Pimsler - Pimsleur

Spanish or Castilian (español or castellano) is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula. It was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Today, 329 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the world's second most spoken language in terms of native speakers.Spanish language total. Ethnologue. Retrieved 14 August 2009.Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Edition, ed. M. Paul Lewis 2009 Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

French (français, ) is a Romance language globally spoken by about 77 million people as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language originated. The rest live essentially in Canada (particularly Quebec, and to a lesser extent Ontario and New Brunswick), Belgium, Switzerland, French-speaking Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire), Luxembourg, Monaco, certain parts of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Most second-language speakers of French live in Francophonic Africa, arguably exceeding the number of native speakers. La Francophonie dans le monde 2006?2007 published by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Nathan, Paris, 2007. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the Francophone country with the largest population.

French is a descendant of the Latin language of the Roman Empire, as are national languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and Catalan, and minority languages ranging from Occitan to Neapolitan and many more. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.

It is an official language in 28 countries, most of which form what is called, in French, La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking nations. It is an official language of all United Nations agencies and a large number of international organizations. According to the European Union, 129 million (26% of the 497,198,740) people in 27 member states speak French, of which 65 million (12%) are native speakers and 69 million (14%) claim to speak it either as a second language or as a foreign language, which makes it the third most spoken second language in the Union, after English (2nd rank) and German (1st rank). In addition, prior to the mid 20th century, French served as the preeminent language of diplomacy among European and colonial powers as well as a lingua franca among the educated classes of Europe.

As a result of France's extensive colonial ambitions between the 17th and 20th centuries, French was introduced to America, Africa, Polynesia, and the Caribbean. As a result, many creole languages developed as a result of the mixture of French and native languages.

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,Ammon, pp. 2245?2247.Schneider, p. 1.Mazrui, p. 21.Howatt, pp. 127?133. it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world.Crystal, pp. 87?89.Wardhaugh, p. 60. It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organisations.

Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders.

At the time of the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from the 12th century Old English englisc or Engle, plural form Angles ("of, relating to, or characteristic of England").[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/English]

Modern English developed with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words. A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and ancient Greek.

German (, ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers. Standard German is widely taught in schools, universities and Goethe Institutes worldwide. It is overall the third most learned language worldwide.

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance.Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p 94. Japanese is classified as an Altaic language by many linguists, even more linguists see a connection with Korean. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned in conversation. The language has a relatively small sound inventory, and a lexically significant pitch-accent system. Japanese is a mora-timed language.

The Japanese language is written with a combination of three scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (??), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (???? or ???) and katakana (???? or ???). The Latin alphabet, r?maji (????), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace (see Japanese numerals).

Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.

Category: File - :SinoTibetanTree.svg|thumb|250px|Sino-Tibetan language family

Category: File - :Map of sinitic languages-en.svg|thumb|250px|The varieties of spoken Chinese in Eastern China and Taiwan

Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (; ; ; or ) is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees.*David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) , p. 312. ?The mutual unintelligibility of the varieties is the main ground for referring to them as separate languages.?

* Charles N. Li, Sandra A. Thompson. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar (1989), p 2. ?The Chinese language family is genetically classified as an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.?

* Jerry Norman. Chinese (1988), p.1. ?The modern Chinese dialects are really more like a family of language.

* John DeFrancis. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984), p.56. "To call Chinese a single language composed of dialects with varying degrees of difference is to mislead by minimizing disparities that according to Chao are as great as those between English and Dutch. To call Chinese a family of languages is to suggest extralinguistic differences that in fact do not exist and to overlook the unique linguistic situation that exists in China." Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world's population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "dialects" instead of "languages" is considered inappropriate by some linguists and Sinologists.

Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue.

The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu), based on the Beijing dialect, which is part of a larger group of North-Eastern and South-Western dialects, often taken as a separate language (see Mandarin Chinese for more), this language can be referred to as ?? Gu?nhuà or ??? B?if?nghuà in Chinese. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese?de facto, Standard Mandarin?is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Guangdong Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Hokkien, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (where it dominates in Singapore and Malaysia).

Arabic ( ', () or ') is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 million more as a second language. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible."Arabic language." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009. Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.

Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century.Versteegh, 1997, p. 33. Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.

:This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language. See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system.

Korean (, see below) is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers. It was formerly written using Hanja, borrowed Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean way. In the 15th century a national writing system was developed by Sejong the Great, currently called Hangul.

The genealogical classification of the Korean language is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family, while others consider it to be a language isolate. Some believe it to be distantly related to Japanese. Like Japanese it is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.

Russian (, transliteration: , , meaning 'Russian tongue language') is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, in Ukraine considered a dialect of Ukrainian and recognized in some countries).

Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. Today, Russian is widely used outside Russia. Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian.Moscow State University, Russian Language Centre - Official website Russian is also a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc). Because of the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century and was widely taught in primary and higher education as a foreign language in many countries all over the world. Hence, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though, according to the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ('''') may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names).

Hebrew (, ',) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over two thousand years. It is one of the official languages of Israel, along with Arabic. Ancient Hebrew is also the liturgical tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic is their vernacular, though today about 700 Samaritans remain. As a foreign language it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, by theologians, and in Christian seminaries.

The modern word "Hebrew" is derived from the word "ivri" which in turn may be based upon the root "`avar" () meaning "to cross over". The related name Eber occurs in Genesis 10:21 and possibly means "the one who traverses". In the Bible "Hebrew" is called ' () because Judah (') was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation, late 8th century BCE (Is 36, 2 Kings 18). In Isaiah 19:18, it is also called the "Language of Canaan" (

The core of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) is written in Classical Hebrew, and much of its present form is specifically the dialect of Biblical Hebrew that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BC, around the time of the Babylonian exile. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as ' (), "The Holy Tongue", since ancient times.