459 articles
1995 Belarusian referendum
The 1995 Belarusian referendum, held 14 May 1995, was Belarus's first national referendum, approving Russian as co-official language, Soviet-style symbols, integration with Russia, and presidential dissolution power.
2008 Greenlandic self-government referendum
The 2008 Greenlandic self-government referendum (25 November 2008) was a non-binding vote in which 75.5% of votes cast approved introducing self-government under the draft Self-Government Act, leading to the 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government replacing Home Rule.
2012 Latvian constitutional referendum
2012 Latvian constitutional referendum (language referendum), held 18 February 2012, on making Russian a second state language; 273,347 for versus 821,722 against, turnout 71.13%, rejected.
Academia Argentina de Letras
The Academia Argentina de Letras is the Argentine institution responsible for studying and advising on Spanish language use in Argentina; it was founded in Buenos Aires in 1931.
Academia Uruguaya de la Lengua
The Academia Uruguaya de la Lengua, today the Academia Nacional de Letras, is Uruguay's academy for the Spanish language, founded in 1943 and a member of ASALE.
Académie Française
Académie Française: French learned society of 40 "immortels" founded by Richelieu in 1635 to conserve and perfect the French language; publishes the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (9th edition 2024) and literary prizes.
Academy of Ethiopian Languages
The Academy of Ethiopian Languages, formally the Academy of Ethiopian Languages and Cultures, is an Addis Ababa University body studying and standardizing Ethiopia's many languages.
Academy of Persian Language and Literature
The Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Farhangestan-e Zaban va Adab-e Farsi) is Iran's official language-regulatory body, founded in 1366 and known as the third Persian language academy.
Afrikaans
Afrikaans, a West Germanic daughter language of 17th-century Dutch spoken in South Africa and Namibia; official since 1925, simplified grammar versus Dutch, asymmetric mutual intelligibility, varieties including Kaaps.
Ahom language
Ahom (Tai Ahom), an extinct Southwestern Tai language of the Tai-Kadai family, was the court and ritual language of the Ahom kingdom in Assam (1228 to 1826), survives in buranji manuscripts and ritual, and is the subject of organized revival efforts.
Akan languages
Akan languages (Twi-Akan, Twi-Fante): a Kwa Niger-Congo macrolanguage [aka] of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, with Twi (Asante, Akuapem) and Fante as major dialects; 49.10% of Ghanaians per the 2010 census, tone and ATR vowel harmony, Roman-script orthography standardized 1961.
Akkadian language
Akkadian (akkadûm) is the extinct East Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform and split into Babylonian and Assyrian dialects; the second-millennium Near Eastern lingua franca, superseded by Aramaic by the first century CE.
Alanic language
Alanic (ISO 639-3 xln) is the extinct Northeastern Iranian language of the Alans, ancestor of modern Ossetic, attested by one funerary inscription, Tzetzes's two verses, and about thirty 1275 glosses.
Alaska Native Language Archive
Alaska Native Language Archive (ANLA), at Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, is the repository for documentation of Alaska's 20+ Native languages, over 15,000 documents dating to the late 1700s, 5,000+ recordings from 1943, formally independent from the ANLC since 2009.
Albanian language
Albanian (shqip, gjuha shqipe) is a separate branch of Indo-European with Gheg and Tosk dialects split by the Shkumbin river, first written in 1462, standardized at the 1972 Tirana Congress mainly on Tosk, spoken by over seven million people.
Altai languages
Altai (Altaic) languages: proposed family uniting Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and in Transeurasian versions Koreanic and Japonic; similarities attributed by most specialists to contact, not common descent.
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek: the Greek language from Mycenaean Linear B records (c.1450 BCE) through the Archaic and Classical dialects to Hellenistic Koine (c. CE 300), with dialect diversity, epichoric alphabets, and the Attic-based koine as written standard.
Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu
Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu (இந்தி எதிர்ப்புப் போராட்டம்): mass protests in Madras Presidency and Tamil Nadu against compulsory Hindi teaching and Hindi as sole official language, in 1937-40, 1948-50, 1965, and 1967-68, led by Periyar and the DMK and ending in the state's two-language policy.
Arab Academy of Damascus
The Arab Academy of Damascus (مجمع اللغة العربية بدمشق) is Syria's official language academy, founded in 1919 and the oldest Arabic language academy still in existence.
Aragonese language
Aragonese (aragonés), a Romance language of the central Pyrenees in northern Aragon, Spain, endangered, with roughly 10,000–25,000 speakers, four dialect groups, recognition under Law 3/2013, and an official orthography adopted in 2023.
Armenian language
Armenian (Հայերեն, Hayeren, ISO hy/hye/hyw) is an independent branch of Indo-European, official in Armenia, with Eastern and Western standards, a fifth-century Mashtots alphabet, grabar liturgy, and endangered Western Armenian.
Aromanian language
Aromanian (Limba armãneascã, also called Vlach) is an Eastern Romance variety of the Balkans, related to Daco-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian; attested from 1156, not standardized, endangered, with Pindean, Fãrshãrot, and Gramustean dialects.
Asturian language
Asturian (asturianu, bable), an Asturleonese Romance language of Asturias, Spain, with about 100,000 speakers, three dialects, protected but non-official status, and an academy since 1980.
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger: reference work mapping endangered languages, print editions 1996, 2001, 2010 (Wurm, then Moseley), online from 2009 with about 2,500 languages on a five-level endangerment scale, feeding Glottolog's AES and succeeded by the World Atlas of Languages.
Aymara language
Aymara (aymar aru) is an agglutinative Indigenous Andean language of the Aru (Aymaran) family, spoken by over two million people in Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Argentina, official in Bolivia and Peru, with fifteen stops in plain, ejective and aspirated series and vowel elision as grammar.
Balochi language
Balochi (Balōčī) is a Northwestern Iranian language, related to Parthian and Kurdish, spoken by about 10 million people in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Gulf. It has a short written history, no official status in Pakistan or Iran, and Western, Southern, and Eastern dialect groups.
Bambara language
Bambara (Bamanankan, Bamanan) is a Mande language of the Manding group, Mali's most widely spoken language with roughly 15 million users, official since 2023, written in Latin script, with S Aux O V X word order and two tones.
Bats language
Bats language, also known as Tsova-Tush, is a severely endangered Nakh language spoken in Zemo Alvani, eastern Georgia. It has no written form and is classified as moribund.
BBC Alba
BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language television channel operated by the BBC and MG ALBA, launched in 2008 as the first dedicated Gaelic-medium channel in history.
Belarusian language
Belarusian (беларуская мова) is an East Slavic language co-official with Russian in Belarus, with about 7 million speakers, a 32-letter Cyrillic alphabet, UNESCO vulnerable status, and two written norms, narkamauka and tarashkievitsa.