovincian, and both of them are Pomeranian language dialects. Many Polish linguists still call it a dialect of Polish.
Kawi
Is a language from the islands of Java, Bali and Lombok. It is actually a literary language based on Old Javanese, but heavily interlarded with Sanskrit loanwords. The language has its own unique alphabets for writing, including Tulisan Bali, a script that evolved from Pallava script. Kawi is extinct as a spoken language, but is still used in Bali, Lombok and to some extent in Java as a literary language. It is also the main language used for the Lombok cultural practice of reading and writing literature on the leaves of the lontar palm.
Kazakh
Also Kazak, Qazaq, Khazakh, Kosach, and Kaisak is a Western Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak. Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.
Kemi Sami
Is a Sami language that was originally spoken in the southernmost district of Finnish Lapland as far south as the Sami siidas around Kuusamo. A complex of local variants which had a distinct identity from other Sami dialects, but existed in a linguistic continuum between Inari Sami and Skolt Sami (some Kemi groups sounded more like Inari, and some more like Skolt, due to geographic proximity). Extinct now for over 100 years, few written examples of Kemi Sami survive.
Kerek
Is a language of Russia that belongs to the northern branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. It was formerly considered to be a dialect of Chukchi, but is now recognised as a separate language closer to Koryak. It is now very close to extinction, and the Kerek ethnic group now speaks Chukchi.
Ket
Formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family, spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Kets. Attempts have been made by Soviet scholars to establish a relationship with either Burushaski or the Sino-Tibetan languages, and it frequently forms part of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. The language is threatened with extinction—the number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language has dropped from 1,225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, is believed to have recently gone extinct.
Khakas
Is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 78,500, of whom 60,168 speak the Khakas language; most people are bilingual in Russian. Traditionally, the Khakas language is divided into several closely related dialects, which take their names from the different tribes: Sagay, Kacha, Koybal, Beltir, and Kyzyl. In fact, these names represent former administrative units rather than tribal or linguistic groups. The people speaking all these dialects simply referred to themselves as Tadar (i.e. Tatar). Shor, which was later on recognised as a Khakas dialect, is spoken by people who originally came from Shoria, currently the Kemerovo region.
Khalaj
Is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic family of languages. There were approximately 17,000 speakers of this language as of 1968.
Kham
Is a language complex of Bodic Tibeto-Burmese lects spoken in the remoter highlands of Rapti Zone and Dhaulagiri Zone, western Nepal by the four northern clans of the Magar tribe, called collectively Kham Magars or Northern Magars.
Khanty
Or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khantia-Mansia, Yamalia, Alexandrovsky and Kargosoksky Districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1970 census, there were over 14,000 Khanty-speaking people in Russia. The Khanty and Mansi languages are the Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) members of the Finno-Ugric languages. The Khanty language is known to have a large number of dialects. The western group of dialects includes the Obdorian, Ob’, and Irtysh dialects. The eastern group of dialects includes the Surgut and Vakh-Vasyugan dialects, which, in turn, are subdivided into thirteen other dialects. All these dialects significantly differ from each other by their phonetical, morphological, and lexical features.
Khasi
Is an Austro-Asiatic language spoken primarily in Meghalaya state in India. Khasi is part of the Mon-Khmer group of languages, and is distantly related to the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family, which is found in east-central India. Although most of the 865,000 Khasi speakers are found in Meghalaya state, the language is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam bordering with Meghalaya and by a sizable population of people living in Bangladesh, close to the Indian border.
Khazar
Is the language spoken by the medieval Khazar tribe, a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia. It is also referred to as Khazarian, Khazaric, or Khazari. It was long debated to what branch of the Turkic languages the Khazar tongue belonged, or even if it was a Turkic language at all. Some scholars postulated Iranian or Caucasic linguistic affiliation. Arab scholars of the Middle Ages classified Khazar as similar to, yet distinct from, the type of Turkic spoken by other Turks with whom they were familiar, such as the Oghuz. They noted, however, that both the Khazar tongue and the more common forms of Turkic were widely spoken in Khazaria.
Khmer
Is one of the main Austroasiatic languages. Sanskrit and Pali have had considerable influence on the language, through the vehicles of Buddhism and Hinduism. As result of their geographic proximity, the Khmer language has influenced Thai and Laotian and vice versa.
