Hindi and Urdu are generally considered to be one spoken language with two different literary traditions. That means that Hindi and Urdu speakers who shop in the same markets have no problems understanding each other -- they'd both say yeh kitne kaa hay for 'How much is it? ' -- but the written form for Hindi will be यह कितने का है? And the Urdu one will be یہ کتنے کا ہے؟ Hindi is written from left to right in the Devanagari script, and is the official language of India, along with English. Urdu, on the other hand, is written from right to left in the Nastaliq script and is the national language of Pakistan.
It's also one of the official languages of the Indian states of Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. Considered as one, these tongues constitute the second most spoken language in the world, sometimes called Hindustani. In their daily lives, Hindi and Urdu speakers communicate in their 'different' languages without major problems.
Both Hindi and Urdu developed from Classical Sanskrit, which appeared in the Indus Valley at about the start of the Common Era. The first old Hindi poetry was written in the year 769 AD, and by the European Middle Ages it became known as 'Hindvi'. Muslim Turks invaded the Punjab in 1027 and took control of Delhi in 1193. They paved the way for the Islamic Mughal Empire, which ruled northern India from the 16th century until it was defeated by the British Raj in the mid-19th century. It was at this time that the language of this book began to take form, a mixture of Hindvi grammar with Arabic, Persian and Turkish vocabulary. The Muslim speakers of Hindvi began to write in the Arabic script, creating Urdu, while the Hindu population incorporated the new words but continued to write in Devanagari script.
The two official languages exert an influence on the language spoken at home. In 2011, while 20.6% of the population reported a mother tongue other than English or French,Footnote 9 most of them reported also speaking English or French at home. In fact, only 6.2% of the population reported speaking a language other than English or French as their only home language. According to Wikipedia.org, Haitian Creole is commonly referred to as Creole. It is a French-based creole language and is spoken by 10–12 million people worldwide. It is one of the two official languages of Haiti and is the native language of the major population.
The language became popular due to the contact between French settlers and enslaved Africans. Its grammar is that of a West African and it is inspired by the Volta-Congo language. The language has wide influences from Spanish, English, Portuguese, Taino, and other West African languages.
It is similar to standard French but has its distinctive grammar. Haitian Creole has elements of the Romance group of Indo-European languages. The use of superstratum makes it similar to French, and African languages. There are many theories regarding the formation of the Haitian Creole language. Urdu, which was often referred to by the British administrators in India as the Hindustani language, was promoted in colonial India by British policies to counter the previous emphasis on Persian. Urdu replaced Persian as the official language of India in 1837 and was made co-official, along with English.
Native language of the Svans , who inhabit southern slopes and valleys of the High Caucasus in the region of Svaneti, located in north-western Georgia. The language, called in Svan Lushnu, is one of the Kartvelian language family, that includes also Georgian, Megrelian and Laz. Lack of any support from Georgian state and the low prestige of Svan have resulted in an increased rate of language decay and endangerment. Likewise the Georgians the Svans are of Christian Orthodox denomination, although their traditions include also numerous remnants of pre-Christian beliefs. The Svan language is written at present with the letters of Georgian alphabet, although in the past it also used Latin or Cyrillic alphabets.
Four languages shown in Figure 1 showed a slight decrease in the number of persons who reported speaking them most often at home during this period. Three of them, namely Italian, Polish and Greek are languages spoken mainly by early immigration groups and their descendants. The decrease in the number of people who reported 'Chinese' (n.o.s. – not otherwise specified) mainly reflects the fact that more people tended to report a specific Chinese language such as Mandarin or Cantonese in 2011. Botswana has both an official language and a national language , and you'll find both spoken throughout the country if you visit.
English is used for official documents and formal written communications, whereas Setswana is primarily used as a spoken language. Including English and Setswana, there are over 30 different languages spoken throughout diverse Botswana. The Naxi language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and is divided into several dialects. With a number of speaker reaching 309 thousand – including ca. 100 thousand monolinguals – Naxi is not considered a particularly endangered.
Naxi has been written with a unique pictographic Dongba script. A family of languages spoken by at least 6 million people in Mesoamerica. The ancient Mayan writing system probably shows the independent invention of writing on the American continent .
Hebrew belongs to the Semitic group within the Afro-Asiatic language family. Classical Hebrew has been used for centuries in religious texts of the Jewish community. Modern Hebrew , one of the official languages of Israel and spoken by 5.3 Mio.
People, is one of the most impressive examples of language revival. It was created in the 19th century on the base of Classical Hebrew. A west Germanic language, one of the largest languages in the world by native speakers with official status in several European countries. The share of the Quebec population whose mother tongue was neither English nor French and who reported speaking English most often at home in 2011 was 19.7%, compared with 20.3% in 2006 and 22.1% in 2001. Those who reported speaking English on a regular basis as a second language in the home represented 10.2% of that population in 2011, compared with 11.3% in 2006 and 11.9% in 2001.
Finally, during the same period, the proportion of those who reported speaking English and French equally most often at home went from 1.9% in 2001, to 1.5% in 2006 and 2.5% in 2011. These two languages were also spoken equally on a regular basis (in addition to an 'other' language spoken most often) by 2.9% of this population in 2011 compared with 2.3% in 2006 and 2.7% in 2001. The list presented here comes from the CIA World Factbook, a widely recognized source of data on countries around the globe. The table below lists the official language of each country, if there is one, as well as other languages spoken. In selected countries, the percent of the population that speaks each language is also given.
This covers all of the major recognized languages in each country. Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialised contexts that rely on academic or technical vocabulary. In a longer conversation, differences in formal vocabulary and pronunciation of some Urdu phonemes are noticeable, though many native Hindi speakers also pronounce these phonemes. At a phonological level, speakers of both languages are frequently aware of the Perso-Arabic or Sanskrit origins of their word choice, which affects the pronunciation of those words.
