Malayalam is the language of Kerala, the southernmost state in India. Over 35 million people speak this language. Malayalam, one of the Dravidian languages, has its own alphabet and grammar. It originally developed from Tamil and uses many Tamil words. It has also adapted many words from Sanskrit, other Indian languages, and English.
Malagasy is the national language of Madagascar, along with French. Although the island nation of Madagascar is located just across the Mozambique Channel from the African continent, Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian family of languages. Anthropologists theorize that 2,000 years ago, the first humans to arrive in Madagascar were seafarers from Indonesia. Over the past two millennia, other African migrants and Arab traders settled in Madagascar to create the Malagasy people’s diverse and fascinating identity. Malagasy is a unique, yet thriving language.
Korean (한국어/조선말) is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. Approximately 78 million people speak Korean worldwide. For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu.
Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken primarily in Karnataka State in South India, and it has a literature that dates from the ninth century. Kannada has a population of about 38 million speakers, and it is spoken not only in Karnataka, but, to some extent, in the neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. The literacy rate in Kannada is estimated to be about 60%. Kannada is written with its own script, which is similar to the script used in Telugu. The script is also used for writing Tulu.
Judaeo-Spanish is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. In Israel, Judaeo-Spanish is commonly referred to as Ladino, and it is known locally as Judezmo, Espanyol, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, and Spaniolit, among others. As a Jewish language, it is primarily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, but it is also influenced by Arabic, Turkish, and to lesser extents, Greek and other languages of Sephardic exiles around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Japanese (日本語 Nihongo) is a language spoken by over 120 million people in Japan and in Japanese immigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists.
Irish, or Gaeilge, is one of two official languages in the Republic of Ireland, with English being the second. The number of native speakers, however, is relatively small -- approximately 1% of the population, or 30,000 people, speak Irish. Traditionally, the Irish language has been spoken most widely in separate communities along the west coast, clustered around small towns and villages such as Gaoth Dobhair (Co. Donegal), An Spidéal and Rosmuc (Co. Galway), and Dún Chaoin (Co. Kerry). Other centers of Irish speakers are An Rinn (Co.
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), a form of Malay, is spoken in Indonesia. It is an Austronesian language, a language family that extends across the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The term “Indonesian” is more political than linguistic, as Indonesian Malay is extremely similar to the Malay spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. It is also an important native language in the southern provinces of Thailand, in East Timor, and among the Malay people of Australia’s Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean.
The term "Igbo" often denotes community or the inhabited world, as in the expression, "Igbo bia lere (world or whole community, come see!)!" The Igbo language has dozens of geographical dialects and belongs to the Niger-Congo family / Benue-Congo group of languages. It is also the second most populous indigenous language of southern Nigeria.
Hungarian (Magyar) is an official language of Hungary, spoken by 10.5 million people (98% of the population). Substantial populations of speakers are also found in adjacent countries: Romania (2 million); the Czech and Slovak Republics (600,000); the former Yugoslavia (450,000); Ukraine (170,000); and Israel (150,000). A significant number of speakers live in the US (450,000) and smaller populations--under 20 thousand--live in Slovenia, Canada, and Austria.
