Russian (ру́сский язы́к, russkiy yazik) is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine and Latvia, and to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union and former participants of the Eastern Bloc. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond.

It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the seventh by total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though an optional acute accent (знак ударения, znak udareniya) may be used to mark stress, such as to distinguish between homographic words, for example замо́к (zamok, meaning a lock) and за́мок (zamok, meaning a castle), or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names.

Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India; in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; and in Malacca in Malaysia.

Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, and has kept some Celtic phonology. With approximately 215 to 220 million native speakers and 260 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually listed as the sixth most natively spoken language in the world, the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers, and a major language of the Southern Hemisphere. It is also the most spoken language in South America and the second-most spoken in Latin America after Spanish, and is an official language of the European Union, Mercosul, OAS, ECOWAS and the African Union.

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language" and Spanish playwright Lope de Vega referred to it as "sweet", while the Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela (the last flower of Latium, rustic and beautiful). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language, Luís Vaz de Camões.

In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in the world. The museum is the first of its kind in the world.  In 2015 the museum was destroyed in a fire, but there are plans to reconstruct it. 

Italian (italiano or lingua italiana) is a Romance language. By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City and western Istria (in Slovenia and Croatia). It used to have official status in Albania, Malta and Monaco, where it is still widely spoken, as well as in former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa regions where it plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is spoken by small minorities in places such as France (especially in Corsica), Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and 

Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages. Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world.

Italian is a major European language, being one of the official languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 14 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million.

Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera. Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world.

Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.

Dutch (Nederlands) is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a first language—including most of the population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent that of Belgium—and by another 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after English and German.

Dutch has developed over the course of 15 centuries. Old Dutch developed from Frankish, as it was spoken by the Salian Franks in the fifth century. Middle Dutch began in the late 11th century with the proliferation of a Medieval Dutch literature. Modern Dutch began in the late 15th century when the first attempts for a Standard language were made. Despite the worldwide influence of the Dutch Empire, modern Dutch spread only moderately around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. Outside of the Low Countries, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and also holds official status in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Historical minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France and Germany, and in Indonesia, while up to half a million native speakers may reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined. The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have evolved into Afrikaans, a mutually intelligible daughter language which is spoken to some degree by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia.

Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive, and has levelled much of its morphology, including most of its case system. Features shared with German include the survival of three grammatical genders—albeit with few grammatical consequences—as well as the use of modal particles, final-obstruent devoicing, and a similar word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but fewer than English.

                                                   Practice Using the Four Mandarin Tones

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that different tones can change the meaning of a word, even if the pronunciation and spelling are otherwise the same. It is essential to learn the different tones if you wish to speak Mandarin Chinese correctly. Mandarin Chinese has four main tones, as follows:

• The first tone is a high, flat tone. Your voice stays flat, with no rise or dip in the way it sounds. Using the word "ma" as an example, the first tone is indicated using the symbol above the letter a: "mā".

• The second tone is a rising tone. Your voice rises from a low to middle pitch, as if you were asking someone to repeat something by saying "huh?" or "what?" The second tone is indicated using the symbol "má".

• The third tone is a dipping tone.The pitch goes from middle to low to high, like when you say the letter "B". When two third tone syllables are near each other, the second one retains its third tone sound while the first takes the sound of the second tone. The third tone is indicated using the symbol "mǎ".

• The fourth tone is a lowering tone. The pitch goes rapidly from high to low, as if giving a command e.g. stop! Or as if you're reading a book and have come across something new and interesting and are saying "huh". The fourth tone is indicated using the symbol "mà".

• Easy enough? If not, don't fret. It's definitely recommended to hear the tones demonstrated by a native speaker, since it's hard to get an idea of what they sound like purely through text.