World Languages
Pick a language of the week — learn to say hello, find the countries on the globe, and challenge students to spot any borrowed words they already know in English!
Showing 50 languages · sorted by number of speakers
Mandarin Chinese
普通话
Mandarin has 4 different tones — saying the same syllable in a different tone gives it a completely different meaning!
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Hindi
हिन्दी
Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which reads from left to right. India has 22 officially recognised languages in total!
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Spanish
Español
Spanish is the official language of 20 countries — more countries than any other language in the world!
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Arabic
العربية
Arabic is written and read from right to left! It is also the root language of many English words including algebra, algorithm, coffee, and sugar.
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English
English
English has borrowed words from over 350 other languages — "pyjamas" comes from Hindi, "chocolate" from Nahuatl (Aztec), and "robot" from Czech!
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French
Français
French is spoken on every continent and is official in 29 countries. It was the global language of diplomacy for over 300 years!
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Malay / Indonesian
Bahasa Melayu / Bahasa Indonesia
Malay and Indonesian are so closely related that speakers can largely understand each other. Together they are spoken across the most islands of any language on Earth.
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Portuguese
Português
Over 80% of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil — not Portugal! Portuguese explorers spread the language to four continents during the Age of Discovery.
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Bengali
বাংলা
Bangladesh created International Mother Language Day after students were killed protesting for Bengali in 1952 — now celebrated by the UN on February 21 worldwide.
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Swahili
Kiswahili
"Hakuna Matata" (no worries), "Simba" (lion), and "Rafiki" (friend) from The Lion King are all real Swahili words!
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Urdu
اردو
Urdu and Hindi are so similar in spoken form that speakers can often understand each other perfectly — but they use completely different scripts!
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Russian
Русский
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet with 33 letters. Russian was the first language ever spoken in space — Yuri Gagarin's first words on orbit were in Russian!
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Japanese
日本語
Japanese uses three different writing systems at the same time! And the word "emoji" literally comes from Japanese — e (picture) + moji (character).
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German
Deutsch
German creates gloriously long compound words — "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" (63 letters) was once a real legal term!
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Nigerian Pidgin
Naijá
Nigerian Pidgin (Naijá) connects over 500 Nigerian tribes and ethnic groups — and is the language of Afrobeats, one of the world's fastest-growing music genres!
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Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet with extra accent marks to show 6 tones! The same syllable "ma" can mean mother, ghost, rice seedling, cheek, horse, or tomb.
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Marathi
मराठी
Marathi is the language of Mumbai and Maharashtra — home to Bollywood. The 13th-century poet Dnyaneshwar wrote one of India's greatest spiritual texts in Marathi!
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Tagalog / Filipino
Filipino
The Philippines has over 170 languages! Many Filipinos also speak English fluently — making them one of the largest English-speaking populations in Asia.
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Telugu
తెలుగు
Telugu is nicknamed the "Italian of the East" because every word ends in a vowel! The Tollywood film industry makes more films annually than any other Indian film industry.
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Tamil
தமிழ்
Tamil is one of the world's oldest living languages — with a continuous literary tradition of over 2,000 years. The ancient Sangam poems are still taught in Tamil schools today!
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Cantonese
廣東話
Cantonese has up to 9 tones and is the language of dim sum, kung fu cinema, and the world's Chinatowns — most overseas Chinese restaurants speak Cantonese!
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Turkish
Türkçe
Turkish is "agglutinative" — you can build one enormous word by sticking many meaning pieces together! It switched from Arabic to Latin script in 1928.
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Korean
한국어
The Korean alphabet Hangul was scientifically designed by King Sejong in 1443 — its letters are shaped to show where in the mouth the sounds are made!
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Farsi (Persian)
فارسی
Persian is one of the world's oldest living languages. It gave us "chess", "paradise", "bazaar", and "jasmine" in English, and Rumi remains the world's best-selling poet!
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Wu Chinese
吴语
Wu Chinese is the language of Shanghai — China's most international city. The Yangtze Delta's Wu-speaking region generates 25% of China's entire GDP!
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Hausa
Hausa
Hausa is the major trade language across West Africa and the Sahel, with BBC and Voice of America both broadcasting in Hausa to reach 70+ million listeners!
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Javanese
ꦧꦱꦗꦮ
The English word "java" (coffee) comes from Java island! Javanese has three separate levels of politeness and is home to the world's largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur.
