Characteristics of Languages

Many years ago, I was an English translator at China Translation and Publishing Corporation, the only government-designated agency to translate United Nations documents in China. When we received a foreign language document and the language was not English, we passed it on to those translators that know the language. The challenge was how to identify the language so we would know who to assign the document to. We had plenty of books and dictionaries, but no computer database for this purpose, and of course no Internet. As a linguistics hobbyist, however, it didn't take me long to figure out some patterns in various languages and created the following table, which was seen on other translators's desks soon later.

With this table, you can easily identify the language given part of a document. In fact I still use it today when need arises, and the need can't be satisfied by Google Translate or the good old Babel Fish translators because you don't know what to translate from in the first place.

(Warning: I only know one language in the table, English. It's likely you'll find errors. If you do, please let me know.)

Language Common words Characteristics
English the of a(n) and  
Spanish
(español)		 el*,la(s),lo(s) de(l) un(a),uno y,e (also for "therefore", "but")
  • Characteristic letters: ñ*
  • Typical words: en [in], por [for], oltros [other], a [to, for, at]
  • -ción
  • "¿" prepended to inquisitive statements*
French
(français)		 le(s),la,l'*(also see Italian) de,d',du,des un(e) et* (also see Latin)
  • Characteristic letters: ç, é, è, ê
  • Typical words: en [at,in], C'est* [This is]
  • -aire, -oir, -aux, -eau
German
(Deutsch)		 der,den,des,das,die,dem von (also for "from") ein(e) und*
  • Characteristic letters: ü, ö, ä, ß
  • Typical words: -en, -ung, (-)sch(-), -cht, (0)tz(-), (-)eu(-)
  • Uppercase for initial letter of noun (so you'll see many)*
Portuguese
(português)		 o* de,da   e
  • Characteristic letters: é, ó, ã,*, á, ô
  • Typical words: é [be], a [to,for,with...]
  • -ção
Italian
(italiano)		 il,i,la,le,lo,l' de,di,dei,del un,uno,una e
  • Characteristic letters: ā, è
  • Typical words: è [be]
  • Words end with vowel* (also see Swahili and some words in Japanese)
Norwegian
(norsk)		   til en,ei,et og*
  • Characteristic letters: Ø, å, æ
  • Typical words: mot [toward], fra [from], eller [or]
Swedish
(svensk)		 de(n),det,dem,dom,dens,deras   en och*
  • Characteristic letters: å, ä*, ö* (NB: Finnish has many ä but has no ö)
  • Typical words: om [if,whether,of], i [at]
  • (-) jvowel, e.g. (-)sjö(-), (-)hja(-), (-)tjär(-)
Dutch
(Nederlands)
Flemish
(Vlaams)		 de,het* van een en
  • Characteristic letters: ç, é
  • Typical words: dat [this]
  • -en, -ij(-), words containing consecutive vowels are common (e.g. aan [to])*
Danish
(dansk)		 de(n),det,des,desto   en,et,én,ét og*
  • Characteristic letters: æ, ø, å
  • Typical words: den [he,she,it], de [they], til [to,for,at,with,into,until]
Polish
(polski)		       i
  • Characteristic letters: ł*, ę*, ą*, ć, ś, ź ń, ó; no q, v, x
  • Typical words: w [in,into,at]*, z [ ]
  • (-)szcz(-), prz-, (-)brn(-), (-)sr(-), (-)drz(-)
Hungarian
(Magyar)		 a     és,meg
  • Characteristic letters: ö, ó, á, é, ő*, ű*
  • (-)sz(-), (-)èk(-), (-)cs(-)
Vietnamese
(tiẽng Vìệt)		       va
  • Characteristic letters: Ð, đ, ê, ô, ỏ*, ủ*
  • Complicated symbols above vowels, e.g. ắ, ổ, ữ*
Turkish
(Türkçe)		     bir ve*
  • Characteristic letters: ı, ç, ö, ş, ü, ğ, İ*; no q, w, x
Latin       et
  • -us, -um
Swahili
(Kiswahili)		       na
  • No letters of c, q, x; no symbols above or below letters
  • vowel as word end* (also see Italian and Japanese)

Note
1. * indicates a very important characteristic.
2. If the characteristic letter is composed of a regular letter plus a symbol above or under it, then the regular letter also exists. E.g., Spanish has "ñ" then there is also "n".
3. Brackets after typical words contain their English translation.
4. If a hyphen precedes a typical letter combination, this combination is a word suffix; if it follows it, a prefix. A parenthesis indicates the hyphen is optional.
5. If you still can't identify the language by using this table, please try Doug Beeferman's Stochastic Language Identifier. Failing that, read Kenneth Katzner's excellent book, The Languages of the World, Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1975.

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