1
Afrikaans
A West Germanic language that evolved from 17th-century Dutch in South Africa — the world's youngest major language and one of South Africa's eleven official tongues.
Below are languages that contain the letter I anywhere in the name. Each of the 122 languages below opens to a full profile.
Table of contents
List of Languages That Contain I
2
Ainu
A language isolate of northern Japan and Sakhalin — once spoken by the indigenous Ainu people, now critically endangered with only a handful of native speakers.
3
Akkadian
The Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia — the tongue of Sargon, Hammurabi, and the Epic of Gilgamesh — written in cuneiform across three millennia.
4
Albanian
An Indo-European isolate forming its own branch — Albania's official language, also widely spoken in Kosovo and parts of North Macedonia and Montenegro.
5
Amharic
A Semitic language and the working language of Ethiopia — written in the ancient Geʽez script and spoken as a first or second language by tens of millions.
6
Ancient Greek
The classical language of Homer, Plato, and the New Testament — a Hellenic branch of Indo-European that shaped Western philosophy, science, and theology.
7
Arabic
A Central Semitic language whose Classical form is the liturgical tongue of Islam and whose Modern Standard form unites a continuum of regional varieties spoken from Morocco to Oman.
8
Aramaic
The Semitic lingua franca of the ancient Near East — spoken by Jesus, used in parts of the Hebrew Bible, and still alive today in scattered Christian and Jewish communities.
9
Armenian
An Indo-European language forming its own branch — official in Armenia, written in a 36-letter alphabet created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 CE.
10
Azerbaijani
A Turkic language spoken in Azerbaijan and Iran's northwestern provinces — about 23 million speakers, closely related to Turkish.
11
Bashkir
A Turkic language of the Bashkir people in Russia — the official language of Bashkortostan, closely related to Tatar, with about 1.2 million speakers.
12
Belarusian
An East Slavic language closely related to Russian and Ukrainian — one of two official languages of Belarus, though increasingly endangered as Russian dominates.
13
Bengali
An Indo-Aryan language of Bengal — official in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal — with a rich literary tradition that produced Asia's first Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.
14
Berber (Tamazight)
A family of Afroasiatic languages indigenous to North Africa — collectively called Amazigh — with official status in Morocco and Algeria.
15
Bislama
An English-based creole that serves as the national language of Vanuatu — one of three official languages alongside English and French.
16
Bosnian
A South Slavic language standardized by Bosniaks — one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, mutually intelligible with Croatian and Serbian.
17
Bulgarian
A South Slavic language and the official tongue of Bulgaria — historically the first Slavic language to be written down, in the 9th-century Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts.
18
Coptic
The final stage of the ancient Egyptian language — the language of early Christian Egypt and still the liturgical tongue of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
19
Cornish
A revived Celtic language of Cornwall in southwestern England — extinct as a community language by the late 18th century, now spoken by a few hundred dedicated revivalists.
20
Corsican
A Romance language of the island of Corsica — closely related to Tuscan Italian, with about 130,000 speakers and growing institutional support in France.
21
Croatian
A South Slavic language and the official tongue of Croatia — written in Latin script and mutually intelligible with Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.
22
Danish
A North Germanic language and the official tongue of Denmark — famous for soft "d" sounds, glottal stops (stød), and being notoriously hard to pronounce.
23
Dari
The Afghan variety of Persian and one of Afghanistan's two official languages — mutually intelligible with Iran's Farsi and Tajikistan's Tajik, forming the Persian dialect continuum.
24
Dhivehi
The Indo-Aryan language of the Maldives — closely related to Sinhala but isolated in a thousand-island archipelago.
25
Dothraki
A fictional language created by linguist David J. Peterson for HBO's *Game of Thrones* adaptation — the language of the nomadic Dothraki horse-lords.
26
Egyptian Arabic
The most widely understood spoken variety of Arabic — Egypt's everyday vernacular, spread across the Arab world by Cairo's enormous film, TV, and music industries.
27
English
A West Germanic language with Norse and Norman French overlays — the most widely spoken language on Earth when second-language speakers are counted, and the de facto lingua franca of science, aviation, and the internet.
28
Estonian
A Uralic language closely related to Finnish — Estonia's official tongue, with 14 grammatical cases and three contrastive degrees of vowel and consonant length.
29
Fijian
An Austronesian (Oceanic) language and one of Fiji's three official languages — spoken alongside English and Fiji Hindi by most of the indigenous Fijian population.
