16
Danish
Dansk
The Danish word for mullet is ‘bundesligahår’ (German football league hair).
Our Danish team were as keen as we were to ensure the language’s most famous export word, ‘hygge’ (a state of cosy contentment), would be included in their wordlist. It has led to a number of brilliant combinations including ///hygge.ildsted.tæpper (‘hygge’, fireplace, blankets) which can be found in Essex, UK.
Released:
2018
17
Norwegian
Norsk
In Norway, when someone finds themselves stuck, having failed or perhaps been tricked, they are said to ‘stå/sitte med skjegget i postkassa’ (to stand/sit with one’s beard in a postbox).
It is said that Inuit has 50 words for snow, but our language consultants dug up over 80 Norwegian words that contain the word ‘snø’. Some of our favourites are: ‘snøfnugg’ (snowflake), ‘snøvær’ (snowy weather) and ‘snøballkrig’ (snowball fight).
Released:
2018
18
Afrikaans
Afrikaans
The first published texts in Afrikaans were written in the Arabic alphabet in 1845 by Muslim scholars in Cape Town.
As with many languages, you can turn almost any Afrikaans noun into a diminutive (small) version. For example, ‘springbok’ becomes ‘springbokkie’ (a little springbok). Diminutives were particularly useful to the language consultants when they were generating the 25,000 words needed for the Afrikaans map.
Released:
2018
19
isiXhosa
IsiXhosa
In the 2018 superhero film Black Panther, the people of Wakanda, a fictional African kingdom, speak a real language: isiXhosa.
There are over 5,000 words with click consonants in the isiXhosa wordlist. ‘c’ is pronounced with the tongue against the back of the teeth (a tutting sound), ‘q’ with the tongue on the roof of the mouth (sounds like uncorking a bottle) and ‘x’ with the tongue at the sides of the mouth (like the sound made to spur on a horse).
Released:
2018
20
isiZulu
IsiZulu
The word ‘ubuntu’, used in isiZulu and a few other Nguni languages, means ‘compassion and humanity’. It has become one of the words most representative of South African culture.
Because we don’t allow duplicate words across multiple wordlists, Latin script languages can lose a fair amount of potential vocabulary before we even start the project. Some letters and consonant and vowel combinations are simply more common than others, adding to the likelihood that some they will have already been used in a previous wordlist. While isiZulu has some overlap with isiXhosa, it didn’t clash too extensively with other wordlists, partly because nearly 40% of the words in our isiZulu list contained the rarely-used q, x and z!
Released:
2018
21
Dutch
Nederlands
The Dutch word ‘natafelen’ is difficult to translate. Taken literally, it means ‘after-table-ing’ and refers to having a nice, lingering chat with the family or friends with whom you’ve just shared a meal.
On launching Dutch in March 2018, we reached a significant milestone: every country in the Americas had at least one of its national/official languages covered by what3words.
Released:
2018
22
Greek
Ελληνικά
‘χαρμολύπη’ (charmolypi) is a mashup of the Greek words for happiness and sadness. It describes the mixed feeling of regret from past mistakes and forgiveness that makes us feel hopeful for the future.
Some Greek words couldn’t be included in the map because speakers from different countries don’t agree on their spelling! You won’t find the word for halloumi in a what3words address because Greeks write it with two ‘l’s ‘χαλλούμι’ while Cypriots spell it with a single ‘l’: ‘χαλούμι’.
Released:
2018
23
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Indonesia
There are two forms of the pronoun ‘we’ in Bahasa Indonesia: ‘kita’ (you and me, us) and ‘kami’ (us, but not you).
More than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, but the lingua franca (or common language) of the country is Bahasa Indonesia. Many people use it regularly but don’t consider it their first language, so we recruited speakers from many different parts of the country to make sure we used words that feel local to everyone.
Released:
2018
24
Korean
한국어
In Korean, dogs go 멍멍 (meong meong), cats 야옹 (ya-ong) and pigs 꿀꿀 (ggul-ggul).
Written Korean may look like it’s made up of large square characters, but look more closely and you’ll see each larger character is made up of around 2 to 4 small letters (‘jamo’). Each one represents a single syllable of spoken Korean. People type each ‘jamo’ individually on their keyboard, and they’re automatically arranged in the correct formation. We store each of our Korean words as both the large characters you see displayed, and, behind the scenes, as a linear collection of the individual ‘jamo’.
