Other languages

Finnish is spoken mainly in Finland, where it is the mother tongue of the majority of the population. The country's second national language is Swedish, which is spoken today by 5% of Finns. Finnish also has official status as a minority language in Sweden.

Hebrew, spoken by around 6 million people, is the official language of the State of Israel. The language of the Bible and, for that reason, considered a sacred language for centuries, it is the only language in the world to have resurrected in spoken usage after an interruption of over two thousand years.

This resurrection was only made possible by its maintenance as a literary, liturgical and epistolary language in all the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.

Considered a dead language, it wasn't until 1936 that it made its entry into Langues O' where it joined other Semitic languages. As a result, the Hebrew department is one of the largest in the world.

The Hebrew department is one of the largest in the world.The Hebrew department is one of the largest in the world.

India's official language (alongside English), Hindi, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family, is spoken by over 400 million people in India; it is also present on other continents thanks to numerous immigrant communities of varying lengths. It has an abundant and ancient literature in various dialects and, in a standardized form from the second half of the 19th century onwards, is enriched by a modern literature that is highly varied in its genres and themes, serves as a language of instruction in many schools or as a language of communication in the media and cinema.

Find out more about our Hindi teaching progress (level 1) at the bottom of the page.

If you would like to check your language level in relation to our range of courses and the distribution of groups in the classic formula (evening classes), here is the test you can take below.

The test is taken on the Kahoot platform and, is compulsory if you wish to join our courses. Make sure you have 45 minutes to complete it. The result will enable us to determine the level that best suits you.

For all levels:
- if you obtain a score between 30000 and 40000 points, you can join the level in question.
- if your score is between 20000 and 30000 points, you can move up to the next level, but you'll need to re-study some of the points in the lower level.
- if you obtain a score below 20000, your level appears to be insufficient to enter the level in question.

Before you start the test, you'll need to enter your e-mail address and username. When entering your username, please enter your first and last name.

Good luck!

• HINDI TEST for access to Level 2
• HINDI TEST for access to Level 3 (on request)

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan (around 109 million speakers) and is also one of the 22 official languages of the Indian Union. It is mainly spoken in northern India, but also in certain Indian states such as Telengana and Maharashtra. It enjoys official or co-official status in 5 Indian states and in the territory of Delhi. In India, Urdu is spoken by around 50 million people. According to Ethnologue 2018, worldwide, there are 163 million Urdu speakers.

Swahili, with an estimated 80 to 100 million speakers, plays a leading role throughout East and Central Africa. It enjoys the status of national and official language in Tanzania, and national language in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili is a lingua franca in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, northern Mozambique and southern Somalia, and to a lesser extent in Malawi, Zambia and southern Sudan.

Find out more about the pedagogical progression in Swahili at the bottom of the page.

If you'd like to check your language level in relation to our training offer and the breakdown of groups in the classic formula (evening classes), here are the tests you can take below.

The test is taken on the Kahoot platform and, is compulsory if you wish to join our training courses. Make sure you have 45 minutes to complete it. The result will enable us to determine the level that best suits you.

For all levels:
- if you obtain a score between 25000 and 30000 points, you can join the level in question.
- if your score is between 20,000 and 25,000 points, you can move up to the next level, but you'll need to study some of the points in the lower level again.
- if you obtain a score below 20000, your level appears to be insufficient to enter the level in question.

Before you start the test, you'll need to enter your e-mail address and username. When entering your username, please enter your first and last name.

Good luck!

• TEST SWAHILI ACCES LEVEL 2

Czech belongs to the group of West Slavic languages. Since 2004, it has been one of the official languages of the European Union.

Set down in writing as early as the 11th century, the Czech language has been distinguished over the centuries by an abundance of literature in all areas of culture and the mind. It has been taught at Langues O' since 1916.

Today, Czech is spoken by some 12 million speakers: not only the inhabitants of the historic territories of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia (around 10.5 million), but also speakers from various waves of economic and political emigration, mainly to the USA, Canada, Latin America and Germany. Not forgetting Slovakia, which formed a common state with the Czech lands, Czechoslovakia, created in 1918 and which disappeared at the end of 1992. The close linguistic proximity of Czech and Slovak means that there is almost complete intercomprehension between the two languages.

OPENING OF A 100% DISTANCE CZECH LANGUAGE COURSE IN THE 2022 SCHOOL YEAR
For more information, contact formation.continue@inalco.fr

Tibetan, taught in the South Asia and Himalayas Department, belongs to the Tibetan group of the Tibeto-Burman language family. The Tibetan-speaking area covers a territory of around 2.5 million km², with 6 million speakers: the Tibetan language group is spoken in Tibet, as well as in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan (with a small Tibetan-speaking area in Burma). Tibetan can be broken down into fifty languages, which in turn can be broken down into around two hundred dialects, most of which are poorly understood. The Tibetan taught at Inalco, as elsewhere in the world, is the standard Tibetan, spoken in the diaspora, which acts as a lingua franca.

Why learn the Ukrainian language?

Relations between France and Ukraine are constantly expanding, yet few French people speak Ukrainian, the country's only official language. There's a tendency to believe that Russian can become the substitute language for exchanges with the country, but this is not true, as all oral and written exchanges are conducted solely in Ukrainian. So, if you want to have Ukrainian partners, you need to master Ukrainian.

In addition to professional opportunities, Ukrainian opens the door to a very rich civilization and allows you to discover the identity of an important player in Central and Eastern Europe.

Ukrainian belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European language family and uses Cyrillic. It is an inflectional language, meaning that the inflection (ending) changes according to the role the word plays in the sentence.

Find the Ukrainian pedagogical progression at the bottom of the page.
Ukrainian pedagogical progression (.pdf / 115.43Kb)

Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt), the official language of Vietnam, belongs to the Viet-Muong group, of the Mon-Khmer branch, of the Austroasiatic language family. It is the language with the highest number of speakers, around 86 million (compared with around 20 million for Khmer). In addition, it is spoken by 3 million Vietnamese living abroad, notably in Australia, North America, Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany...), and Asia (Japan, Korea...).
It is an isolating language, with a six-tone system, which shares several syntactic features with other languages of the region.

If you'd like to check your level of Vietnamese against our training offer and the breakdown of groups in the "classic" formula, find below the tests you can take.

Below are the answers to the test. Add up your correct answers and check at the end of the document whether you have enough correct answers.