So many dialects in the language tree,

so many spoken around the world.

When you spread them out, they’re easy to see,

like the patterns of a rug unfurled.

First comes French, quite the Romantic type,

it’s hard to speak, but beautiful when spoken.

After a few weeks’ time, you’ll feel the hype,

you can hold conversation, even if broken.

Spanish is similar in more than one way,

it’s also Romantic like its sibling, Portuguese.

You can learn either, starting today,

and in a few months, you can speak with ease.

Or, opt for the French and Spanish mix,

Catalan of Catalonia, with an epic flag to match.

Finally, there’s Italian, the language of 85 million and six,

add in langs like Occitan, rounding out the Romance batch.

Next comes German, Germanic Branch CEO,

with clean-cut syllables and plenty of “z”‘s.

Or maybe Swiss is the way to go,

language of the land of mountains and cheese.

There’s also Dutch, language of the Netherlands,

a twin of Afrikaans, spoken in Africa.

Learn either and you’ll make new friends,

from Benelux to Suriname, South America.

Don’t forget Welsh and Irish,

spoken by just over 2 million combined.

So many accents and pronunciations to relish,

beautiful languages of course, no need to remind.

Scandinavian langs are in this branch too,

Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic.

By all means learn them, but whatever you do,

don’t learn them together, it’ll make you frantic.

We haven’t forgotten the real Germanic king.

which is the one and only English.

It’s big and bold and does its own thing,

but from it you can learn any language you wish.

Moving on, we come to the branch of Slavic,

with foreign alphabets and syllables so strange.

Us English speakers think these langs cause havoc,

but they’re just like the others, albeit a minor change.

Russian is the most well known,

Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Serbian come next.

All of them are purely homegrown,

the same as other langs, sans a Latin text.

Also included in this group,

is Polish, Slovak, and Czech.

They’re also a part of the language soup,

just don’t mix them, you’ll be a wreck.

We now say “dasvidaniya” to these as we move on, pronto,

to loners like Armenian and Greek.

There’s also the conlang Esperanto,

the easiest of them all to speak.

Next is the Semitic branch, home to langs of the Middle East,

the biggest of these is Arabic, considered to be hard.

It’s said that even natives aren’t fluent, at least,

so watch your verbs, be on your guard.

Hebrew is also a part of this section,

native to Israel, with 5 million speakers.

Amharic and Aramaic are included in the collection,

chock-full of history for language seekers.

In the Turkic branch, we must mention a few,

like Azerbaijani and Turkish.

Uzbek and Turkmen are another two,

tiny languages to learn, should you wish.

Indic languages are next in line,

the Iranian ones specifically.

Persian, Kurdish, and Pashto are a few, that’s fine,

mainly spoken in Iran, generally.

You’ll find Sanskrit languages residing here too,

Hindi and Bengali are the biggest by far.

Popular also are Punjabi and Urdu,

but speak all four at once and you’ll seem bizarre.

Almost finished now, we come to Sino-Tibetan,

home of the mighty Mandarin Chinese.

Cantonese is another variety we must get in,

and it’s also important to mention Burmese.

Austroasiatic is yet another type,

home to Vietnamese and Khmer.

There are some others in this language pipe,

too many to mention, but interesting, we swear.

In Oriental Asia, we find two big loners,

Korean and Japanese, each with their own family.

Combined, these two have 200 million owners,

two of the biggest languages in all humanity.

We’ve now concluded our language tour,

bringing our poem to an end.

Perhaps one day you’ll make a detour,

and use language to make a new friend.