Indo-European
Latin: Roman empire, scholarly language up to 19th century.
Germanic
Afrikaans: Language derived from Dutch. It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia.
6½ million speakers.
Danish: North Germanic language used mostly in Denmark and Northern Germany.
6 million speakers.
German: West Germanic language, official language of Germany and Austria, and one of the four official languages in Switzerland.
105 million native speakers.
English: West Germanic language, official language of Great Britian, United States, Australia and many other counties.
First language of 300-400 million people.
Faroese: Faroese or Faeroese, West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese in Denmark and elsewhere.
Frisian (West): West Frisian, a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands.
360,000–700,000 speakers.
Icelandic: North Germanic language, the language of Iceland.
320,000 speakers.
Luxembourgish: Moselle Franconian language spoken mainly in Luxembourg.
About 390,000 speakers.
Dutch: West Germanic language spoken in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname.
Over 22 million speakers
Norwegian: North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway. The language includes two official written forms:
Bokmål ("Book language", the majority (c. 90%) written form)
Nynorsk (literally "New Norwegian", a written form of the language created in the 19th century from traditional Norwegian dialects, and used by about 10% of the population of Norway).
For the elements, only the name for Copper differs in both forms: Kobber in Bokmål and Kopar in Nynorsk.
5 million speakers.
Swedish: North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland.
~ 10 million speakers.
Italic
Aragonese: Romance language spoken in a number of local varieties over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon. Between 10,000 and 30,000 speakers
Aromanian: Also Macedo-Romanian
Bulgaria, southern Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
300,000 speakers.
Asturian: Romance language of the West Iberian group, spoken in the Spanish province of Asturias.
150,000–400,000 speakers.
Catalan: Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community.
7.7 million speakers
Spanish: Romance language which is the main language in Spain and most of Latin America.
First language of 329 million speakers.
French: Romance language globally spoken by about 110 million people as a first language, mainly in France, Québec, Switzerland, Belgium, and French speaking Africa.
Friulian: Romance language belonging to the Rhaetian family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy.
Around 800,000 speakers.
Galician: Language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain.
3-4 million speakers.
Italian: Romance language spoken primarily in Italy and Switzerland.
70 million native speakers.
Lombard: Member of the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland (names written in koiné uçidentala, urtugrafìa ünificada).
3.5 million speakers.
Occitan: Romance language spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain.
Between 1 and 3.7 million speakers.
Portuguese: Romance language, spoken in Portugal and Brazil.
≈200 million native speakers.
Romanian - Moldovan: Romanian and Moldovan (Moldavian)
Romance language spoken primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia. Romanian and Moldovan are identical, but for political reasons both names are in use.
24 million speakers.
Slavic
Bulgarian: Official language of Bulgaria, written in Cyrillic script.
9 million speakers.
Bosnian: South Slavic language spoken primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The language uses the Latin alphabet although the Cyrillic alphabet is also accepted.
2,700,000 speakers.
Belarusian: Official language of Belarus, written in Cyrillic script.
4 to 9 million speakers.
Czech: Majority language in the Czech Republic.
12 million speakers.
Croatian: South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Over 6 million speakers.
Kashubian: Kashubian or Cassubian, one of the Lechitic languages, a subgroup of the Slavic languages, spoken by 50,000 people in Pomerania (Northern Poland).
Macedonian: Official language of Republic of Macedonia and part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages.
Written in Cyrillic script.
2.3 – 3 million speakers.
Polish: West Slavic language[4] and the official language of Poland.
40 million speakers.
Russian: East Slavic languages, spoken in Russia.
Written in Cyrillic script.
About 164 million speakers (as primary language)
Slovak: West Slavic language, spoken in Slovakia.
over 7 million speakers.
Slovenian: South Slavic language, spoken in Slovenia.
Approximately 2.4 million speakers.
Serbian: South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia.
Written in Cyrillic and in Latin script.
Over 12 million speakers.
Ukrainian: Language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine.
Written in Cyrillic script.
Approximately 42 up to 47 million speakers.
Baltic
Lithuanian: Official state language of Lithuania.
4-5 million speakers.
Latvian: Official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish.
1.5 million speakers.
Samogitian: Dialect of the Lithuanian language spoken mostly in Samogitia (western part of Lithuania).
~500,000 speakers.
Celtic
Breton: Celtic language of Bretagne (France).
200,000-300,000 speakers.
Welsh: Member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales.
750,000 speakers
Gaelic (Irish): Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland.
550,000 speakers (fully native speakers estimated 10,000 up to 80,000 people).
Gaelic (Scottish): Member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, spoken in Scotland (Western Isles Islands Area and Skye & Lochalsh District).
60,000 speakers.
Gaelic (Manx): Goidelic language spoken on the Isle of Man.
Extinct, but since 1974 revived and now with about a hundred competent speakers, including a small number of children who are new native speakers. 1,689 people (2.2% total population) professing some knowledge of the language.
Cornish: Cornwall (England), revived language with ~ 378 fluent speakers in everyday conversation and 2,900 in simple conversation.
Other Indo-European
Greek: Independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken in Greece and Cyprus.
Written in Greek script.
13 million speakers.
Armenian: Official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Written in its own script, the Armenian alphabet.
6.7 million speakers.
Albanian: Indo-European language spoken primarily in Albania and Kosovo.
nearly 6 million speakers.
Indo-Iranian/Iranian
Kurdish: Language spoken by Kurds in western Asia (Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq).
16-26 million speakers.
Ossetian: East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains.
