Previously used an Arabic script but through its Dutch colonizers’ influence switched to Roman, adding é, è, ë, ö, and ô.Achang (Ngochang or Maingtha) ✧ ACN ✧ Sino-Tibetan, Lolo-Burmese, 70,000 speakers in Northern Myanmar and China’s Yunan Province. Of its many dialects, Huasteca Nāhuatl is the most heavily spoken.Na [Yongning] ✧ NRU ✧ Sino-Tibetan, Qiangic, spoken in Yongning township, Lijiang municipality in China’s Yunnan Province.

Along with French, Sango is an official language of the Central African Republic.Sangu {Tanzania} ✧ SBP ✧ Niger-Congo family, Northeast Bantu, Bena-Kinga, 75,000 speakers in Tanzania’s Mbeya Region. Charlemagne spoke a dialect of Frankish.Frisian [West] ✧ FRY ✧ Indo-European, West Germanic, considered to be the closest foreign language to English. 22,000 on the southeast shore of the Black Sea. The character ɳ in these Tibetan transcriptions represents an n sound with the tongue curled backwards.Tibetan [Written] ✧ BOD ✧ Written Tibetan quite famously diverges from its spoken form. The other chief dialect is Hill Mari, which in contrast to Meadow relies on Russian/Neo-Latin Gregorian month terms.Marshallese ✧ MAH ✧ Malayo-Polynesian, two main dialects, spoken by 44,000 on the Marshall Islands.Mashi (Kwandu) ✧ MHO ✧ A Niger-Congo, Bantu language spoken by 22,000 in parts of Angola, DR Congo, and Zambia.Matlatzinca ✧ MAT ✧ From the Oto-Manguean family, spoken by 650 in and around San Francisco Oxtotilpa, Mexico. Not mutually intelligible with Persian.Mbuko ✧ MHW ✧ Afro-Asiatic, Chadic. 200,000 speakers, Nigeria. Suriname, 90,000 speakers.Sardinian [Campidanese] ✧ SRD or SRO ✧ 500,000 speakers in Sardinia in the Cagliari metro area and elsewhere in Oristano, South Sardinia, and Nuoro. Features “hard” versus “soft” words. Heavy Vietnamese influence.Paicî ✧ PRI ✧ Malayo-Polynesian, Southern Oceanic, Northern New Caledonian, 7300 speakers on New Caledonia’s east coast and inland valleys. around the 17th century.
It serves as a lingua franca, though French is gradually displacing it.Bezhta (Kapucha) ✧ KAP ✧ Preliterate Northeast Caucasian language spoken by around 6800 in Southern Dagestan.Biete (Biate) ✧ BIU ✧ A Sino-Tibetan, Kuki-Chin language spoken by 30,000 in northeast India (Meghalaya, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, and Tripura).

Tonal. One and half a million speakers.Tunica ✧ TUN ✧ Language isolate native to central Louisiana, extinct since the 1948 death of Mr. Sesostrie Youchigant, who worked with linguist Mary Haas, but now spoken as an acquired language by 32 people through the efforts of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe. Its native writing system, called Rongorongo, remains undeciphered.Rawang (Krangku) ✧ RAW ✧ Sino-Tibetan family, Tibeto-Burman, Nungish, 63,000 speakers in India and Northern Myanmar. Italian has largely displaced it.Circassian (Cherkess) [Adyghe] ✧ ADY ✧ Northwest Caucasian. There is also an Eastern dialect spoken in Ghana.Kutenai (Ktunaxa) ✧ KUT ✧ Language isolate spoken by 100 in British Columbia, Montana, and Idaho.

Plural pronouns specify inclusive or exclusive of the person being spoken to.Tamil ✧ TAM ✧ Dravidian family, India. Its last first-language speakers were Maud McCauley Rowe (d. 1978), Ralph Pepper (d. 1982), and Walter Kekahbah (d. 1983).Kapingamarangi (Kirinit) ✧ KPG ✧ Polynesian language with around 3000 speakers on the Kapingamarangi and Pohnpei Islands of MicronesiaKaqchikel ✧ CAK ✧ Mayan family, 450,000 speakers in Guatemala’s Central Highlands. Endangered. In descending order of frequency, Evenki appears in Roman, Cyrillic, and Mongolian script.Ewe ✧ EWO ✧ Niger-Congo family, tonal, spoken by 5 million in western Africa. Unlike many languages it uses both the voiced and unvoiced th sounds (IPA symbols ð, θ).Albanian [Tosk] (Arberesh) ✧ ALS ✧ Albanian dialect spoken in Italy, partial interintelligibility with its Gheg dialect above.Aleut [Atkan] ✧ ALE ✧ Eskimo-Aleut family, Aleut branch, native to the Alaskan Peninsula and the Aleutian, Commander, and Pribilof Islands. Closely related to Nkore (q.v. Rich consonant inventory but like others of its family lacks an f sound.Tshangla (Sharchop) ✧ TSJ ✧ Sino-Tibetan, Bodish, spoken by 170,000 in Bhutan’s Trashigang district, Tibet, and Arunachal Pradesh in India. Agglutinative.Inupiaq [Malemiut] ✧ IPK ✧ Inupiaq dialect native to northwest Alaska’s Kotzebue Sound, around the towns of Deering, Kivalina, Kotzebue, and KobukIraqw ✧ IRK ✧ Afro-Asiatic, Cushitic, spoken by 600,000 in the Tanzania’s Arusha Region. Kingdom of Tonga, 187,000 speakers. For numerals greater than four, they switch to Spanish.Achuar-Shiwiar [Shiwiar Chicham] ✧ ACU ✧ The other dialect of Achuar-ShiwiarAdele (Gidire) ✧ ADE ✧ Niger-Congo family, Kwa, geographically of the Ghana Togo Mountain languages, 37,000 speakers in Togo and Ghana. 500,000 speakers in the central Urals. 80,000 speakers on French islands of Mayotte. It differs also in employing a vocative case, i.e., an inflection indicating the subject is being addressed.Unami [Lenape] ✧ UNM ✧ Nominally extinct Algonquian language of the New Jersey area Lenape peopleUpper Chinook [Clackamas] ✧ WAC ✧ From the Chinookan family of northwest Oregon. Unlike Sorani below, Kurmamji usually appears in Roman characters.Kurdish [Kurmanji/North/Ezdîkî] ✧ KMR ✧ The Yazidi people speak Kurmanji Kurdish. The English word “skunk” likely derives from Abenaki.Abkhazian (Abkhaz) ✧ ABK ✧ Northwest Caucasian, closely related to Abaza above. Four noun cases; three genders; definite articles se, sēo, þæt, and þā. ), natively extinct since 1996 though there are some 40 mostly older semi-fluent speakers.

The 2015 Venezuelan film Gone with the River is in Warao.Waray-Waray [Premodern] ✧ WAR ✧ Malayo-Polynesian, Central Visayan, 2. Lewis and Clark’s translator, Sacagawea, was Shoshone.Shuar ✧ JIV ✧ Jivaroan family, 35,000 jungle-dwelling speakers in Ecuador’s Morona-Santiago and Pastaza Provinces.