Khmu
Is the language of the Khmu people of the northern Laos region. Alternate names include Kmhmu, Khmu', Khamu, Kamu, Kammu, Khamuk, Kamhmu, Khomu, Mou, Pouteng, Pu Thenh, Tenh, Theng, Lao Terng. Linguistically, the Khmu belong to the Khmuic branch of the Mon-Khmer family of languages.
Kichagga
Is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the people of Tanzania, South of Mount Kilimanjaro. It is one of a group of closely related languages spoken in that area. Kichaga has various dialects including Vunjo, Rombo, Machame, Uru, Kibosho and Oldi Moshi.
Kildin Sami
(Also spelled Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish) is a Sami language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. Kildin Sami has an official Cyrillic script.
Kimatuumbi
Also known as Matumbi, is a language spoken in Tanzania in the Kipatimu region of the Kilwa district, south of the Rufiji river. It is a Bantu language, P13 in Guthrie's classification. Kimatuumbi is closely related to the Ngindo, Mbunga, Rufiji and Ndengereko languages. It is spoken by about 70 000 people, according to the Ethnologue.
Kinaray-a
Is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Antique Province in the Philippines. It is also spoken in parts of Iloilo. Due to regional proximity, media and television stations, Kinaray-a speakers can understand Hiligaynon speakers but not vice versa. It is a misconception among some Hiligaynon speakers that Kinaray-a is a variation of Hiligaynon; the reality is that the two belong to two different, but related, language subgroups. It belongs to the Visayan language family.
Kinyarwanda
Is the chief spoken language in Rwanda. It is also spoken in the east of DRC and in the south of Uganda (Bufumbira-area). Kinyarwanda is a tonal language of the Bantu language family (Guthrie D61). Kinyarwanda is closely related to Kirundi spoken in the neighboring country, Burundi and to Giha of western Tanzania. The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Hutu outnumbering the latter two groups
Kiribati
Is a language from the Austronesian family, part of the Oceanian branch and of the Nuclear Micronesian subbranch. It is a verb object subject language. Description of the language as Gilbertese or Kiribatese is sometimes considered a relic of colonial days by some I-Kiribati (the people of Kiribati). But as Kiribati is itself a rendition for "Gilberts", most people do not care. The official description is Taetae ni Kiribati, or 'the Kiribati language'.
Kirombo
(Also Rombo) is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken by approximately 300,000 people (1992 UBS). It is spoken in the Chaga area of the Kilimanjaro region. Kirombo is closely related to the other Chaga languages Vunjo, Moshi, and Machame languages, with which it is said to form a dialect continuum.
Kirundi
(Also written Rundi) is a Bantu language (D62 in Guthrie's classification) spoken by some 6 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. 85% of the speakers are Hutu, 15% are Tutsi. Kirundi is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the main language of neighbouring country Rwanda and to Giha, a language spoken in western Tanzania. Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are mutually intelligible.
Kivunjo
(Also Vunjo) is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken by approximately 300,000 people (1992 UBS). It is spoken in the Chaga area of the Kilimanjaro region. Kivunjo is closely related to the other Chaga languages Rombo, Moshi, and Machame languages, with which it is said to form a dialect continuum.
Klallam
(Also Clallam) is a Straits Salishan language spoken by Klallam peoples. Klallam is spoken at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Klallam is closely related to the Northern Straits dialects (including Saanich).
Kodava Takk
Is the original language of the south Karnataka district of Kodagu. The language is often called Coorgi or Coorg language in English. The number of speakers is estimated at around 300,000. It is the primary language of Kodavas, but a large portion of other communities and tribes in Kodagu also use Kodava Thakk. It belongs to the Dravidian languages family, and is related to and influenced by Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. Kodava Takk also has words which do not sound similar to words in other Indian languages. Kodava Takk has no written script and usually Kannada script is used to write it.
