Arabic
The Arabic language group
Arabic is a Semitic language with about 221 million speakers in
Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea,
Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali,
Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia,
Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Arabic has a distinctive alphabet
and, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.
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Chinese
The Chinese language group
The word "Chinese" does not refer to a single and distinct
language shared by all Chinese populations. Rather, it denotes a
family of related languages, or dialects, first spoken in different
regions of South and Southeast Asia. Traditionally, the main dialect
groups of Chinese are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, and Hakka.
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Japanese (Kokugo/Nihongo)
The Japanese language group
Japanese is spoken by more than 125 million people, most of whom
live in Japan. There are also many speakers of Japanese in the Ryukyu
Islands, Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and parts of the United States. While
Japanese might look similar to Chinese at first glance, because
of the use of similar characters, the two languages are not related.
Their grammar bears no resemblance, and the roots of the two languages
are totally independent. Japanese is often regarded today as a mixture
of two main influences: a largely northern syntax, perhaps arriving
in Japan from the Korean peninsula, and a southern (Austronesian)
lexicon, arriving first from southeast Asia and India. Whatever
the true origins of the language, modern Japanese consists of many
foreign loan words - in fact, over half of all Japanese words are
of Chinese origin.
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French
"La Francophonie"
The term "francophonie", which was
introduced by the French geographer Onésisme Reclus in the 19th
century, was originally used to refer to the spread of the language
in the former colonial empire. Today the "francophonie"
is not just a terminology to denote those countries or societies
which use French as their primarily language, it also encompasses
an institution. It is the official name for the international organisation
which brings together the 55 states and governments which have chosen
to subscribe to its charter.
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Russian
The Russian language group
Russian is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is
the national language of Russia, one of the five official languages
of the United Nations, and is spoken as a first or second language
in the now independent states of the former Soviet Union. These
Russian-speaking republics include Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Latvia, Moldova, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania,
Armenia, Turkmenistan, Georgia, and Tajikistan.
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