Polish is the official language of Poland and is spoken by approximately 40 million people worldwide. It has been designated as one of official languages of the European Union since 2004. Polish is the second most spoken Slavic language, after Russian, and it is also one of the most difficult languages to learn due to very complicated grammar. Standard Polish is spoken by all Polish speakers, though there are many dialects that are unique to the various regions of Poland. Native Polish speakers have no difficulties understanding all the variations because there are few differences from the standard Polish. Read more interesting facts about Polish in our November 2008...
Oriya is an Indian language mainly spoken in the Indian state of Orissa. It is one of the 22 languages officially recognized in India. In total, there are approximately 31 million Oriya speakers. The dialects of Oriya can be divided into seven major groups. One of the dialects, Mughalbandi Oriya, is considered as proper or standard Oriya due to literary...
A North Germanic language, Norwegian derived from the Indo-European language family. Swedish and Danish have similar historical background with Norwegian as Danish was the official language of Norway from the 16th to the 19th centuries. There are about 5 million Norwegian speakers in the world. Norwegian can be categorized into 5 main dialects which are quite different from each other, especially in the two official writing forms regulated by the Norwegian Language Council. Even some native speakers sometimes find it difficult to read Nynorsk “new Norwegian” and Bokmal “book...
Nepali is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language not only of the country of Nepal, but is also one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also widely spoken in Bhutan and Burma. There are around 15 million native Nepali speakers but also as many as 126 listed languages /dialects spoken in Nepal. Nepali is categorized into three main dialects: Eastern, Central, and Western. However, differences are relatively unclear because there is little historical separation or development as in other...
Mongolian is spoken mainly in Mongolia. It belongs to the Altaic language family and is most closely related to Turkish. In fact, many people in the western part of Mongolia speak a dialect of Turkish. The total number of speakers in the world is estimated at 5 million. The most recognised dialect is Khalkha, which is spoken in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar and other parts of Mongolia. There are estimated to be over 2 million words in Mongolian, and eight different writing systems have been used throughout its history. In the early 20th century, both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were adopted. The classic writing style which is written vertically was used until the Mongolian government decided to abolish it in 1940. However, since 1994 efforts have been made to bring it back. In fact, it is taught in some schools and used for decorative purposes by artists and...
The official language of Moldova is Moldavian, spoken by about 2.6 million people. However, Ukrainian, Russian and Gagauz are also widely spoken there. It is closely related to Romanian but on the other hand, it is said that Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian because the spoken language is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in north-eastern Romania. Therefore there is much debate about whether Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian, or a separate language. According to linguistic studies, it is considered the same language as Romanian. However, the constitution of Moldova has indentified Moldavian as the official language of the country rather than Romanian. Also, Moldovan people have long alleged their linguistic identity from Romania. Many scholars have been researching this interesting language...
