Here are some interesting facts about all languages in the world. Language Direct has translators and interpreters who can help you with over 189 of them!
Number of All Languages in the World
Ethnologue sites that there are 7,105 living languages in the world today. Other experts and books estimate that the number is between 6,000 and 7,000.
Most Spoken Languages
The top five languages with the most number of speakers are: Standard Chinese – 1,026 million, English – 765 million, Spanish – 466 million, Hindi – 380 million, and Standard Arabic – 353.5 million. These numbers include both L1 and L2 speakers. These numbers are estimates from Ethnologue.
The top five languages with the most number of native speakers are: Mandarin – 935 million or 14.1% of the world’s population, Spanish – 387 million or 5.85% of the world’s population, English – 365 million or 5.52% of the world’s population, Hindi – 295 million or 4.46% of the world’s population, and Arabic – 280 million or 4.23% of the world’s population. These are estimates by Nationalencyklopedin.
Language Families
The top five language families based on number of languages included in them are: Niger- Congo – 1,532 languages, Austronesian – 1,257, Trans- New Guinea – 477 languages, Sino- Tibetan – 449 languages, and Indo- European – 439 languages.
The top five language families based on number of native speakers as a percentage of the world’s population are: Indo- European – 45%, Sino- Tibetan – 22%, Niger- Congo – 4.6%, Afroasiatic – 6%, and Austronesian – 5.9%.
Oldest of All Languages in the World
The oldest languages in the world based on written accounts are:
- Sumerian – Sumerian was spoken in Meopotamia, which is now Modern- day Iraq, beginning 4th century BC.
- Egyptian – The first Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to 2700 BC.
All Languages in the World that are Extinct,
An “endangered language” is one that is falling out when its native speakers die or start speaking another language. A “dead language” is one that has no more native speakers. It becomes an “extinct language” when there are no more speakers of the language.
The oldest language the went extinct is Sumerian. The language was extinct by the early part of the 2nd millennium BC. Other languages that went extinct during the 2nd millennium BC are: Eblaite, Hattic, Palaic, Hurrian, Ugaritic and Hittite.
More recently, the Livonian language went extinct in 2013 after its last surviving native speaker, Gizelda Kristina, passed away. Other languages that went extinct between 2010 and 2013 are: Aka- Bo, Cochin Indo- Portuguese Creole, Pazeh, and Scots (a Cromarty Dialect).
Other more popular revived languages are:
- Hebrew, which first existed in 10th century BC was a dead language by 200 BC. It was revived in the 19th century, and has about 5 million speakers today and is the official language in Israel.
All Languages in the World and their Official Statuses
There are 193 countries in the world. 178 of them have national official languages.
English is the most widely spoken official language; also there are 66 countries who gave it an official status. French is second, with 30 countries giving it official status. There are 25 countries who have declared Spanish and Arabic as their official languages, and 11 countries who named Portuguese as such.
Interestingly, while Chinese is the native language, it is the official language in only two countries. On the other hand, Swahili, a native language to only 800,000 people is the official language in four countries. Also, Javanese is the most common language without any official status in any country. It has 84 million native speakers.
There are 15 countries with no official language, and of all the languages in the world, there are 16 with no official status.
Countries with the Most Dialects / Languages
Papua New Guinea wins this category. There are 820 languages in the country. India comes in second, with 742 spoken languages. Nigeria is third with 516, India with 427 and the US ranks fifth with 311.
All Languages in the World: Constructed Languages
Constructed languages are divided into three categories. Auxiliary languages are those that were intentionally created to provide people from different countries to have one common language that is easy to learn and execute, without replacing their native languages. The most popular of these is Esperanto, which was constructed in 1887.
Controlled languages are those that originated from natural languages, but were altered to make it easier and simpler.They are mostly English- based: Basic English, Simplified English, Prime English.
All Languages in the World: Sign Languages
There is an estimated 200 sign languages in the world, although the exact number is not known as sign languages are continually developed. There are countries like Sri Lanka and Tanzania where each school for the deaf uses a different sign language.
Sign Languages are categorized into three: deaf sign languages, auxiliary sign languages, signed modes of oral languages.
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