50 Awesome Facts About Languages

Did You Know That ?

• 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.
• 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 ‘in danger’.
• 231 languages are now completely extinct. These include Alderney French, Soyot and Togoyo.
• Ayapaneco. In Mexico this language is in danger of dying out , because its two remaining speakers refuse to talk to each other.
• 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.
• Marc Okrand, the man who was credited with creating Klingon, was once a linguistics teacher at the University of California.
• 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.
• The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been published in 300 languages. It is the world's most translated document.
• There are 24 working languages of the EU.
• There are 6 official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
• The Bible is available in 2454 languages.
• Agatha Christie's novels are available in 7231combinations of book and language. She is the world's most translated author.
• 830 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.
• Frisian is the easiest foreign language for English speakers to learn. It is native to part of the Netherlands and has a common history and similar sounds.
• Welsh is spoken in Wales (the United Kingdom) and Argentina, as Welsh immigrants settled in Patagonia in 1865 and kept the language.
• The oldest written language was believed to be written in about 4500 BC.
• Rotokas has the smallest alphabet, just 11-12 letters, whereas Khmer (Cambodian) has the largest alphabet, 74 letters.
• South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.
• The pope tweets in 9 languages.
• German and French have been voted the best for graduates to learn to help enhance their prospect of getting a job.
• German is thought to be the most similar to English.
• If babies hear foreign languages in their first few months, they'll find picking up languages easier in later life, a study has shown.
• Sign language also has accents.
• The US has no official language.
• You can us an ATM in Latin in Vatican City.

taken from http://www.edudemic.com/language-quiz/