The fourth-most frequently spoken language in the United States, American Sign Language (ASL) is purposefully not known as “English” sign language because it’s not derived from England. ASL comes from Old French Sign Language, which was officially developed in the 18th century in the deaf community of Paris, France. Educators Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc then traveled from France to the United States to set up a school for the deaf, where ASL was born.

The first two nations to send astronauts to space were the United States and Russia, and today, most travel to space still departs from Russian airspace. For this reason, astronauts who travel to the International Space Station must learn Russian, and Russian astronauts who work with NASA technology learn English, making those the two official languages of space.

The United Nations (UN) has six official languages: Spanish, Russian, English, French, Chinese, and Arabic. Delegates of the UN can speak in any of these six languages, and each speech will be interpreted into the other official UN languages. If a delegate makes a statement in a non-official language, an interpretation or written text must be provided in an official language.

The Isle of Man is a 220-square-mile island located between England and Ireland that is home to around 85,000 people. After periods of Irish, Scandinavian, and Scottish rule, the island became a territory of England in 1346 and is now a self-governing British Crown Dependency. Though English is the official language of the island, the island’s traditional language, Manx, is closely related to both Scottish and Irish Gaelic.

Located in the Horn of Africa near the continent's eastern coast, Ethiopia is a linguistic melting pot. There is some disagreement on the official count, but Ethiopia is home to somewhere between 45 and 86 languages. The official language of the country's government is Amharic, despite only being primarily spoken by around one-third of Ethiopians. A similar number of residents speak Oromo, mainly in the center and south of the country.

Learning your ABCs in Cambodia might take you a while. Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, has the longest alphabet in the world with 74 letters. This alphabet reportedly derives from the Pallava Script, which was created in South India in the sixth century. Khmer is also spoken in several other countries, including Thailand and Vietnam.

There are at least 35 Indigenous languages spoken in South Africa. One of those is Xhosa, a member of the Bantu family of languages, spoken by the Bantu peoples in sub-Saharan Africa. About 7 million people (16% of the population) speak Xhosa in South Africa. Xhosa is known as a click language, where “click” sounds serve as consonants.

The Basque region, covering nearly 4,000 square miles in northern Spain and France, is home to the Basque people, whose language is known as both Basque and Euskara. Linguists believe it to be the only remaining language that was spoken in southwestern Europe before the arrival of the Romans. It’s estimated that nearly 1 million people speak Basque today.

In English-speaking countries, saying "cheers" over a drink is a popular way to toast old and new friends alike. But for those who speak Irish Gaelic, the word of choice is “sláinte” (pronounced “slawn-che”). When translated to English, “sláinte” means “health.” Spoken by approximately 75,000 people in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Irish Gaelic is a member of the Celtic language group.

In Papua New Guinea, citizens speak about 840 languages — more than twice the number found throughout Europe. However, just three (Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin, and English) are official languages of the country. Indonesia is second on the list with 712 languages, but its population is more than 40 times bigger.

Argentina is home to around 1.5 million Italian speakers, the most of any South American country. It's the second-most widely spoken language in Argentina, after Spanish, since many Argentines have some degree of Italian ancestry. Large numbers of Italian immigrants settled in the country in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they brought their culture, customs, and language with them.

With about 78 million speakers worldwide, Korean is the most spoken language without traceable origins to any other language — a phenomenon known as a “language isolate.” While some linguists believe that Korean originated from the Altaic languages of central Asia, the language’s past still remains a mystery.

There are more than 40 million Polish speakers in the world, most of whom live in Poland itself. The language uses a 32-letter alphabet, which takes the standard English alphabet, removes x, q, and z, and adds 9 extra accented letters. Polish first emerged as a distinct language around the 10th century; it comes from the Slavic family and is closely related to Czech and Slovak.

Hey Hoeijendagh! If you’re a polyglot, you probably know that’s “hello” in Flemish. The language is a Lower Dutch dialect spoken by approximately 5.5 million people, mainly in the northern region of Belgium. Approximately 55% of Belgium’s population overall speaks Flemish. It also can be heard in Dutch Zeelandic Flanders and French Flanders.

It can be especially tricky for native English speakers to master Russian, in part because it uses an entirely different alphabet. The Russian alphabet was derived from the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed during the ninth century. Composed of 33 letters, the Russian alphabet takes some of its letters from Hebrew and Greek, although several look (but often don’t sound) like letters from the Latin alphabet.

Hindi is by far the most common first language in India, with more than 500 million native speakers. After that, about 100 million speak Bengali, and more than 80 million speak Marathi as their first languages. India is such a diverse and massive country linguistically that there are more than a dozen languages which have 10 million native speakers or more.

Lusophone countries refer to those nations which Portugal colonized when it was a global empire beginning in the 15th century. Included in this group are nations such as Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and East Timor. In total, more than 270 million people speak Portuguese across 10 sovereign states and territories that recognize it as an official language. That makes Portuguese the sixth-most spoken language in the world.

Considering China is home to nearly 1.3 billion people — around 18% of the world's population — perhaps it’s not too surprising that Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers. Mandarin is the largest language of the Chinese macrolanguage, which is a grouping of 13 languages all considered “Chinese” because of their shared writing system and literature.

Hola! Bonjour! Olá! Ciao! Salut! The five romance languages, which are all derived from Latin, are Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. Why are these languages considered “romantic”? Their roots trace back to the language of the Roman Empire and share much of the same vocabulary and grammatical forms.

If you speak Berber, Hausa, Amharic, or one of the other 2,000-some languages of Africa, then you’re not alone. A third of the world's 6,000 languages are spoken here, despite the fact that it’s home to only one-sixth of the total global population. In comparison, approximately 300 languages are spoken in Europe.

While the United States has the most English speakers in the world at 268 million, India is home to 125 million people who speak it fluently — approximately 10% of its population. “Hinglish,” a hybrid of Hindi and English, where speakers alternate between the two languages, has also become popular. The U.K. lands at number six with nearly 60 million English speakers.