Komi
Also known as Zyrian, or Komi-Zyrian, is a language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. Komi belongs to the Finno-Permic group of the Finno-Ugric languages. Of the several dialects found within Komi, two major dialects are recognized, although the differences are not great: Komi-Zyrian, the largest group, which serves as the literary basis within the Komi Republic; and Komi-Yazva, spoken by a small, isolated group of Komi to the east of Perm Krai and south of the Komi Republic. Permyak (also called Komi-Permyak) is spoken in Komi-Permyak, where it has literary status.
Konkani
Is an Indo-Aryan language, although it includes a wealth of words derived from various Dravidian languages. It started as a vernacular of Sanskrit, with inevitable corruption of the words. It has been relatively free of influence of any other language except a little of Portuguese (in the last few centuries) and some Kannada (supposedly during the Kadamba period of 12-14th centuries). Konkani is not a dialect of Marathi. History has established that even when the Konkani language had reached maturity, the Marathi language was not even born.
The Konkani language is spoken widely in the Konkan region consisting of Goa, south coastal Maharashtra, coastal Karnataka and Kerala, each region having a unique dialect and pronunciation style.
Kongo
Or Kikongo is the Bantu language spoken by the Bakongo people living in the tropical forests of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola. It was the base for Kituba, a Bantu creole and lingua franca throughout much of western central Africa. It was spoken by many Africans from the region who were taken into slavery and sold to the Americas. For this reason, while Kikongo still is spoken in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola, Creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of African derived religions in Brazil, Jamaica and Cuba, and is one of the sources of the Gullah peoples language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kikongo, with perhaps two million more who use it as a second language.
Korandje
Is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the oasis of Tabelbala by no more than a few thousand people; its name, Kora-n-dje, means "village's language". While retaining a basically Songhay structure, it is extremely heavily influenced by Berber and Arabic; Lacroix estimates that only 40% of its vocabulary is Songhay, with another 30% each from Arabic and Berber.
Korean
Is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also one of the two official languages (the other is Standard Mandarin) in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently the Philippines. The genealogical classification of Korean is debated. Many linguists place it in the Altaic language family; some others consider it to be a language isolate. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Some vocabulary has been imported from Chinese, or created on Chinese models.
Korowai
Also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua (i.e. the southeastern part of the western part of New Guinea). Their numbers are very roughly estimated at about 3,000. Until the 1970s, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves and some immediately neighboring tribes. Only a few of them have become literate thus far. They are one of few surviving tribes in the world to engage in cannibalism.
Koryak
Is a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language spoken by circa 5,200 people (2001) (Koryak) in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in the region called Koryakia. It is mostly a language spoken by Koryaks. Its close relative, the Chukchi language, is spoken by about twice that number. The language together with Chukchi, Kerek, Alutor and Itelmen forms the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. The Chukchi and Koryaks form a cultural unit with an economy based on reindeer herding and both have autonomy within the Russian Federation.
Kosraean
Also sometimes called Kusaiean, is the language spoken on the islands of Kosrae (Kusaie), Caroline Islands, and Nauru. In 2001 there were approximately 8,000 speakers.
Koyra Chiini
Or Western Songhay, is a variety of Songhai in Mali, spoken by about 200,000 people (as of 1999) along the Niger River in Timbuktu and upriver from it in the towns of Diré, Tonka, Goundam, and Niafunké, as well as in the Saharan town of Araouane to its north. In this area, Koyra Chiini is the dominant language and the lingua franca, although minorities speaking Hassaniya Arabic, Tamashek, and Fulani are found.
Koy Sanjaq Surat
Is a modern Eastern Aramaic or Syriac language. Speakers of the language call it simply Surat, or 'Syriac'. It is spoken in the town of Koy Sanjaq and its nearby village of Armota in the province of Arbil in northeastern Iraq. The speakers of Koy Sanjaq Surat are traditionally Chaldean Catholics. Koy Sanjaq Surat seems to be related to Senaya, which is spoken by Chaldean Christians who originally lived east of Koy Sanjaq, in the city of Sanandaj in Iran. Not enough is known about the language to make any definite comment, but it seems that Koy Sanjaq Surat may have developed as the language of Chaldean settlers from Sanandaj. It does not appear to be intelligible with Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, which is spoken by correligionists further north, or with the Jewish Neo-Aramaic language of Lishanid Noshan which was traditionally spoken by the Jews of Koy Sanjaq.