30
Finnish
A Uralic language with elaborate agglutinative morphology — Finland's official tongue alongside Swedish, and one of the most grammatically distinctive languages in Europe.
31
Frisian
A cluster of West Germanic languages spoken in the Netherlands and Germany — English's closest living relative, with about 470,000 speakers.
32
Friulian
A Romance language spoken in Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia region — about 420,000 speakers, recognized as a minority language with regional cultural support.
33
Galician
A Romance language closely related to Portuguese — co-official in Galicia in northwestern Spain, with about 2.4 million speakers.
34
Georgian
A Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language and the official language of Georgia — written in its own unique 33-letter alphabet, with about 3.7 million speakers.
35
Gothic
The earliest substantially attested East Germanic language — preserved almost entirely in Bishop Wulfila's 4th-century Bible translation.
36
Greenlandic
An Eskimo-Aleut language and the sole official language of Greenland — a polysynthetic Inuit language spoken by about 50,000 people.
37
Guarani
A Tupian language and the co-official language of Paraguay — spoken by about 5 million people, unique among major Latin American languages for being used by both Indigenous and mestizo populations.
38
Gujarati
An Indo-Aryan language of western India and the mother tongue of about 56 million people — official in Gujarat and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, with global diaspora communities.
39
Gulf Arabic
The Arabic vernacular of the Persian Gulf coast — spoken from Kuwait to Oman, blending peninsular Arab features with Persian and South Asian loanwords.
40
Haitian Creole
A French-based creole and the most widely spoken creole language in the world — Haiti's co-official language alongside French, spoken by virtually all 12 million Haitians.
41
Hawaiian
A Polynesian language indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands — one of two official languages of the State of Hawaii, undergoing dramatic revitalization since the 1980s.
42
Hawaiian Sign Language
An indigenous sign language of the Hawaiian Islands — only recently documented and likely the last surviving member of its language family.
43
Hindi
An Indo-Aryan language written in Devanagari and one of India's two official languages — the standardized form of a dialect continuum spoken across the Hindi Belt of northern India.
44
Hittite
The earliest attested Indo-European language — spoken in Bronze Age Anatolia and rediscovered in the 20th century from cuneiform archives at Hattusa.
45
Hopi
A Uto-Aztecan language of northeastern Arizona — spoken by the Hopi Tribe on the Hopi Reservation surrounded by the Navajo Nation.
46
Hungarian
A Uralic language stranded among Indo-European neighbors in Central Europe — Hungary's official language, with rich agglutinative morphology and vowel harmony.
47
Ido
A reformed version of Esperanto created in 1907 to address perceived flaws — the most significant Esperanto offshoot, with a small but persistent community.
48
Igbo
A Niger-Congo language of southeastern Nigeria — spoken by about 30 million people and one of Nigeria's three official "majority" languages.
49
Indonesian
A standardized form of Malay and the national language of Indonesia — a deliberate lingua franca for the world's fourth-most-populous country, with about 200 million speakers.
50
Interlingua
A naturalistic auxiliary language compiled in 1951 from the shared Romance and Latinate vocabulary of major European languages — readable on first sight by their speakers.
51
Inuktitut
An Inuit language spoken across the Canadian Arctic — co-official in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, written in both Latin and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.
52
Iranian Persian (Farsi)
A Western Iranian language and the official language of Iran — successor to Old and Middle Persian, written in a modified Arabic script and source of much vocabulary across the Islamic world.
53
Irish
A Celtic language and the national language of Ireland — taught in all Irish schools, though daily speakers number only about 70,000 in the Gaeltacht regions.
54
Italian
A Romance language descended from Tuscan dialects of the late medieval period — Italy's national language and one of four official languages of Switzerland.
55
Jamaican Patois
An English-based creole spoken by virtually all Jamaicans — about 3 million native speakers and a growing presence in global music and pop culture.
56
Kinyarwanda
A Bantu language and the national language of Rwanda — spoken by virtually all 13 million Rwandans and shared with related dialects in Uganda and DR Congo.
57
Klingon
A constructed language created by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek franchise — the most fully developed and widely spoken of all fictional languages.
58
Krio
An English-based creole that is the lingua franca of Sierra Leone — descended from the speech of freed Africans resettled in Freetown from the late 18th century.
59
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
The most widely spoken Kurdish variety — a Northwestern Iranian language used by Kurds in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, Armenia, and the diaspora.
60
Kurdish (Sorani)
The Central Kurdish variety — official in Iraqi Kurdistan and widely used in western Iran — written in a modified Arabic script.