Released:
2018
25
Japanese
日本語
There are said to be over 400 words to describe rain in Japanese. Many are onomatopoeias, like ぽつぽつ (potsupotsu), describing drops of rain.
Japanese is the only language that does not separate words in a what3words address using the Latin script full stop (.). Instead, Japanese addresses are displayed using the ideographic full stop (。): ///おひたし。わりきる。いわし It is easier to find on many Japanese keyboard, and makes the words easier to read.
Released:
2018
26
Thai
ไทย
In Thai, the number five is pronounced ‘ha’ and ‘555’ is a common text message reply.
Written Thai has no spaces, bringing up the question ‘what is a word?’. We had to be careful to only include single words in our list, as opposed to phrases or sentences. For example, ฉันดื่มชา (I drink tea) looks like a single word to an English speaker but is in fact made up of three separate words: ฉัน (I), ดื่ม (drink) and ชา (tea).
Released:
2018
27
Chinese (Simplified)
中文
In Chinese, the word for computer 电脑 (diàn nǎo) translates to ‘electronic brain’.
Written Chinese has thousands of characters but only a few hundred unique ways to pronounce them, leading to a large number of homophones, particularly for 1-syllable words. In general, the longer a word, the less likely it is to be a homophone. We made the decision to have 2-syllable words as our shortest, therefore reducing the number of homophones dramatically. A helpful comparison in English: rain/rein/reign and deer/dear are all homophones but reindeer is not.
Released:
2018
28
Bahasa Malaysia
Bahasa Malaysia
There are no tenses in Bahasa Malaysia. They add the time of the action or use ‘sudah’ (already) or ‘akan’ (will be) with verbs.
Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are two forms of the Malay language that have been standardised as official languages in their respective countries. We found a surprising number of differences between the two, meaning we could create two different what3words maps. We worked with separate Malaysian and Indonesian teams who advised us on the nuances of the language in their respective countries.
Released:
2019
29
Romanian
Română
In Romanian, you can form an entire sentence using only vowels: ‘Oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau’ (That sheep is hers, I am taking it from her).
Released:
2019
30
Bulgarian
Български
In Bulgarian, those who offer up unsolicited opinions and meddle in other people’s business are told ‘На всяко гърне мерудия’ (you want to be the parsley of every dish).
The Bulgarian language is very similar to Macedonian, and there is ongoing debate regarding the status of each as a dialect vs. distinct language. To avoid any bias we launched Bulgarian first, with a Macedonian release coming soon.
Released:
2019
01
English
English
English is the universal language of the skies. Every pilot, crew member and air traffic controller has to pass a test, regardless of their country of origin.
English was the first wordlist we completed. Multiple words are spelled differently in the UK and USA, so we decided to remove these word pairs. You will find neither ‘colour’ nor ‘color’ in our English version.
Released:
2013
02
Spanish
Español
Around 8% of Spanish vocabulary, like ‘almohada’ (pillow) and ‘aceituna’ (olive), is derived from Arabic, a remnant of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years.
Like many of the world’s major languages, Spanish is spoken in many different countries. We recruited Spanish speakers from Europe as well as Central and South America to make sure the words were recognisable to all, and crucially, that they didn’t have any unpleasant or offensive slang meanings in different parts of the world.
Released:
2013
03
Russian
Русский
Russian was the first language spoken in space.
Russian was our first non-Latin script language. We quickly realised that some Russian Cyrillic letters look identical to Latin character sets – like ‘a’, ‘c’ and ‘e’ – but aren’t treated the same by a computer system. We built a tool to identify letters from the wrong character set, so we could be 100% sure our wordlist didn’t include any of them. This way, users’ input would always match our own system.
Released:
2014
04
Swedish
Svenska
In Swedish, the days of the week are named after Nordic Gods, except for Saturday, ‘Lördag’. It means ‘take a bath day’.
Released:
2014
05
Portuguese
Português
The Portuguese word for doorknob is ‘maçaneta’ (little apple).
During the Portuguese language project we had to be aware of the Orthographic Reform of 1990, which standardised the spellings of many words between Portugal and Brazil. It was important to ensure we used spellings that were up to date.
Released:
2014
06
French
Français
In French, the word ‘avocat’ means both avocado and lawyer.
