Cantonese is predominantly spoken in Chinese communities instead of Mandarin. The total number of Cantonese speakers is estimated to be 62 million people. Cantonese is widely spoken in Singapore, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia & Canada. Cantonese is mainly considered as an oral language. Cantonese is unique among the major Chinese languages due to the fact that it has well-preserved more characteristics of Ancient Chinese than others forms of Chinese.
Zuni language is spoken mainly by the about 9,500 people in the USA. It is spoken mainly in New Maxico, Zuni Pueble and in some parts of Arizona. Different ways of writing Zuni with Latin alphabet have been devised by a number of linguists and anthropologists. According to Ladd’s report in 1994, Zuni is still the main language of communication in the pueblo and is used in the home.
Zulu is a Bantu language. It is spoken by the Zulu people and has about 10 million speakers. Majority of its speakers live in South Africa. It is the most widely spoken language in South Africa. According to Ethnologue, it is the second most widely spoken Bantu language. It is written using the Latin alphabet.
The Zhuang/Chuang languages are mainly spoken by the Zhuang people. Most speakers of this language live in the People’s Republic of China, where Standard Zhuang is an official language. There are over one million speakers of Zhuang Language in China’s Yunnan province. The Zhuang languages have been written in Sawndip which is an Old Zhuang script, for over a thousand years.
There are around 60 Zapotecan languages spoken mainly in Mexico. They are a part of the Oto-Manguean family of languages. There are about half a million speakers of these languages. Most Zapotec speaking communities are highly bilingual in Spanish.
Yoruba belongs to the Volta-Niger branch of the Niger-Congo family of languages. It is one of the four official languages of Nigeria. Yoruba is spoken by about 22 million people. It first appeared in writing during the 19th century. Yoruba is closely related to the Owo and Itsekiri language, spoken in Nigeria.
Yiddish is a Germanic language. It is spoken by about three million people, mainly by the Ashkenazic Jews. Yiddish originated in the Ashkenazi culture and its orthography uses the Hebrew alphabet. Yiddish is written and spoken in many Orthodox Jewish communities around the world. It has two main dialects: Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish.
Yapese belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian sub-group of Austronesian languages. It is spoken by about 6,600 people in the State of Yap. The Yapese language has influences from Spanish, German, Japanese and English. Yapese first appeared in writing in 1888. Earlier its spelling system was based on Spanish language. However, in 1972 the Yapese Orthography Committee introduced a new spelling system.
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It belongs to the Austro Asiatic family of languages. It is the native language of Vietnamese people and there are around 59 million speakers of Vietnamese worldwide. It is also spoken as a first or second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. Vietnamese is spoken in three dialects, corresponding to the three main regions of Vietnam.
Urdu, or more precisely Modern Standard Urdu, is a standardized register of the Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) language. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, and an official language of five Indian states and one of the 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India. Apart from academic jargon, it is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi. There are between 60 and 70 million native speakers of Urdu.
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