Written in the Cyrillic alphabet.
c. 525,000 speakers.
Tajik: Modern variety of Persian spoken in Central Asia. Most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan and is written in Cyrillic script.
Approximately 4,380,000 speakers.
Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan
Bengali: Eastern Indo-Aryan language, native to Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam.
Written in Bengali script.
Nearly 230 million speakers.
Persian: Iranian language, spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.
ca. 60-70 million speakers. Written in Arabic script.
Gujarati: Gujarātī, an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 46 million people in the Indian states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
Written in Gujarati script.
46.1 million speakers.
Hindi: Indo-Aryan language, or a dialect continuum of languages, spoken in northern and central India.
Written in devanagari script. ~ 490 million speakers.
Finno-Ugric
Estonian: Official language of Estonia.
1.1 million speakers.
Finnish: Member of the Finno-Ugric language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92%).
6 million speakers.
Hungarian: Uralic language (more specifically a Finno-Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary .
15 million speakers.
Komi: Komi-Permyak, Finno-Ugric language spoken in Komi-Permyak Okrug of Perm Krai, Russia.
116,000 speakers.
Mari: The Mari language is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation and belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family.
600,000 speakers.
Moksha: Member of the Finno-Volgaic subdivision of the Uralic languages and the majority language in the western part of Mordovia (a federal republic in central Russia).
Written in Cyrillic characters. About 500,000 native speakers.
Võro: Language belonging to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages, spoken in the historical Võru County (south-eastern Estonia).
70,000 speakers.
Altaic
Azerbaijani: (also Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkic, Azerbaijani Turkic) is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran.
20-31 million speakers.
Chuvash: Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Republic of Chuvashia and adjacent areas, written in Cyrillic script.
1.64 million speakers.
Kazakh: Kazakh (also Qazaq), Turkic language, spoken in Kazakhstan.
Written in Cyrillic script.
12 million speakers.
Kyrgyz: Kyrgyz or Kirghiz, Turkic language, official language in Kyrgyzstan.
Written with Cyrillic script.
Approx. 5 million speakers.
Mongolian: Best-known member of the Mongolic language family. It has about 5.7 million speakers, including over 90% of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China.
Written in Cyrillic script.
Turkish: Official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus.
about 70 million speakers.
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Uyghur: Uyghur is a Turkic language with about 10 million speakers mainly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.
Traditionally written with the Arabic script. The Chinese government introduced a Roman script in 1969, but the Arabic script was reintroduced in 1983, and the Cyrillic script currently used in the former Soviet Union
Uzbek: Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan.
The Latin script has been officially re-introduced, although the use of Cyrillic is still widespread (most of the 'new' element names are transcriptions from the Cyrillic names in Russion). About 23.5 million native speakers.
Other (Europe)
Basque: Navarre and in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (Comunidad Autónoma Vasca) (N Spain).
C. 1 million speakers.
Georgian: Official language of Georgia.
Written in mkhedruli ("military") script.
3.9 million speakers.
Afro-Asiatic
Arabic: Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language.
Written in Arabic script.
Hebrew: Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel.
Written in Hebrew script.
Maltese: Semitic language spoken by Maltese people and the national language of Malta.
It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet.
371,900 speakers.
Sino-Tibetan
Hakka: Hakka or Kejia is one of the main subdivisions of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka people and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world.
34 million speakers.
Japanese: Japonic language spoken mainly in Japan.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (漢字), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名) and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名).
130 million speakers.
Korean: Official language of Korea, both South and North.
Written in Hangul, the Korean alphabet
78 million speakers.
Thai: Official language of Thailand.
Written in the Thai alphabet.
60-64 million speakers.
Vietnamese: Official language of Vietnam.
70-73 million native speakers.
Chinese: Language family consisting of languages mutually intelligible to varying degrees.
Approx 1.3 billion speakers.
Malayo-Polynesian
Cebuano: Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines.
About 20 million speakers.
The names of the elements are based on Spanish.
Indonesian: Indonesian is a standardized dialect of Malay, official language of Indonesia.
17 million native speakers
Māori: Eastern Polynesian languages, the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand
ca. 160,000 speakers.
Malay: Language of Malaysia and Brunei, lingua franca of the Malay Archipelago.
Over 176 million speakers.
Other Asiatic
Malayalam: one of the four major Dravidian languages of South India and official language in the state of Kerala.
36 million speakers.
Tamil: Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Puducherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore.
Tamil is written its own script.
66 million speakers.
Africa
Lingala: 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).
ca. 2 million native speakers, between 8 and 30 million second-language speakers
Sesotho: Sesotho or Southern Sotho, a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language.
At least 5 million speakers.
Swahili: Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Swahili is also a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
5-10 million speakers
North-America
Nahuatl: group of related languages and dialects of the Nahuan (traditionally called 'Aztecan') branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Collectively they are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico.
South-America
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Quechua: Native American language family spoken primarily in the Andes of South America.
6 to 8 million speakers.
Creole
Sranan Tongo: Creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 400,000 people in Suriname.
Artificial
Esperanto: Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language.
New names
Atomic Elements: Names with a maximum of 8 positions for "use in computer filing systems." 3-letter symbols are "phonetic, computer usable atomic symbols" and usable as "3-letter computer file extensions for the IUPAC chemical filing system" This system is invented by Dr.Hugh Manly, who is the owner of atomic-elements.info
Dorseyville: New names given by the students of Team 8D of the Dorseyville Middle School, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2001.
Their new element names reflect one of the properties of that particular element More information