2006-07-05 07:18:59 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
alot
2006-07-05 07:33:57 · answer #1 · answered by crazycoolk 1 · 0⤊ 4⤋
Linguists estimate that there are about 5,000-6,000 different languages spoken in the world today. The imprecision in this estimate is largely due to the fact that some dialects are in the process of diverging and it is not clear that they have reached the stage of being separate languages. If two people find each other's speech unintelligible, they are usually thought to be speaking different languages rather than dialects.
There are about 200 languages that have a million or more native speakers. Mandarin Chinese is the most common, being spoken by around 874,000,000 people as a native language. English is a distant third with approximately 341,000,000 native speakers.
2006-07-05 14:26:37 · answer #2 · answered by dayna_bug 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
13% of all the languages spoken on earth are spoken in Papua New Guinea which means as there are approximately 930 different languages spoken there so in total that would make the global count around 7154. Many of the languages spoken in PNG are spoken by as few as 2 people and is known as "place talk" meaning that that particular language is spoken by one village only. I hope this helps. P.S. There are 615000 words in the English language and there are 3000 more words in the English language than there were 10 years ago!
2006-07-05 14:28:40 · answer #3 · answered by mandbturner3699 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are around 6,000 - 7,000 languages spoken in the world today although about 90% of the world population speaks one of 15 languages. There are estimated to be another 5,000 dialects in existence. 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 are represented by on-line dictionaries. Pretty awesome!
2006-07-05 14:31:02 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are 6,800 KNOWN languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken).
300 are represented by on-line dictionaries as of May 11, 2004.
2006-07-05 14:28:52 · answer #5 · answered by Marilynne 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Scientific counts range from about 3000 to about 8000. It all depends on how you distinguish between the notions of "language" and "dialect". Most linguists say "about 6000". To get an idea of where these languages are in the world, imagine six individuals who each speak 1000 languages. One of them would live in the Americas, two of them would live in Africa, one of them would live on the Eurasian supercontinent, one of them would live on Australia and all the islands of the Pacific including those usually counted as part of Asia, and one of them would live on the island of New Guinea
2006-07-05 21:14:28 · answer #6 · answered by Taivo 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, no one knows that, because no one can agree on what qualifies as a language, as compared to a dialect. Also, some languages have few or no speakers left alive--do they count?
There's some language in Australia (I think) that two people speak, but they don't speak to each other because that's taboo in their culture.
But I'd say 7500 myself.
2006-07-05 14:24:02 · answer #7 · answered by Goddess of Grammar 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I know there are over 600 in Africa alone. You know, with all those random little tribes and stuff. Not sure about the world, though.
2006-07-05 14:21:35 · answer #8 · answered by qtzilla 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well over a million (billions, if you count dialects and extinct languages).
2006-07-05 14:21:12 · answer #9 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, Jules Verne said once that there were 2,000 languages and 4,000 dialects
2006-07-05 15:29:00 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
812 primary languages
2006-07-05 14:29:54 · answer #11 · answered by Christian F 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