In the French language, many verb infinitives are pronounced the same as some of their conjugations. We kept the verbs’ infinitive forms but decided that identically-pronounced words should lead to the what3words address with the infinitive form. So if you enter ///mangé.pourquoi.merci you’ll be redirected to ///manger.pourquoi.merci
Released:
2014
07
German
Deutsch
Great German proverbs include ‘Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei’ (everything has an end, only the sausage has two).
To keep things simple for our users, the longest what3words addresses are assigned to locations in the world where they are least likely to be used: either in the ocean, or in rural locations where that language is less common. This is a particularly important feature for the German language, which has some really long words. For example, ///schneeballschlacht.prinzregententorte.sprachwissenschaft is in the middle of the Colombian rainforest, whereas the more user-friendly ///fragt.nach.vorsicht is in downtown Berlin.
Released:
2015
08
Italian
Italiano
Anyone who’s studied music will know a fair bit of Italian. Musical notation was developed in Italy during the Renaissance, leading to widespread use of words like ‘presto’ (quickly), ‘crescendo’ (getting louder) and ‘solo’ (alone).
Released:
2015
09
Swahili
Kiswahili
Swahili developed as a coastal trading language. ‘Sawahil’ is the plural for the Arabic word ‘sahil’, which means coast.
Swahili was the first agglutinative language we worked on, where a single word can contain a huge amount of grammatical information. We had to be mindful of this and restrict the complexity of the words where possible to ensure the 3 word combinations remained user-friendly.
Released:
2016
10
Turkish
Türkçe
Turkish was written using the Arabic script until the 1928 language reform, when it was replaced by the Latin-based modern Turkish alphabet.
Released:
2016
11
Finnish
Suomi
JRR Tolkien was so inspired by the Finnish language that you can clearly see its influence in Elvish and other languages he created. In later years, he called the language ‘intoxicating’.
Different language versions of what3words can’t share any words. When the team found out that ‘sauna’ had unfortunately already been used in the English wordlist, they quickly channelled their ‘sisu’ to the project, making sure the word for the quintessentially Finnish concept of resilience and determination was included instead.
Released:
2016
12
Mongolian
Монгол хэл
The Mongolian language distinguishes between types of dreams. ‘зүүд’ (züüd) is a dream you have in your sleep, and ‘мөрөөдөл’ (möröödöl) is an aspirational dream.
Mongolian was the first Asian language that what3words supported. That may seem like an unusual choice, but Mongolia played a crucial role in what3words’ history: in 2016, its National Postal Service became the first to officially accept what3words addresses.
Released:
2016
13
Polish
Polski
Polish is known for being difficult to learn. Long strings of consonants in words like ‘pszczoła’ (pssh-cho-wa), meaning bee, often trip up non-native speakers.
Released:
2016
14
Arabic
العربية
Arabic words are read right-to-left, but the order in which digits are read varies.
Arabic is read from right to left, which presented an interesting challenge for our team of developers. To create a better user experience, not only is the text flipped but the entire interface of the app flips horizontally when the Arabic language is selected. The same goes for Urdu, Hebrew and Persian.
Released:
2016
15
Czech
Čeština
There is a word in Czech to describe someone who owns a cabin and goes there often: ‘chatař’.
Released:
2018
16
Danish
Dansk
The Danish word for mullet is ‘bundesligahår’ (German football league hair).
Our Danish team were as keen as we were to ensure the language’s most famous export word, ‘hygge’ (a state of cosy contentment), would be included in their wordlist. It has led to a number of brilliant combinations including ///hygge.ildsted.tæpper (‘hygge’, fireplace, blankets) which can be found in Essex, UK.
Released:
2018
17
Norwegian
Norsk
In Norway, when someone finds themselves stuck, having failed or perhaps been tricked, they are said to ‘stå/sitte med skjegget i postkassa’ (to stand/sit with one’s beard in a postbox).
It is said that Inuit has 50 words for snow, but our language consultants dug up over 80 Norwegian words that contain the word ‘snø’. Some of our favourites are: ‘snøfnugg’ (snowflake), ‘snøvær’ (snowy weather) and ‘snøballkrig’ (snowball fight).
Released:
2018
18
Afrikaans
Afrikaans
The first published texts in Afrikaans were written in the Arabic alphabet in 1845 by Muslim scholars in Cape Town.
