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.
If you've been searching for languages that start with A, you'll find 14 detailed languages below. We're not interested in giving you only a list of names — every entry on this page links to a full profile with the kind of detail you'd actually want to know.
For languages, that means family, writing scripts, native range, speaker counts, and status.
List of Languages That Start With A
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
Akan
A cluster of closely related Niger-Congo languages of Ghana and Ivory Coast — including Twi and Fante — spoken by roughly 11 million people as a first language.
4
Akkadian
The Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia — the tongue of Sargon, Hammurabi, and the Epic of Gilgamesh — written in cuneiform across three millennia.
5
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.
6
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.
7
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.
8
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.
9
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.
10
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.
11
Assamese
An Indo-Aryan language and the official tongue of Assam in northeastern India — closely related to Bengali, with about 15 million native speakers.
12
Avestan
The Old Iranian language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts — closely related to Vedic Sanskrit and preserved entirely in religious literature.
13
Aymara
An Aymaran language spoken in the Andean Altiplano of Bolivia, Peru, and Chile — about 1.7 million speakers, official in Bolivia alongside Spanish and 35 others.
14
Azerbaijani
A Turkic language spoken in Azerbaijan and Iran's northwestern provinces — about 23 million speakers, closely related to Turkish.
About languages starting with A
That's our current list of languages starting with the letter A. We add new entries every week — if you have a favorite language starting with A that isn't on this page, let us know and we'll write it up.
Looking for more? Try languages that end with A, or contain A anywhere in the name.