Tucano

Tucano (Dahseyé) Tucano is part of the Eastern Tucanoan language family and is spoken in the Amazonas regions of Brazil and Colombia by about 5.000 people. Tucano speakers live mainly along the Papurí River and its tributaries. Tucano has offical status in municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in Amazonas State. The language is also…

Tujia

Tujia (Bizisa) Tujia is an independent member of the Tibeto-Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan languages. It is spoken by about 70,000 people in the Chinese province of Hunan, specifically in the northern part of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in north-western Hunan. The native name for the Tujia language is Bizisa, while the Tujia people,…

Tumbuka

Tumbuka (chiTumbuka) Tumbuka is a Bantu language spoken by about 2 million in northern and central Malawi, and the Lundazi District of Zambia. The Tumbuka spoken in urban areas differs significantly from that spoken in rural areas, which is considered by some as the “real Tumbuka”. Tumbuka has no official status in either Malawi or…

Turkish

Turkish (Türkçe) Turkish is a Turkic language with about 70 million speakers in Turkey and in 35 other countries, including Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Iran, Iraq and Israel. Until 1928, Turkish was written with a version of the Perso-Arabic script known as the…

Turkmen

Turkmen (Türkmen dili / Түркмен дили) Turkmen is a Turkic language spoken by about 6.4 million people in Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia (Asia), Tajikistan, Turkey (Asia), USA and Uzbekistan. Turkmen only started to appear in writing at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was written with the Arabic…

Tuscarora

Tuscarora (Sgaroorehʼ) Tuscarora is a Northern Iroquoian language with about 13 speakers in southern Ontario in Canada, and in New York state and parts of North Carolina in the USA. The native name for the language, Sgaroorehʼ, means ‘hemp people’. The Tuscarora tribe was a member of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Kanonsionni (league of clans),…

Tuvaluan

Tuvaluan (Te ‘gana Tūvalu) Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by about ten thousand people in the independent nation of Tuvalu, consisting of nine small islands in the south-central Pacific, and small groups of Tuvaluan migrants in Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand and the USA. On one of the Tuvaluan islands,…

Tuvan

Tuvan (Тыва дыл / Tyva dyl) Tuvan is a Turkic language with about 200,000 speakers in the Republic of Tuva (Tannu Tuva) in south-central Siberia in the far east of the Russian Federation. There are also small groups of Tuvan speakers in China and Mongolia. Tuvan is classified as a Northeastern or Siberian Turkic language and…

Twi

Twi Twi is a dialect of Akan, a member of the Kwa sub-group of Niger-Congo languages. There are about 7 million Twi speakers, mainly in Ghana. Major dialects of Twi include Akuapim Twi, Fante Twi and Ashanti Twi, which all mutually intelligible. Akuapim Twi was the first dialect to be used for bible translation, and…

Ubykh

Ubykh (ТВaҳəбзa/Twaxəbza) Ubykh is a North West Caucasian language once spoken on the eastern coast of the Black Sea around Sochi in the Russian Federation, and also in Turkey. The Ubykhs were driven out of the Sochi region by the Russians in 1864. Most of them eventually settled in Turkey, where they founded the villages…