Source: www.edudemic.com
50 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Languages
Learning another language is important. And even in the United States (where learning non-native language has typically been lagging a bit behind many other countries), nearly all students are studying another language. Languages are a part of everyday life – whether you speak one or more, they are one of the main keys of communication. Other than being able to speak a language (or not being able to speak it) there are a lot of fun facts about languages more generally.
Did You Know?
• There are about 7,000 languages in the world.
• There are 50,000 characters in the Chinese language. You’ll need to know about 2,000 to read a newspaper.
• 12.44% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin as their first language.
• There are about 2,200 languages in Asia.
• 1/4 of the world’s population speaks at least some English. Learning another language is important!
• 50% of educational time in Luxembourg devoted to learning English, German, and French.
• There are 13 ways to spell the ‘o’ sound in French.
• There is a language in Botswana that consists of mainly 5 types of clicks.
• There are 2,400 languages classified as being ‘endangered’.
• 231 languages are now completely extinct.
• One language dies about every 14 days.
• Eastern Siberia, Northwest Pacific Plateau of North America, And Northern Australia are hotspots for endangered languages.
• There are 12 imaginary languages in Lord of The Rings.
• Esperanto is an artificial language, but is spoken by about 500,000 to 2,000,000 people, and 2 feature films have been done in the language.
• There are 24 working languages of the EU.
• There are 6 official UN languages.
• The bible is available in 2454 languages.
• The oldest written language was believed to be written in about 4500 BC.
• South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.
• The pope tweets in 9 languages.
• The US has no official language.
• You can us an ATM in Latin in Vatican City.