61
Ladino
The Judaeo-Spanish language preserved by Sephardic Jews after the 1492 expulsion from Spain — a 15th-century Iberian Romance variety with Hebrew, Turkish, and Greek admixture.
62
Latin
The Italic language of ancient Rome that became Western Europe's intellectual lingua franca for over a millennium and the parent of all modern Romance languages.
63
Latvian
A Baltic language and the official tongue of Latvia — closely related to Lithuanian and similarly conservative, though with some innovations like fixed first-syllable stress.
64
Levantine Arabic
The everyday Arabic vernacular of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine — known for its lighter sound and prominence in Arabic pop music.
65
Lingala
A Bantu language and a lingua franca along the Congo River — spoken by tens of millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo.
66
Lithuanian
A Baltic language famous for preserving many archaic Proto-Indo-European features — Lithuania's official tongue, considered the most conservative living Indo-European language.
67
Luxembourgish
A West Germanic language of Luxembourg — a national language alongside French and German, with about 390,000 speakers.
68
Macedonian
A South Slavic language closely related to Bulgarian — official in North Macedonia, written in a distinctive Cyrillic alphabet.
69
Maghrebi Arabic
The collective vernacular Arabic varieties of northwest Africa — spoken across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania, often called Darija.
70
Mandarin Chinese
The world's most-spoken first language, based on the Beijing dialect and codified as Standard Chinese (Putonghua) — the official language of mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore.
71
Mandinka
A Mande language spoken across the western Sahel — the most widely spoken language in The Gambia and a major language in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.
72
Maori
An Eastern Polynesian language and the indigenous language of New Zealand — an official language of Aotearoa, undergoing active revitalization after late-20th-century decline.
73
Marathi
An Indo-Aryan language of western India and the official language of Maharashtra — written in Devanagari and famous for the poetry of saints like Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar.
74
Min Nan
A major Sinitic language of southeastern Fujian and the Chinese diaspora — known to its speakers as Hokkien, Hoklo, or Taiwanese.
75
Mongolian
A Mongolic language and the official tongue of Mongolia — about 5.7 million speakers across Mongolia, Inner Mongolia (China), and Russia.
76
Nepali
An Indo-Aryan language and the official tongue of Nepal — written in Devanagari and the lingua franca for a country of more than 100 ethnic groups.
77
Norwegian
A North Germanic language with two written standards (Bokmål and Nynorsk) — official in Norway, mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish.
78
Occitan
A Romance language of southern France, Monaco, parts of Italy and Spain — once the prestige tongue of medieval troubadour poetry, today minority and endangered.
79
Odia
An Indo-Aryan language and the official tongue of the Indian state of Odisha — one of India's six classical languages, with a literary tradition dating to the 13th century.
80
Ojibwe
A Central Algonquian language spoken across the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada — one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in North America.
81
Old Church Slavonic
The first literary Slavic language — developed in the 9th century by Saints Cyril and Methodius for the Christianisation of the Slavs, still used liturgically by Orthodox churches.
82
Old English
The West Germanic language spoken in early medieval England — the language of *Beowulf*, unrecognisable to modern English speakers without study.
83
Ossetian
An Eastern Iranian language and the official language of North Ossetia (Russia) and South Ossetia — about 540,000 speakers, descended from the Alans and Scythians.
84
Pali
The Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Theravada Buddhist canon — preserved across South and Southeast Asia in monastic recitation.
85
Plains Cree
The largest dialect of Cree — a Central Algonquian language spoken across the Canadian prairies from Alberta to Manitoba.
86
Polish
A West Slavic language spoken by about 45 million people — Poland's national language and a major European tongue with a famously consonant-rich phonology.
87
Punjabi (Eastern)
The Indian variety of Punjabi — official in the state of Punjab, written in the Gurmukhi script developed in the 16th century for Sikh scripture.
88
Romani
An Indo-Aryan language of the Roma people — spoken across Europe and the Americas by an estimated 4 million people, with many regional dialects.
89
Romanian
The only major Eastern Romance language — the official language of Romania and Moldova — descended from Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman province of Dacia.
90
Russian
An East Slavic language and the most widely spoken Slavic tongue — official across the Russian Federation and a key second language throughout the former Soviet sphere.
91
Sami (Northern)
A Uralic language and the most widely spoken Sami variety — indigenous to northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland with about 25,000 speakers.
92
Sanskrit
The classical liturgical and literary language of the Indian subcontinent — the language of the Vedas, the Mahabharata, and a millennia-spanning tradition of grammar and poetics.