Krymchak
Is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes referred to as Judeo-Crimean Tatar. Like most Jewish languages, it contains a large number of Hebrew loanwords. Before the Soviet era it was written using Hebrew characters. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s this language was written with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet (a variant of the Latin alphabet), like Crimean Tatar and Karaim). Now it is written in Cyrillic script.
The community was decimated during the Holocaust. Only about a thousand Krymchak people remain in Crimea. Nowadays the language is almost extinct. Today it is a native language for only three persons, all of an advanced age, and about a hundred can speak it.
Kujargé
Is spoken in seven villages in Chad near Jebel Mirra (11°45'N 22°15'E) and in Sudan in villages scattered along the lower Wadi Salih and Wadi Azum. It is estimated to have about 1000 speakers (as of 1983). The language is classified by Paul Newman as a member of the Mubi subgroup of Chadic; however, Lionel Bender argues that its classification is still uncertain, on the basis that it shows much fewer roots in common with the other Mubi languages than they do with each other. The name is derived from Sudanese Arabic kujur "sorcerer", because of their reputation for witchcraft. The speakers mainly live by hunting and gathering.
Kumaoni
Variously used to signify the people or the local dialect of Kumaon Division of Uttaranchal, a region in the Indian Himalayas.
Kumyk
(Also Qumuq, Kumuk, Kumuklar, and Kumyki) (?????) is a Turkic language, spoken by about 200 thousands speakers (the Kumyks) in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation. Yirçi Qazaq (born 1839) is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature. First regular newspapers and magazines 1917-18. Kumyk was written using Arabic script until 1928, Latin script was used in 1928-1938, and Cyrillic since then. It has been strongly influenced by Azeri and Dargwa, as well as by Russian during last century.
Kumzari
Is an Iranian language spoken by the members of the Shihuh tribe in the Kumzar coast of Musandam Peninsula, northern Oman. This is the only Iranian language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Kumzaris can also be found in towns of Dibah and Khasab, as well as various villages and the Larak Island. Speakers are descendants of fishermen that inhabited the coast of Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The language is a development of early Modern Persian and is closely related to the Minabi dialect of southern Balochistan. The majority of vocabulary, as well as the grammatical and syntactic structure of the language, is Iranian, although a large number of Arabic words exist in the everyday speech. Despite the fact that it is spoken by the Persian Gulf fishermen, its phonology bears closer resemblance with the Persian language dialects of Fars province in Iran and is thought to be mutually understandable by the speakers of Luri.
Kurdish
is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurdish is an official language in Iraq while it is banned in Syria. Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media. In Iran, though it is used in the local media and newspapers, only a few schools are permitted to teach the language. The Iranian government allows very limited higher education in Kurdish, and therefore, many Kurds have left for Iraq where they can study in their native language.
The Kurdish language belongs to the western sub-group of the Iranian languages which belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages family. The most closely related languages to Kurdish are Persian and Pashto.
Kurukh
Belongs to the Dravidian family, and is most closely related to Brahui and Malto (Paharia). It is spoken by the Oraon, a tribal (Adivasi) people of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, India. It is also the only Dravidian language indigenous to Bangladesh.
Kwanyama
Is a Bantu language mainly spoken in Angola and some parts of Namibia (together with Ndonga). The language is spoken by about 421,000 people in Angola and 713,919 in Namibia. The language is also known by other names like Ochikwanyama, Kuanyama, Kwanjama, Kwancama, Cuanhama, Ovambo and Humba. Grouped with the closely related Ndonga, it is also called 'Otjiwambo', 'Oshiwambo' or 'Owambo'. The borders between different languages and dialects in the area are less strict than in for example Western Europe.
Kyrgyz
Is a Northwestern Turkic language, and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz is spoken by about 3 million people in Kyrgyzstan, China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey (Asia), Uzbekistan, Pakistan (Chitral) and Russia. Kyrgyz is written in modified Cyrillic (Kyrgyzstan) and modified Arabic (China) scripts. A Latin script was used between 1928 and 1940 in Kyrgyzstan. After Kyrgyzstan gained independence in 1991, there was a popular idea among some of the Kyrgyz politicians to return Kyrgyz language back to the Latin alphabet, but this plan has never been implemented.
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