Urdu speakers will often insert vowels to break up consonant clusters found in words of Sanskritic origin, but will pronounce them correctly in Arabic and Persian loanwords. As a result of religious nationalism since the partition of British India and continued communal tensions, native speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert that they are distinct languages. Urdu is the sole national, and one of the two official languages of Pakistan . It is spoken and understood throughout the country, whereas the state-by-state languages are the provincial languages, although only 7.57% of Pakistanis speak Urdu as their first language.
Its official status has meant that Urdu is understood and spoken widely throughout Pakistan as a second or third language. It is used in education, literature, office and court business, although in practice, English is used instead of Urdu in the higher echelons of government. Article 251 of the Pakistani Constitution mandates that Urdu be implemented as the sole language of government, though English continues to be the most widely used language at the higher echelons of Pakistani government.
No region in Pakistan uses Urdu as its mother tongue, though it is spoken as the first language of Muslim migrants in Pakistan who left India after independence in 1947. Other communities, most notably the Punjabi elite of Pakistan, have adopted Urdu as a mother tongue and identify with both an Urdu speaker as well as Punjabi identity. Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India. It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan, and together with English as the main languages of instruction, although the people from differing provinces may have different native languages. Note that people often call this language simply Quechua – but, to be precise, "Quechua" is more of a language family than one specific language. "Southern Quechua" is used to refer to the largest grouping of mutually intelligible dialects in the Quechua family.
An immersion language course integrating the experience, observations and impressions of students living abroad with a French family . Emphasis on development of language proficiency and cultural awareness. Enhances speaking, reading, writing proficiency and the ability to communicate with native speakers. Develops reading, writing, listening and speaking skills and helps with comprehension of written and audio texts. Students can use their knowledge of the Arabic language to clearly express their personal views in a meaningful and well-structured language.
The Mixtec language continuum comprises several indigenous languages spoken by around 550,000 people in southern Mexico. Iwaidja, Ilgar and Maung are Iwaidjan languages from Northern Territory, Australia. It is suggested that Iwaidjan languages be grouped together with other languages in the Arnhem Land language family. Iwaidja and Maung are highly endangered languages spoken by only around 200 people each. Speakers, Hungarian is the largest language of the Finno-Ugrian family. It is the national language of Hungary and one of the official languages of the European Union.
French belongs to the Romance group of the Indo-European language family. It is one of the largest languages of the world, especially if native and second language users are counted together. It has official status in various countries in Europe and Africa as well as in Canada.
French is also a language of international communication in several European and worldwide organisations. Bislama, also called Bichelamar, is a creole language, one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" , and the second language of much of the rest of the country's residents.
The same phenomenon is observed with regards to English, although with a proportion of 70%. Conversely, English was reported as the language spoken most often at home by more than 2.5 million people who also spoke a language other than French at home on a regular basis. In the Ottawa - Gatineau CMA, almost 141,000 persons reported speaking an immigrant language most often at home.
The vast majority of this population (87%) lived in the Ontario portion of the CMA and 13% lived in the Quebec portion. On the Ontario side, Arabic, Chinese (n.o.s.), Spanish and Mandarin were the leading immigrant home languages. On the Quebec side, Arabic once again led, followed by Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese (n.o.s.). In Montréal, 626,000 people reported speaking an immigrant language most often at home. Among Canada's CMAs, Montréal had the largest population of speakers of these two languages .
Mauritian Créole, which is spoken by the majority of the population, is considered to be the native language of the country and is used most often in informal settings. There is no official written standard for Mauritian Creole; words are often spelt differently from standard French during verbal communication. When groups of people speaking different languages come together and intermix, a common improvised second language, called a pidgin, occasionally develops.
It allows speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages to communicate with each other. Subsequently, such a language can replace the settlers' original language and become the first language of their descendants. The difference between pidgins and creoles is that people grow up speaking creoles as their first language, whereas nobody speaks pidgin as their first language. There is no single accepted theory that explains the genesis of creole languages. Some who are from a non-Urdu background now can read and write only Urdu.
With such a large number of people speaking Urdu, the language has acquired a peculiar Pakistani flavour further distinguishing it from the Urdu spoken by native speakers, resulting in more diversity within the language. As of 2021, Urdu is the 21st-largest first language spoken in the world, with approximately 61.9 million native speakers. According to 2018 estimates by Ethnologue, Urdu is the 10th-most widely spoken language in the world, with 230 million total speakers, including those who speak it as a second language.
If spoken colloquial contexts are broadly taken into account, the Hindustani language (Hindi–Urdu) is the 3rd-most spoken language in the world. Although the official language of Trinidad and Tobago is English, the most commonly spoken languages are Trinidadian Creole English and Tobagonian Creole English. Trinidadian usage includes a large number of local words and expressions.
There is no standard orthography for the written language; written forms which attempt to capture the sound of the language tend to converge. Besides, French is also used both as an official language and as a medium in education. It is considered to be one of the principal languages of Mauritius. Mauritius shares this distinction of being a both English and French-speaking country with Canada, Cameroon and Vanuatu.
Here are a few useful phrases and words in French that might come in handy. A member of the Chadic family, Hausa is the biggest language in Nigeria, and a national language of Niger. Across wide swathes of western and central Africa, Hausa is used as a trade language. The largest of the Slavic languages, Russian is the official language of four countries . It's also widely spoken in many other countries of the former Soviet Union, and has official status in numerous sub-national territories.
Classical Tibetan is the language of texts from the 10th – 12th centuries, written in the Tibetan script. It is also the basis for Modern Standard Tibetan, the official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China. Tibetic languages form a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken by over a million people, mainly in Estonia where it has official status.
