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Language Capitals
Boston's Languages
World Languages
History of Languages
Writing Systems
100

The city with the most speakers of Japanese

Tokyo

100

Boston's second-most-spoken language

Spanish

100

This language has the most native speakers worldwide

Mandarin Chinese

100

For most of human history, this—not monolingualism—has been the norm in cities, empires, and border regions

Multilingualism

100

This language's kanji characters are derived from Chinese

Japanese

200

The city with the most speakers of German

Berlin

200

Boston neighborhood with the largest portion of non-native speakers of English

Chinatown

200

Term to refer to languages at risk of disappearing

endangered languages

200

One of the two languages used by educated Europeans for centuries to facilitate communication across borders

Latin then French

200

This language is distinguished from Hindi primarily only in its writing system

Urdu

300

The city with the most speakers of English

New York City

300

Consonant famously dropped in the "Boston accent"

r

300
Largest country without an official language

United States

300

This term refers to a language used for communication between different language groups

lingua franca

300

This nation devised an original writing system in the 15th century that is still used today

Korea

400

The city with the most speakers of Spanish

Mexico City
400

Boston neighborhood with the largest proportion of residents classified as having "Limited English Proficiency"

Dorchester

400

Name a country with more than 10 official languages

Bolivia, India, Mali, South Africa, Zimbabwe

400

Merchants along this trade network routinely spoke multiple languages to conduct business across Asia, Africa, and Europe

Silk Road

400

The Cyrillic alphabet, used by Russian and other Slavic languages, was largely based on this earlier European alphabet

Greek

500

The city with the most speakers of French

Kinshasa

500

This language is among the most often spoken in Boston, but not among the ten most spoken in the U.S. as a whole

Portuguese, Cape Verdean Creole, Haitian Creole

500

Over 800 languages are spoken in this country

Papua New Guinea

500

First empire to guarantee the equality of all languages in its constitution (in 1867)

Austro-Hungarian

500

This island has an as-yet undeciphered script

Easter Island