1
Sami (Northern)
A Uralic language and the most widely spoken Sami variety — indigenous to northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland with about 25,000 speakers.
If you've been searching for languages that start with S, you'll find 22 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 S
2
Samoan
A Polynesian language and the official tongue of Samoa and American Samoa — closely related to other Polynesian languages and the foundation for understanding the Polynesian dispersal.
3
Sango
A Ngbandi-based creole that serves as the national language of the Central African Republic.
4
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.
5
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.
6
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.
7
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.
8
Shona
A Bantu language and the most-spoken first language in Zimbabwe — also widely used in Mozambique, with a vibrant oral and musical tradition (especially mbira music).
9
Sicilian
A Romance language spoken in Sicily, Calabria, and parts of Apulia — recognized by UNESCO as vulnerable, with about 4.7 million speakers.
10
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.
11
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.
12
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.
13
Slovak
A West Slavic language closely related to Czech — the official language of Slovakia, often considered the most central Slavic tongue in mutual intelligibility.
14
Slovene
A South Slavic language and Slovenia's official tongue — notable for preserving the rare grammatical dual number, used for exactly two of something.
15
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.
16
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.
17
Sotho
A Bantu language spoken by about 6 million people across Lesotho, South Africa, and Zimbabwe — also called Sesotho or Southern Sotho.
18
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.
19
Standard German
The standardized West Germanic language of Germany, Austria, and most of Switzerland — built on Luther's Bible translation and refined into one of Europe's most influential languages.
20
Sumerian
The language isolate of the world's earliest urban civilisation in southern Mesopotamia — the first language ever written down.
21
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.
22
Swedish
A North Germanic language and the most-spoken Scandinavian tongue — official in Sweden and Finland, with a characteristic pitch accent.
About languages starting with S
That's our current list of languages starting with the letter S. We add new entries every week — if you have a favorite language starting with S that isn't on this page, let us know and we'll write it up.
Looking for more? Try languages that end with S, or contain S anywhere in the name.