do you know?
2006-09-07 13:35:53 · 14 answers · asked by William A 2 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Commuting
do you know?
2006-09-07 13:37:02 · update #1
There is a list of the world's languages, called "Ethnologue" (Grimes 1996). There are 6,500 living languages listed. Of these, 6,000 have registered population figures. 52% of the 6,000 languages are spoken by less than 10,000 people, and 28% are spoken by less than 1,000 people. 83% of them are limited to single countries.
The ten largest languages in the world are the first languages for nearly half of the world's population.
Here is a list of the top 10 languages in February 1999 according to Ethnologue:
1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
2. Spanish 332 million speakers
3. English 322 million speakers
4. Bengali 189 million speakers
5. Hindi 182 million speakers
6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
6. Russian 170 million speakers
8. Japanese 125 million speakers
9. German 98 million speakers
10. Wu 77 million speakers
2006-09-07 13:38:12 · answer #1 · answered by missourim43 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's not so easy to give a number ...The problem is that as older people die, the number of languages in the world that are spoken is shrinking.
According to China's People's Daily newspaper, " half of the existing 6,700 languages in the world will die away in a century and another 2,000 languages will be endangered if no efforts are made to save them,."
IIn http://www.ling.gu.se/projekt/sprakfrage... it says "it is difficult to give an exact figure of the number of languages that exist in the world, because it is not always easy to define what a language is. The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear-cut. It has nothing to do with similarity of vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation. Sometimes, the distinctions are based purely on geographical, political, or religious reasons. It is usually estimated that the number of languages in the world varies between 3,000 and 8,000". This site also talks about how, depending on language whether it's counted as one of more languages, Arabic can either be the the 10th or 6th highest in number of speakers in the world.
http://www.ling.gu.se/projekt/sprakfrage...
Here's a great language site...it tells about the world's different languages and offers a virtual translator.
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/
I hope this has helped answer your question.
2006-09-07 13:42:32 · answer #2 · answered by art m 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Not sure of the question. But I'll try, if you mean "lounges", I'm sure there are many throughout the world. If you meant "languages", There has to be hundreds of thousands, with all of the different dialects of any single language, etc.
2006-09-07 13:42:00 · answer #3 · answered by knownothing 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I checked 3 sources and got 3 different answers
5000, 6700, 6809
2006-09-07 13:44:35 · answer #4 · answered by Rrf00 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
launges?
At present there are about 6,900 known languages, if that's what you mean.
2006-09-07 13:37:45 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I have no idea what a launge is. =(
2006-09-07 13:36:46 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think that you may have invented a new language right now. So we now have 1 more than before.
2006-09-07 13:38:19 · answer #7 · answered by Patrick 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
launges...not a word.
2006-09-07 13:41:31 · answer #8 · answered by da_hammerhead 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
May I suggest a dictionary... it is not just for reaching those things out of reach... pull one out and read it... the re-post your question..
2006-09-07 13:43:07 · answer #9 · answered by bluedanube69 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
2 many.
2006-09-07 13:41:18 · answer #10 · answered by thesunnshynne 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