Today it is the official language of 29 countries on different continents. If English is the language of business, French was considered the language of culture. Its enormous importance is also reflected in the fact that it is the language with the third-largest number of non-native speakers. Arabic is the official language of 26 countries. Due to this territorial dispersion, it is actually a collection of dialects.
It is also the liturgical language of Islam. It is not only the language that treasures the enormous cultural legacy of the Arab world, but also a necessary tool for business in this part of the world. Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh. It may come as a surprise that a language spoken in such a small territory should appear on a list of the world's most spoken languages.
However, the fact is explained by the population density of that region. It is also spoken in parts of India and Burma. Less surprising is the inclusion of Russian among the world's most widely spoken languages if we consider its territorial extension.
It is the official language of four countries but is also spoken in all those that were part of the former Soviet Union. It is the language with the largest number of native speakers in Europe. Portuguese is another of the languages that expanded during the European colonial period.
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The Intrepid Guide contains affiliate links. These commissions help reduce the ever-increasing costs of keeping this site active. Thanks for reading! There are countries, but how many languages are there in the world today? According to Ethnologue, there are currently 7, languages spoken around the world. Source: Ethnologue The exact number of languages spoken has always been surrounded by uncertainty. What is a Language? The Origin of Languages Researchers are still baffled as to how and when these numerous languages were invented.
The Invention of Writing The text is a list of gifts from the High and Mighty of Adab to the High Priestess, on the occasion of her election to the temple. Michele Michele writes and vlogs about language learning and travel. As can be easily understood from these examples, most of these languages will die out over the next few centuries.
But does it have to be that way? The answer is simple, but not that straightforward: yes and no. Roughly 40 percent of languages are currently endangered, many of which are being sustained by handfuls of less than 1, speakers. Of course awareness helps enormously. In many countries, such as Spain and France, successful attempts are being made to preserve and to some extent revive the local languages and dialects.
Whenever governments set up education and health systems, one language will automatically be used as an official language. The descendants of the Ainu people learned and grew up with Japanese in order to have better access to education and therefore a better life. Due to persecution and stigmatization, some languages die out faster than others. For example, Ainu has long been regarded as an inferior language, and therefore speakers of Ainu in Japan were often excluded from society.
In such cases, population groups may decide to abandon their own language entirely and exclusively teach their children the majority language in order to ensure their social integration. There have been many other examples of genocide and forced assimilation throughout history that have placed minority language speakers in even more oppressive circumstances. The Chinese language has gained more importance because China is making progress by leaps and bounds and it is expected that China will supersede the USA by Moreover, China is the most populous country in the world and the official language of this populous country is Mandarin which is one of the dialects of the Chinese language.
It is estimated that Mandarin Chinese is spoken by a whopping million people. Do you know Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world? It is spoken by a whopping million people. Approximately 31 countries around the world speak the Spanish language making it the most spoken language of the world.
Every language has its importance. Other languages that are mostly spoken around the world are Persian, German, Russian, Malaysian, and Portuguese. The importance of these languages will be categorized by checking how many countries they are spoken in. For example, Persian is spoken in 29 countries, German in 18 countries, Russian in 16 countries, Malaysian in 13 countries, and Portuguese in 12 countries. Although Asia boasts of the maximum number of languages, they are not necessarily divided that way by country.
If we zoom in further on the countries, it becomes evident that many of the popular languages are spoken not just in one, but across multiple countries. That is the reason that English , French, and Arabic are the bosses with a large number of countries where their speakers reside. Take a look at the number of countries and the languages are spoken there. English is spoken across countries, with Arabic and French being spoken in 60 and 51 countries, respectively.
Other languages follow suit with Malaysian and Portuguese having the least number of countries to their name. With every passing day and month, fewer and fewer languages see the light of the day. It is a fact that when a language ceases to be learned, it ceases to survive, and a language dies with the death of the native speakers. The threat to the languages of the world, therefore, is very real. The death of a language is not just a loss of the spoken language, it is a loss of culture , traditions, norms, and customs of a community or tribe.
With the death of a language, a small unit of civilization ceases to exist, with the customs and traditions of that unit lost and forgotten. When so many languages are endangered and so many of them are already on the verge of extinction, what can be done to preserve them?
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