93
Sardinian
A Romance language of Sardinia often called the most conservative Romance language living today — about 1 million speakers, recognized as a minority language by Italy.
94
Scottish Gaelic
A Celtic language brought from Ireland to Scotland in the early medieval period — recognized but minority, with about 57,000 speakers concentrated in the Hebrides and Highlands.
95
Serbian
A South Slavic language and the official tongue of Serbia — the only major European language to use both Latin and Cyrillic scripts in everyday life.
96
Sicilian
A Romance language spoken in Sicily, Calabria, and parts of Apulia — recognized by UNESCO as vulnerable, with about 4.7 million speakers.
97
Sindarin
A fictional Elvish language created by J.R.R. Tolkien — the everyday language of the Grey-elves of Middle-earth, modelled on Welsh phonology.
98
Sindhi
An Indo-Aryan language of the Indus delta — spoken by about 36 million people in Pakistan's Sindh province and the Indian diaspora, with rich Sufi poetic tradition.
99
Sinhala
An Indo-Aryan language brought to Sri Lanka over two millennia ago — official in the island nation alongside Tamil, with about 16 million native speakers.
100
Sogdian
The Middle Iranian language of the Sogdian merchant city-states of Central Asia — the lingua franca of the Silk Road for over a thousand years.
101
Somali
A Cushitic language and the official tongue of Somalia — distinguished by its complex tone-accent system and a uniquely Latin-based orthography adopted in 1972.
102
Spanish
A Romance language born in medieval Castile and carried by empire across the Americas — today the world's second-most-spoken native language and official in 21 countries.
103
Sumerian
The language isolate of the world's earliest urban civilisation in southern Mesopotamia — the first language ever written down.
104
Swahili
A Bantu language born from East African Indian Ocean trade — official in five countries and the lingua franca for over 200 million people across the African Great Lakes region.
105
Swedish
A North Germanic language and the most-spoken Scandinavian tongue — official in Sweden and Finland, with a characteristic pitch accent.
106
Tagalog (Filipino)
An Austronesian language and the basis for Filipino, the national language of the Philippines — spoken natively by about 28 million people and as a second language by most Filipinos.
107
Tahitian
A Polynesian language indigenous to French Polynesia — co-official with French, and the basis for much of the global vocabulary of Polynesia (such as "tattoo" from tatau).
108
Tamil
A Dravidian language with one of the world's longest continuous literary traditions — official in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and Singapore, with about 78 million native speakers.
109
Thai
A Tai-Kadai language and the official tongue of Thailand — tonal, with five distinct tones and a Brahmic-derived script not separated by spaces between words.
110
Tibetan
A Sino-Tibetan language and the traditional language of Tibet — written in a Brahmic script developed in the 7th century, with about 6 million speakers.
111
Tigrinya
A Semitic language of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia — written in Geʽez script and closely related to Amharic and the ancient Geʽez liturgical language.
112
Tok Pisin
An English-based creole and one of the three official languages of Papua New Guinea — the lingua franca for a country of over 800 languages.
113
Toki Pona
A minimalist constructed language created by Sonja Lang in 2001 — with only about 120 root words, designed to encourage simple, mindful expression.
114
Turkish
The most spoken Turkic language and the official language of Turkey — famous for vowel harmony and a relentlessly suffixing morphology.
115
Twi
The most widely spoken member of the Akan dialect continuum in Ghana — particularly the Asante and Akuapem varieties.
116
Ukrainian
An East Slavic language spoken by about 40 million people — Ukraine's official language, written in Cyrillic and closely related to Russian and Belarusian.
117
Vietnamese
An Austroasiatic language spoken by about 85 million people — Vietnam's national language, written in a Latin-based script designed by 17th-century missionaries.
118
Western Punjabi
The most widely spoken language of Pakistan — known there as Punjabi or sometimes Lahnda — written in the Perso-Arabic Shahmukhi script and spoken by over 100 million people.
119
Wu Chinese
A major Sinitic branch centered on Shanghai and the lower Yangtze — its best-known variety, Shanghainese, has about 14 million speakers and a notable tonal system.
120
Yiddish
A High German language with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic admixture — the historical mother tongue of Ashkenazi Jews and still spoken in Hasidic communities worldwide.
121
Yuchi
A language isolate of the Yuchi people of Oklahoma — once spoken across the southeastern United States, now critically endangered.
122
Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
A southern Chinese branch centered on Guangzhou and Hong Kong — famous for preserving more tones and finals than Mandarin and for its prolific role in global Cantonese pop culture.
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