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Italian
Italiano
Italian is the language of music! All musical directions worldwide — piano, forte, allegro, adagio — are Italian. If you've eaten pizza, pasta or gelato, you've spoken Italian!
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Punjabi
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Punjabi is the third most spoken language in Canada! Bhangra — Punjab's harvest dance — now influences global pop, and the Golden Temple feeds 100,000 visitors free food daily.
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Thai
ภาษาไทย
Thai script is written without spaces between words, has 5 tones, and 44 consonants. Thai New Year (Songkran) is celebrated with the world's biggest water fight!
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Kannada
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada has won more of India's top literary awards than any other language! And Bangalore — the Kannada-speaking capital of Karnataka — is India's tech capital.
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Gujarati
ગુજરાતી
Mahatma Gandhi spoke Gujarati! Gujarat has one of the world's most entrepreneurial diaspora communities — with major Gujarati communities from Leicester to Houston to Nairobi.
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Polish
Polski
Polish has seven grammatical cases and some notoriously tricky consonant clusters — "Szczebrzeszyn" is a real Polish town name!
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Yoruba
Yorùbá
Yoruba culture survived the slave trade to take root in Brazil and Cuba — the Candomblé and Santería religions are built on Yoruba spiritual traditions!
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Sundanese
Basa Sunda
The angklung — Sundanese bamboo musical instruments played together in orchestras — is UNESCO-listed! Learning to play it is taught in schools across West Java.
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Oromo
Afaan Oromoo
Oromo has one of Africa's oldest democratic governance systems — the Gadaa system is 500 years old and UNESCO-listed. Oromo athletes are among the world's greatest marathon runners!
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Pashto
پښتو
Pashto's landay poetry — just 22 syllables in two lines — has been used by Pashtun women to express love and courage for centuries. Pashtunwali demands that any guest must be fed and protected.
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Malayalam
മലയാളം
"Malayalam" is a perfect palindrome — it reads the same forwards and backwards! Kerala's literacy rate is nearly 100%, and the state is the world capital of Ayurvedic medicine.
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Xiang Chinese
湘语
The Avatar Mountains of Zhangjiajie, Hunan — the inspiration for James Cameron's Pandora — are in Xiang Chinese-speaking territory! Hunan is also famous for some of China's spiciest food.
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Amharic
አማርኛ
Amharic uses the Ge'ez script (Fidel), one of the world's oldest writing systems still in daily use — over 2,000 years old! Ethiopia is also the birthplace of coffee.
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Uzbek
O'zbek tili
Al-Khwarizmi — the mathematician who gave us "algebra" and "algorithm" — came from Uzbekistan! And Samarkand's Registan is considered one of the most beautiful architectural sights on Earth.
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Burmese
မြန်မာဘာသာ
The Burmese script's circular letters were designed for writing on banana leaves without tearing them! Myanmar has over 2,000 ancient Buddhist temples in Bagan alone.
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Ukrainian
Українська
Ukrainian's national colours (blue and yellow) represent the sky above golden wheat fields. Ukraine was historically called the "breadbasket of Europe" for its extraordinary agricultural land.
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Dutch
Nederlands
Dutch is the closest living relative of English — they share a common ancestor! Dutch gave English "cookie", "cosy", "boss", "yacht", "waffle", and Santa Claus (Sinterklaas).
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Somali
Soomaali
Somali only got an official written form in 1972 — before that it was an entirely oral tradition. Somali oral poets are called "gabaye" and are deeply respected in society.
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Nepali
नेपाली
Nepal's word for Mount Everest is "Sagarmatha" — meaning "Goddess of the Sky". Nepal is home to 8 of the world's 10 highest mountains!
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Sinhala
සිංහල
The Sinhala script's rounded, curling letters were designed to be written on palm leaves without splitting them — beauty born from practical necessity!
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Mongolian
Монгол хэл
Mongolian is still written in a traditional vertical script (top to bottom) for official documents. Mongolian throat singing can produce two pitches at the same time!
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Welsh
Cymraeg
Welsh is one of Europe's oldest living languages — spoken for 1,500 years! The word "penguin" is thought to come from Welsh "pen gwyn" (white head).
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Māori
Te Reo Māori
Te Reo Māori was nearly lost — but Māori language nests (Kōhanga Reo) saved it. The model of immersive language revival schools is now used all over the world!
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Explore the Countries Behind the Languages
Can Do Kids Worldwide covers 100+ countries with Explorer Guides, music, quizzes, and virtual travel. Every language comes alive when you explore the culture behind it.