As with many languages, you can turn almost any Afrikaans noun into a diminutive (small) version. For example, ‘springbok’ becomes ‘springbokkie’ (a little springbok). Diminutives were particularly useful to the language consultants when they were generating the 25,000 words needed for the Afrikaans map.
Released:
2018
19
isiXhosa
IsiXhosa
In the 2018 superhero film Black Panther, the people of Wakanda, a fictional African kingdom, speak a real language: isiXhosa.
There are over 5,000 words with click consonants in the isiXhosa wordlist. ‘c’ is pronounced with the tongue against the back of the teeth (a tutting sound), ‘q’ with the tongue on the roof of the mouth (sounds like uncorking a bottle) and ‘x’ with the tongue at the sides of the mouth (like the sound made to spur on a horse).
Released:
2018
20
isiZulu
IsiZulu
The word ‘ubuntu’, used in isiZulu and a few other Nguni languages, means ‘compassion and humanity’. It has become one of the words most representative of South African culture.
Because we don’t allow duplicate words across multiple wordlists, Latin script languages can lose a fair amount of potential vocabulary before we even start the project. Some letters and consonant and vowel combinations are simply more common than others, adding to the likelihood that some they will have already been used in a previous wordlist. While isiZulu has some overlap with isiXhosa, it didn’t clash too extensively with other wordlists, partly because nearly 40% of the words in our isiZulu list contained the rarely-used q, x and z!
Released:
2018
21
Dutch
Nederlands
The Dutch word ‘natafelen’ is difficult to translate. Taken literally, it means ‘after-table-ing’ and refers to having a nice, lingering chat with the family or friends with whom you’ve just shared a meal.
On launching Dutch in March 2018, we reached a significant milestone: every country in the Americas had at least one of its national/official languages covered by what3words.
Released:
2018
22
Greek
Ελληνικά
‘χαρμολύπη’ (charmolypi) is a mashup of the Greek words for happiness and sadness. It describes the mixed feeling of regret from past mistakes and forgiveness that makes us feel hopeful for the future.
Some Greek words couldn’t be included in the map because speakers from different countries don’t agree on their spelling! You won’t find the word for halloumi in a what3words address because Greeks write it with two ‘l’s ‘χαλλούμι’ while Cypriots spell it with a single ‘l’: ‘χαλούμι’.
Released:
2018
23
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Indonesia
There are two forms of the pronoun ‘we’ in Bahasa Indonesia: ‘kita’ (you and me, us) and ‘kami’ (us, but not you).
More than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, but the lingua franca (or common language) of the country is Bahasa Indonesia. Many people use it regularly but don’t consider it their first language, so we recruited speakers from many different parts of the country to make sure we used words that feel local to everyone.
Released:
2018
24
Korean
한국어
In Korean, dogs go 멍멍 (meong meong), cats 야옹 (ya-ong) and pigs 꿀꿀 (ggul-ggul).
Written Korean may look like it’s made up of large square characters, but look more closely and you’ll see each larger character is made up of around 2 to 4 small letters (‘jamo’). Each one represents a single syllable of spoken Korean. People type each ‘jamo’ individually on their keyboard, and they’re automatically arranged in the correct formation. We store each of our Korean words as both the large characters you see displayed, and, behind the scenes, as a linear collection of the individual ‘jamo’.
Released:
2018
25
Japanese
日本語
There are said to be over 400 words to describe rain in Japanese. Many are onomatopoeias, like ぽつぽつ (potsupotsu), describing drops of rain.
Japanese is the only language that does not separate words in a what3words address using the Latin script full stop (.). Instead, Japanese addresses are displayed using the ideographic full stop (。): ///おひたし。わりきる。いわし It is easier to find on many Japanese keyboard, and makes the words easier to read.
Released:
2018
26
Thai
ไทย
In Thai, the number five is pronounced ‘ha’ and ‘555’ is a common text message reply.
Written Thai has no spaces, bringing up the question ‘what is a word?’. We had to be careful to only include single words in our list, as opposed to phrases or sentences. For example, ฉันดื่มชา (I drink tea) looks like a single word to an English speaker but is in fact made up of three separate words: ฉัน (I), ดื่ม (drink) and ชา (tea).
