Fun Language Facts:Bible, Mandarin, French, German...

Here are some fun language facts that you have probably never heard of.

Fun Language Facts

Fun Language Facts 1

There are about 7,000 languages around the world today.
2,200 of these are in Asia.
12.44% of our population are Mandarin native speakers.
About 1/4 of the world’s population has some knowledge on English.
There are 50,000 characters in the Chinese language.
There are 13 ways of spelling the “o” sound in French.
50% of children’s education in Luxembourg is spent learning languages such as English, French and German alongside Luxembourgish.
!Xóõ is one of the 29 languages in Botswana. Its alphabet has 5 basic and 17 click sounds.
There are 2,400 languages that are classified as endangered.
231 are completely extinct.

Fun Language Facts 2

One language dies every two weeks.
Eastern Siberia, Northern Australia and the Northwest Pacific Plateau of North America are hotspot areas for severely endangered languages.
The indigenous Mexican language of Ayapaneco is in danger of dying because the its two remaining speakers refuse to talk to each other. The two speakers call their language Nuumte Oote.
There are 12 fictional languages in Lord of the Rings. Only two were developed: Quenya and Sindarin.
The artificial international language Esperanto has about 500,000 to 2,000,000 speakers.
There are two movies made entirely using Esperanto filed in the 1960s.
Klingon, the language used in Star Trek universe was created by Marc Okrand.
Linguist Dr. D’Armond Speers attempted to raise his son bilingual and spoke only Klingon to him for 3 years.
The Talossan of the micronation of the Kingdom of Talossa has 35,000 words. The micronation was founded in 1979 by a 14- year old boy in his bedroom.
The 1990’s children’s toy Furby has an official language: Furbish.

Fun Language Facts 3

The European Union has 24 official and working languages.
The United Nations has 6 official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
The bible (Bible app, online bible, bible verses) – or sections of it – is available in 2,454 languages.
After the Bible, Pinocchio is the next book available in most languages,
Agatha Christie is the most translated author. Her novels are available in 7,231 combinations of books and languages.
There are 830 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea.
The easiest foreign language to learn for English speakers is Frisian. It is a native language to certain parts of Netherlands. English and Frisian have a shared history and has similar sounds.
Linguistic experts believe that there are similarities between Japanese and the language of the Native American Zuni tribe. Further research showed that there are biological links between the two languages.
A Japanese man sued NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, because of its use of English loanwords that caused him “mental distress”.
Other than Wales, the country with high number of Welsh speakers is Argentina. Specifically in Chubut province, Welsh immigrants moved to Patagonia in 1865 and continued using their language.

Fun Language Facts 4

The chart song sing in most languages – nine in total – is Liquid Blue’s “Earth Passport”.
An Indian man recorded a song in 125 languages and released it as a double CD in 2009.
The oldest written language dates back to 4500 BC on Yangshao culture pottery in China.
Songs in English have won Eurovision Song Contest competitions than songs in any other language.
Rotokas is the language with the smallest alphabet consisting of only 11 – 12 letters.
Khmer (Cambodian) is the language with the biggest alphabet. It has 74 letters.
South Africa has 11 official languages, the most any country has.
Cryptophasia refers to the private languages developed between twins.
The word “dord” was discovered in the Miriam- Webster dictionary in 1939. It is not a word, but was in there for 5 years due to an error.
The pope tweets in 9 languages. His Spanish account has the most number of followers, followed by English.

Fun Language Facts 5

The languages thought to be most similar to English, in order, are: German, French and Russian
A polygot is someone who can speak or write in a number of different languages.
A study showed that when babies hear foreign languages in their first few months of life, they will find it easier to learn new languages later in life.
A script from the 1400s, the Voynich Book, contains a language that is yet to be understood.
Sign languages also have accents.
The United States has no official language.
Cash machines in the Vatican City have Latin translations.

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