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Languages of the World: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
How Many Languages?
About 7,000 languages are spoken today. Papua New Guinea alone has over 800.
Key fact
Around 40% of the world’s languages are endangered.
Most Spoken
English has the most speakers in total, counting learners. Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers, followed by Spanish.
Key fact
Spanish has more native speakers than English.
Language Families
Languages come in families. Spanish, Hindi, English and Russian are all Indo-European, descended from a shared ancestor spoken thousands of years ago.
Key fact
The word for “mother” looks alike in many Indo-European languages.
Writing Systems
Languages are written in different ways: alphabets like Latin or Cyrillic, syllable scripts like Japanese kana, or characters like Chinese, where symbols stand for words or ideas.
Key fact
Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left.
Endangered Languages
When a language’s last speakers die, it’s lost. But languages can be revived: Hebrew became an everyday spoken language again in the late 1800s and 1900s.
Key fact
Welsh has grown again, thanks to schools and media.
Tones
In tonal languages like Mandarin, pitch changes meaning. In Mandarin, “ma” can mean mother, horse or scold, depending on the tone.
Key fact
Mandarin has four main tones.
Invented Languages
Some languages were invented. Esperanto, created in 1887, was designed as an easy shared second language, and Klingon was made for Star Trek.
Key fact
Tolkien invented Elvish languages before writing The Lord of the Rings.
Fun facts
About half the world’s people speak one of just 23 languages as their first language.
Spanish is an official language in around 20 countries.
Finnish and Hungarian aren’t Indo-European: they belong to a different family, called Uralic.
Korea’s alphabet, Hangul, was invented on purpose in the 1440s, so ordinary people could learn to read.
Cornish was once declared extinct, but it has been revived and is taught in schools again.
Cantonese is usually said to have six main tones, more than Mandarin’s four.
Esperanto even has native speakers: children raised speaking it at home, perhaps around a thousand.
Story: The Talking Leaves
The Talking Leaves
Early 1800s. Sequoyah, a Cherokee silversmith who can’t read, watches settlers use “talking leaves”: paper that carries words. His people have no writing.
Mocked by neighbours, he works for years. By 1821 he has 85 symbols, one for each syllable of Cherokee. His young daughter helps him prove it works.
It was so easy to learn that within a few years thousands of Cherokee could read and write. Few scripts have ever been invented by one person.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
About 7,000 languages are spoken today.
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True. Spread very unevenly across the world.
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Question 2 of 10
Mandarin has the most native speakers.
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True. Around a billion.
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Question 3 of 10
English and Hindi are distant relatives.
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True. Both are Indo-European.
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Question 4 of 10
Arabic is written from right to left.
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True. So is Hebrew.
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Question 5 of 10
Hebrew was revived as an everyday spoken language.
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True. Now spoken by millions.
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Question 6 of 10
In Mandarin, “ma” can mean mother, horse or scold.
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True. Depending on the tone.
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Question 7 of 10
Esperanto was designed as an easy shared language.
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True. By L. L. Zamenhof, in 1887.
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Question 8 of 10
Every country speaks only one language.
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False. Many countries have dozens or hundreds.
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Question 9 of 10
English has the most native speakers of any language.
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False. Mandarin and Spanish have more.
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Question 10 of 10
Spanish and English are completely unrelated.
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False. They share an Indo-European ancestor.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Languages of the World has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Ethnologue — How many languages are there in the world?
- UNESCO — World Atlas of Languages
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Indo-European languages, writing systems, Esperanto
- UNESCO — Whistled language of La Gomera, Silbo Gomero (2009)
- Ethnologue — Languages of the world
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — sign language, click, Basque, creole languages
- Kuhl (2004), early language acquisition, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5
