Department No. III · Ordinary Languages · Room 3 · Floor 2
Billions of people conduct almost all of life in a handful of tongues. This department describes twelve of them, without favour.
The Secretary of Hellos can say thank you in twelve tongues and says little else. Visitors are asked to manage at least one hello before proceeding to the Atlas. The full phrasebook trio for each tongue — hello, thank you, goodbye — is shelved in the Atlas.
Twelve tongues: where spoken, script notes, one ordinary sentence each, and the phrasebook trio.
Ordinances, Thursday pronunciation hour, and the beginners’ shelf. Silence, except on Thursdays.
Language 01
The current lingua franca of aviation, science, and pop music. Spelling preserves six centuries of history at once, which is why though, through, and tough coexist without apology.
Note. Department No. II keeps the remarkable words; this department keeps the unremarkable fact that most English conversations now take place between people for whom it is not a first language.
Language 02
The most spoken first language in the world. Tonal: the same syllable carries different meaning at different pitches. The writing system is morphosyllabic — characters carry meaning as well as sound.
Language 03
One of India’s official languages, closely related to Urdu; the two share grammar and much everyday vocabulary and diverge mainly in script and formal register. Bollywood carries it further than any census.
Language 04
Spoken across Spain, most of Latin America, and large communities in the United States. Remarkably uniform in writing across continents; pronunciation varies cheerfully, especially the letters c, z, and ll.
Language 05
Modern Standard Arabic is used in writing and broadcast; daily life runs on regional varieties — Egyptian, Levantine, Maghrebi and others — which can differ substantially. The script’s calligraphic tradition is itself a major art.
Language 06
The former language of diplomacy, now the fastest-growing by some projections because of African demographics. The Académie française still pronounces on correctness; the language continues regardless.
Language 07
The only language for which people died demanding its recognition — Language Martyrs’ Day, 21 February, is now UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. Its literature includes Tagore, the first non-European Nobel laureate in Literature (1913).
Language 08
European and Brazilian standards differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and some grammar — comparable to the distance between British and American English, then a little further. The future tense of the language’s expansion is largely Brazilian and African.
Language 09
The largest native language in Europe, and the medium of a literature — Pushkin to Akhmatova — that the shelf's single grammar introduces with appropriate caution. Stress must simply be learnt.
Language 10
Three scripts used together, politeness built into the grammar, and a reading direction that runs two ways. The Atlas ordinary sentence — a delayed train — is the correct first phrase.
Language 11
Compounds joined at length, verbs sent to the end of the sentence to wait, and nouns capitalised throughout. Thursday regulars recommend it to anyone who enjoys rules that are actually kept.
Language 12
East Africa's lingua franca, with straightforward spelling and noun classes that sort the world sensibly. The kindest beginner's slope after Spanish, and the Thursday queue's newest regular.