Released:
2018
27
Chinese (Simplified)
中文
In Chinese, the word for computer 电脑 (diàn nǎo) translates to ‘electronic brain’.
Written Chinese has thousands of characters but only a few hundred unique ways to pronounce them, leading to a large number of homophones, particularly for 1-syllable words. In general, the longer a word, the less likely it is to be a homophone. We made the decision to have 2-syllable words as our shortest, therefore reducing the number of homophones dramatically. A helpful comparison in English: rain/rein/reign and deer/dear are all homophones but reindeer is not.
Released:
2018
28
Bahasa Malaysia
Bahasa Malaysia
There are no tenses in Bahasa Malaysia. They add the time of the action or use ‘sudah’ (already) or ‘akan’ (will be) with verbs.
Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are two forms of the Malay language that have been standardised as official languages in their respective countries. We found a surprising number of differences between the two, meaning we could create two different what3words maps. We worked with separate Malaysian and Indonesian teams who advised us on the nuances of the language in their respective countries.
Released:
2019
29
Romanian
Română
In Romanian, you can form an entire sentence using only vowels: ‘Oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau’ (That sheep is hers, I am taking it from her).
Released:
2019
30
Bulgarian
Български
In Bulgarian, those who offer up unsolicited opinions and meddle in other people’s business are told ‘На всяко гърне мерудия’ (you want to be the parsley of every dish).
The Bulgarian language is very similar to Macedonian, and there is ongoing debate regarding the status of each as a dialect vs. distinct language. To avoid any bias we launched Bulgarian first, with a Macedonian release coming soon.
Released:
2019
31
Hungarian
Magyar
Hungarian has two different words for love. ‘Szeretet’ is the love you have for family, friends and pets, and ‘szerelem’ is romantic love.
To avoid confusion, we try to remove names of towns/cities from our wordlists. Our eagle-eyed Hungarian team spotted that the plural of the word ‘bank’ (it means the same in English), ‘Bankok’, resembles a well-known city name! You won’t find the plural form of bank in any Hungarian what3words addresses.
Released:
2019
32
Hindi
हिंदी
The English word shampoo is derived from the Hindi word चंपो (champo), meaning to squeeze, knead or massage. There is no Hindi word for washing your hair.
Hindi was the first language we worked on that is written using an abugida: a script where each consonant comes with its own vowel included in the pronunciation. You can change the vowel by adding extra marks to the consonant itself. For example, the Hindi character क is pronounced ‘ka’, but के is ‘ke’ and कि is ‘ki’.
Released:
2019
33
Bengali
বাংলা
The Bengali phrase ঘোড়ার ডিম (Ghorar Dim) means ‘Horse’s egg’ and is used to describe an impossible object or task.
In the 1950s, the Bengali Language Movement fought for the language to be treated as official in East Pakistan – now Bangladesh. Student demonstrators at the University of Dhaka were killed by police on 21 February 1952, and that date is now commemorated by UNESCO as International Mother Language Day. We were particularly delighted to have a contingent of young linguists from the University on our team, and they were certainly very passionate about the work they did with us!
Released:
2019
34
Tamil
தமிழ்
Tamil is one of the oldest living languages in the world, believed to have been in use for over 2,500 years.
Our Tamil team introduced us to the saying ஆமை புகுந்த வீடு உருப்படாது (your house will be ruined if you let a turtle inside it). To avoid anyone having the word ஆமை (turtle) in their home address, we removed it from the wordlist. Many people think the saying originated when turtles sensing incoming tsunamis would walk into houses.
Released:
2019
35
Telugu
తెలుగు
Telugu is often called ‘the Italian of the East’ because most of its words end in vowels.
Released:
2019
36
Marathi
मराठी
There are around 42 dialects of spoken Marathi, with 90 million fluent speakers globally.
Released:
2019
37
Hebrew
עברית
Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value. For example, the first ten letters represent 1-10 and the next nine 20-100. Some numbers spell out words: יח (yud-het), the number 18, is considered lucky because it uses the same letters as the word for life חי (het-yud).
Released:
2019
38
Urdu
اردو
The word ‘Urdu’ is thought to derive from the Turkic ‘ordu’, which means army. The language is said to have developed through communication between Middle Eastern armies and the local population in northern India.
In its spoken form, Urdu is considered very similar to Hindi, but they’re written using different scripts. Hindi uses the Devanagari writing script, while Urdu is similar to the Persian and Arabic scripts. We therefore created separate maps for the two languages, although some of their what3words addresses may sound similar.
Released:
2020
39
Kannada
ಕನ್ನಡ
The earliest literary work in Kannada is dated 850 AD, and Kannada words can be found in a Greek play dated 150 AD.
Released:
2020
40
Malayalam
മലയാളം
Malayalam is a combination of two words: ‘mala’ (mountain) and ‘alam’ (region).
Released:
2020
41
Gujarati
ગુજરાતી
The phrase મગજની કઢી ના કર (Magaj ni kadhi na kar) in Gujarati means ‘Don’t bother me’, but translates as ‘Don’t make curry of my brain’.
We worked on the Gujarati wordlist after completing Hindi, which helped enormously. While Gujarati drops the distinctive horizontal line of the Devanagari script (used to write Hindi), it retains many familiar letters that we knew how to pronounce! Compare the Gujarati word for language, ભાષા, with the same word in Hindi: भाषा.
Released:
2020
42
Punjabi
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Punjabi is one of the few languages that use two writing systems. Shahmukhi is written from right to left, and Gurmukhi is written from left to right.
The Punjab is a large historical area, split in half by the modern border between India and Pakistan. On the Pakistani side of the border, Punjabi is predominantly written in a variation of the Arabic script, while in India it is written in Gurmukhi (a unique script, close to Devanagari that Hindi is written in). We had to choose: our Punjabi wordlist is in Gurmukhi.
Released:
2020
43
Nepali
नेपाली
The Nepali word for Mount Everest is सगरमाथा (Sagarmatha), which translates as ‘Goddess of the Sky’.
‘Nepali’ or ‘Nepalese’? Our team confirmed that ‘Nepali’ is the word used locally to refer to the language and those native to Nepal, as well as an adjective for things pertaining to Nepal. ‘Nepalese’ adds the English suffix ‘ese’ to the local word, creating an Anglicised way of referring to those things. Although they have the same meaning, we use ‘Nepali’.
Released:
2020
44
Welsh
Cymraeg
Between 1,500 and 5,000 people speak Welsh in Patagonia, South America.
Many of our Latin script languages use diacritics on certain letters, like ‘à’, ‘ç’ and ‘š’. Users of these languages can type a what3words address with or without the extra marks and still get to the correct place. For example, typing ///ffram.llen.grwp into the app automatically take you to ///ffrâm.llên.grŵp. This is particularly useful for our Welsh speakers, as the character ‘ŵ’ is very rarely found on a keyboard!
Released:
2020
45
Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
The Vietnamese word for country, ‘đất nước’, means ‘earth [and] water’. They are the two most essential elements for wet rice cultivation, which unites people and gives them life.
Vietnamese is commonly written with spaces between all the syllables, as well as the words. This means that Vietnamese is the only what3words language that contains spaces in the words themselves - see the address here! The words are still separated with a full-stop, as with all our Latin script languages, and of course the URL has no spaces.
Released:
2020
46
Ukrainian
Українська
The Ukrainian language is rich in diminutive forms. Even the word ‘вороги’ (vorohy, meaning ‘enemies’) has its own diminutive form: ‘воріженьки’ (vorizhenki, meaning ‘little enemies’).
Released:
2020
47
Slovak
Slovenčina
48
Amharic
አማርኛ
The Ge’ez script used to write Amharic is estimated to have already been in use between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.
One of the difficulties of working on a language that uses its own writing script – like Amharic – is that you also have to find a font that supports it. We use a total of 17 different fonts within our app to support all the different scripts for the different languages.
Released:
2021
49
Odia
ଓଡ଼ିଆ
The Odia script has a curved appearance because it used to be written on palm leaves that would tear if too many straight lines were used.
Odia was the 12th South Asian language we launched, and with it we offered at least one official language of every state in India. Over 95% of the country’s population can use what3words in their native language.
Released:
2021
50
Persian
فارسی
Written Persian has changed very little in hundreds of years. Poetry written by Rumi in the 13th century remains popular in its original form to this day.
Broadly speaking, the Persian language is known as Farsi in Iran and Dari in Afghanistan. Their written forms are so similar that it made sense for us to launch Persian as a single language that can be used by Farsi and Dari speakers.
Released:
2021
