How many languages exist in the world?It is believed that from 2500 to 7000. The views of scientists on the total amount of their spending due to the lack of a unified approach to what is considered the language and dialect of that.
How many languages are there in the world?
all languages of the world are divided into families, of which there are 240. The largest language family and is now considered to be the most studied Indo-European group, which includes Russian language.The reason for the inclusion of different languages in the same family is a significant phonetic similarity of the roots of words denoting the basic concepts, and the similarity of grammatical structure.
There are also language-isolates that can not be placed in any family.An example of such a language isolate, "not remembering kinship" is a dialect of the Basque "euskera".
most common languages
How many languages in the world today, which are the most common?These include 10: Chinese (Mandarin), English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay, Indonesian, French.In the language of Mandarin spoken by more than 1 billion people.On each of the other nine of the ten most widely spoken by more than 100 million people.
reason for the popularity of the Chinese language must be considered that it is spoken in China, Singapore, Taiwan, the vast Chinese diaspora in almost all the countries of Southeast Asia and other countries of the world.We can not forget about the fertility of the people.
Native English and Spanish conquerors were the most active overseas land openers Americas.That is why, if we look at the linguistic map of the world, we see that these two languages dominate territorially.English is the official language in 56 countries, Spanish - in more than 20 countries.The French, as well as English and Spanish, too, in his time created a mighty empire that obey vast territories in North America and Africa.Today, French is the first official language of 15 countries around the world.
Interesting facts in the history of European civilization, a few languages in the world at various times occupied the position of ethnic means of communication - the lingua franca.During the Roman Empire Koine - Pan-Hellenic language - has become such a "lingua franca" for the Eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East.Subsequently, more than 1,000 years, first in the Mediterranean countries, and then in the whole of Catholic Europe as a lingua franca used Latin.In XVIII-XIX centuries a means of international communication has become French.Since the end of the twentieth century a means of interethnic communication throughout the world was the English language, of course, because of the leading position in the world of English-speaking superpowers - the United States.
Dead Languages
In linguistics, there is such a thing as a "dead language".It is such, which does not say, and know about it only through the written monuments.In some cases, dead languages continue to live because they are used in scientific or religious purposes.And there are many languages in the world?These include Latin, from which later developed the Romance languages;Old Russian, which became the basis for the East Slavic languages and Greek.There are still a number of dead languages that use a scientific and religious purpose - Sanskrit, Coptic, Avesta.
There is a unique case of the resurrection of a dead language.After World War II, when it was created the State of Israel, Hebrew, where the 18th century, no one spoke, was revived as the official language of this country.
dominant language
The bilingual (bilingual) environment, one language is dominant.Previously, under the Empire, the main reason for dying indigenous languages have been mass destruction of local people.Today, the weaker language is dying on the socio-economic reasons and not because of the fact that its carriers are dying.Ignorance of the dominant language entails the impossibility of education, promotion of the social ladder, and so on. D. Therefore, in a bilingual family, parents often prefer not even to speak their native language dies out, not to create problems for the children in the future.To a large extent affect the process of extinction of the media, using the dominant language.
An important question is how many languages in the world.But even more important problem - their extinction.Every 2 weeks the world disappears one language.Scientists predict that by the end of the XXI century will disappear of their 3.5 thousand.
Artificial languages
interesting phenomenon in the world's languages are artificial speak.How many languages in the world of this type?The most famous - 16, and the most popular of them - Esperanto, created in 1887 by Ludwig Zamenhof.Zamenhof was Hailing from Bialystok, a city inhabited by Jews, Poles, Germans, Belarusians.The city had a very complicated inter-ethnic relations.Zamenhof believed their cause lack of a common language.The aim of Esperanto was spread among the people of the world of ideas of peaceful coexistence.Zamenhof published a textbook of Esperanto.He translated into their language, many masterpieces of world literature, and even wrote poetry in Esperanto.Much of the vocabulary of Esperanto is of Romance and Germanic roots, as well as Latin and Greek, having a scientific importance.Approximately 200,000 articles in language Esperanto was published in Wikipedia.
Now you know how many languages exist in the world, and may be able to save endangered, take their studies.
