11 new dictionaries on Freelang

Renato B. Figueiredo strikes again! We welcome 11 new dictionaries on the site.

Bosnian is probably the language you will all be familiar with. Now distinct from Serbian and Croatian, Bosnian has built its own identity. Some people insist that the name should be Bosniak, but we chose to remain neutral. Bambara is a language spoken in Mali, and we are very happy to add one more African language to our collection. Now let’s move on to Guatemala, where 7% of the population speak Kiche, or Quiché, a Mayan language.

The other dictionaries represent languages which are either extinct, or highly endangered. Sometimes it’s because an ethnic group has been reduced to no more than a few hundred people, like Ahtna, Kaska, Southern Tutchone or Northern Tutchone, four Athabaskan languages spoken in Canada and Alaska, and Tlingit, which also belongs to the Na-Dené family. Sometimes the people remain, but the language was forgotten and has almost disappeared. The Mohegan tribe, for instance, still has 1,700 members, but their language is extinct. In China, people of Manchu descent are more than 10 million, but the Manchu language is only spoken by a few elderly people in remote rural areas. Manchu is a Tungusic language, which means that it belongs to the Manchu-Tungus group of the Altaic language family. Evenki is another language that is classified in the same group, and, to end this presentation on a more optimistic note, let us mention that Evenki still has about 30,000 speakers in China and in Russia.

We hope you will find an interest in these new dictionaries. Many thanks to Renato for his wonderful work!

2 Comments on “11 new dictionaries on Freelang”

  1. I would like to see a Corsican English dictionary on your site for downloading. Preferably from Southern Corsica ( Ajaccio ), PLEASE !!!

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