Author Archives: Aboubacar Douno

Mandarin (traditional Chinese: 官話; simplified Chinese: 官话; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally “speech of officials”), or Beifanghua (simplified Chinese: 北方话; traditional Chinese: 北方話; pinyin: Běifānghuà; literally “Northern Dialect(s)”), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the…

Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is a Latin-derived Romance language that originated in northern Spain, from whence it gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, and subsequently evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken to Africa, the Americas and Asia Pacific when the Spanish Empire was established between the 15th…

English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the first language for most people in the Anglophone Caribbean, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States (sometimes referred to as the Anglosphere). It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language…

Arabic (الْعَرَبيّة al-ʿarabiyyah or just عَرَبيْ ʿarabī) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. Classified as Central Semitic, it is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and has its roots in a Proto-Semitic common ancestor. Modern Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27 sub-languages in ISO 639-3.…

Russian (русский язык, transliteration: russkiy yazyk, Russian) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or, according to some authorities, four) living members of the East Slavic…

The German language (Deutsch) is a West Germanic language and one of the world’s major languages. German is closely related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. Around the world, German is spoken by ~100 million native speakers and also ~80 million non-native speakers, and Standard German is widely taught in schools and universities in…

French (français) is today spoken by about 350 million people around the world as either a native or a second language, with significant populations in 54 countries. French is a descendant of the Latin of the Roman Empire, as are languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Romanian. Its development was also influenced by…

Italian (italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino. It is also widely spoken in Vatican City, although Latin is the official language. Standard Italian, adopted by…

Japanese (日本語 / にほんご , Nihongo (help·info)?) is a language spoken by over 140 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities around the world. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate…