Last month’s answer …….. Telugu.
This language … is the official language of a country with approximately 10.3 million inhabitants. Significant numbers of native speakers of this language also live in neighboring countries, but there are groups of speakers also in Australia, Canada, and the United States.
A well-known American novel, which many students read in high school, concerns a heroine whose native language this is and whose family has come to the US as immigrants.
Due to the complex history of this language, native speakers learn a standard, literary language, which is used for highly formal situations and for many forms of writing. The language of everyday speech, however, differs noticeably from the norms of the literary language.
This is a highly inflected language, with seven cases. Like many related languages, it distinguishes aspect in its verbal system.
The prosodic system features an accent on the first syllable and distinct long and short vowels. Certain very short words remain unstressed and can occur only in specific positions in a sentence. This is a language which non-native language learners sometimes wish would buy additional vowels. A classic and complete, if somewhat nonsensical, four-word sentence in this language contains no vowels.
This language is written in a version of the Latin alphabet which includes extensive use of diacritics. The alphabet, given a few simple rules to remember, is very reflective of the actual sounds of the language.
And, this language is one of the many taught at UC Berkeley.
Answer coming in December!