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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.
Below are languages that contain the letter L anywhere in the name. Each of the 54 languages below opens to a full profile.
Table of contents
List of Languages That Contain L
2
Belarusian
An East Slavic language closely related to Russian and Ukrainian — one of two official languages of Belarus, though increasingly endangered as Russian dominates.
3
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.
4
Bislama
An English-based creole that serves as the national language of Vanuatu — one of three official languages alongside English and French.
5
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.
6
Catalan
A Romance language spoken in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Andorra, and parts of France and Italy — co-official in Spain's autonomous communities and Andorra's sole national tongue.
7
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.
8
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.
9
Fula
A Niger-Congo language spoken across the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan — the language of the historically pastoralist Fulani people, with about 65 million speakers.
10
Galician
A Romance language closely related to Portuguese — co-official in Galicia in northwestern Spain, with about 2.4 million speakers.
11
Greenlandic
An Eskimo-Aleut language and the sole official language of Greenland — a polysynthetic Inuit language spoken by about 50,000 people.
12
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.
13
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.
14
Hawaiian Sign Language
An indigenous sign language of the Hawaiian Islands — only recently documented and likely the last surviving member of its language family.
15
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.
16
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.
17
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.
18
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.
19
Lakota
A Western Siouan language of the Great Plains — spoken by the Lakota people across the Dakotas, Nebraska, and southern Saskatchewan.
20
Lao
A Tai-Kadai language and the official tongue of Laos — closely related to Thai and written in a similar Brahmic script, with about 30 million speakers including northeast Thailand.
21
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.
22
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.
23
Levantine Arabic
The everyday Arabic vernacular of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine — known for its lighter sound and prominence in Arabic pop music.
24
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.
25
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.
26
Lojban
A constructed language designed for unambiguous logical expression — every sentence parses to exactly one syntactic and semantic interpretation.
27
Luxembourgish
A West Germanic language of Luxembourg — a national language alongside French and German, with about 390,000 speakers.
28
Malagasy
An Austronesian language spoken on Madagascar — uniquely related to languages of Borneo, 7,000 km away, brought by ancient seafarers across the Indian Ocean.
29
Malay
An Austronesian language and the national language of Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore — closely related to Indonesian, with a 1,500-year history as a regional trade lingua franca.
30
Malayalam
A Dravidian language of southwestern India and the official language of Kerala — known for its complex script and one of the highest literacy rates in India.
31
Marshallese
A Micronesian language of the Marshall Islands — co-official with English in the central Pacific atoll nation.
32
Mongolian
A Mongolic language and the official tongue of Mongolia — about 5.7 million speakers across Mongolia, Inner Mongolia (China), and Russia.
33
Nahuatl
A Uto-Aztecan language of central Mexico — the language of the Aztec Empire, today spoken by about 1.7 million people across more than two dozen regional varieties.
34
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.
35
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.
36
Old English
The West Germanic language spoken in early medieval England — the language of *Beowulf*, unrecognisable to modern English speakers without study.
37
Old Norse
The North Germanic language of the Viking Age — ancestor of Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish — and the language of the Eddas and sagas.
38
Pali
The Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Theravada Buddhist canon — preserved across South and Southeast Asia in monastic recitation.
39
Plains Cree
The largest dialect of Cree — a Central Algonquian language spoken across the Canadian prairies from Alberta to Manitoba.
40
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.
41
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.
42
Sicilian
A Romance language spoken in Sicily, Calabria, and parts of Apulia — recognized by UNESCO as vulnerable, with about 4.7 million speakers.
43
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.
44
Slovak
A West Slavic language closely related to Czech — the official language of Slovakia, often considered the most central Slavic tongue in mutual intelligibility.
45
Slovene
A South Slavic language and Slovenia's official tongue — notable for preserving the rare grammatical dual number, used for exactly two of something.
46
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.
47
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.
48
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.
49
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.
50
Telugu
A Dravidian language of southeastern India spoken by about 96 million people — official in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, with a rich classical literary tradition.
51
Volapük
The first widely successful constructed international auxiliary language — created by Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879 and peaking before Esperanto overtook it.
52
Welsh
A Celtic language and one of the oldest living languages in Europe — co-official in Wales, with about 884,000 speakers and active government support for revitalization.
53
Wolof
A Niger-Congo language and the lingua franca of Senegal — spoken natively by about 5 million people and used as a second language by most Senegalese.
54
Zulu
A Nguni Bantu language and the most widely spoken first language in South Africa — official, distinctive for its iconic click consonants.
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