LanguageDB
118 languages from every corner of the globe. From the most spoken tongues to endangered gems, a guide to how humanity communicates.
Most Spoken
English
The most widely spoken language in the world by total speakers. Official language of 67 countries. T...
Mandarin Chinese
The most spoken language by native speakers. Official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Has ...
Hindi
The third most spoken language in the world. Official language of India alongside English. Uses the ...
Spanish
The fourth most spoken language. Official in 20 countries. Descended from Vulgar Latin brought by Ro...
French
The language of diplomacy for centuries. Official in 29 countries, mostly in Africa. The Academie fr...
Modern Standard Arabic
The liturgical language of Islam. Written right-to-left. The root system uses 3 consonants to genera...
Unique Writing Systems
Japanese
Uses three writing systems simultaneously. Has no genetic relationship to any other major language f...
Korean
Hangul was invented by King Sejong in 1443 and is considered one of the most logical writing systems...
Georgian
Has its own unique alphabet with 33 letters. Not related to any other major language family. One of ...
Armenian
Has its own unique alphabet invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD. An independent branch of Indo-Eur...
Tibetan
The language of Tibetan Buddhism. The script was created in the 7th century. Has a classical form us...
Khmer
The language of the Angkor Wat civilization. Not tonal, unlike most Southeast Asian languages. The s...
Amharic
The official language of Ethiopia. Uses the Ge'ez script with 231 characters representing consonant-...
Hebrew
The only successfully revived dead language. Was not spoken natively for 1,700 years until Eliezer B...
Language Isolates & Unique
Basque
The only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe. Not related to any other known lang...
Korean
Hangul was invented by King Sejong in 1443 and is considered one of the most logical writing systems...
Hungarian
One of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. Has 18 grammatical cases. Agglutinative ...
Finnish
Famous for having 15 grammatical cases. No grammatical gender, not even he/she distinction. Related ...
Malagasy
The language of Madagascar. Genetically closest to languages spoken 7,000 km away in Borneo. Proof o...
Hawaiian
Nearly went extinct but revived through immersion schools. Has only 13 phonemes, the smallest of any...