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Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022; Language Percentage of world population (2022) English: 18.8% Mandarin Chinese: 13.8% Hindi: 7.5% Spanish: 6.9% French: 3.4% Arabic: 3.4% Bengali: 3.4% Russian: 3.2% Portuguese: 3.2% Urdu: 2.9%
- Lists of Languages
Published lists. SIL International's Ethnologue: Languages...
- First-language
The monument to the mother tongue (ana dili) in Nakhchivan,...
- Creole Languages
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English...
- Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (Hindi: आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, romanized:...
- Bengali
Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, Bāṅlā, ⓘ),...
- Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA)...
- Thai
A native Thai speaker, recorded in Bangkok. Thai, or Central...
- Russian
Russian is an East Slavic language, spoken primarily in...
- Urdu
Urdu (/ ˈ ʊər d uː /; اردو, ⓘ; ALA-LC: Urdū) is an...
- Lists of Languages
- How Many Languages Are Spoken in The World Today?
- Silbo Gomero
- Pawnee
- Esperanto
- Sentinelese
- Andamanese
- Pirahã
- TAA
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The answer is probably more than you think: there are around 7,000 languages in use today. The exact number is difficult to count because so many are spoken in isolated, difficult-to-reach areas, or only spoken by a diminishing number of elders in minority groups. Amongst these 7,000languages, though, are some truly fascinating examples. From whist...
Spoken on the Spanish island of La Gomera, Silbo Gomero is a language that consists entirely of whistling. Originally developedto allow communication at distances of up to 5km through the mountainousisland’s valleys, Silbo Gomero is regular Spanish transposed into simplified,short whistling sounds. Its efficiency and usefulness for outdoor workersh...
A Native American language from the Platte River region in modern-day Nebraska, Pawnee is Interesting in that it has only 13 phonemes or individual sounds that make up the language. For comparison, theaverage number of phonemes in a language is 25-30. English, which is morediverse than most languages, has around 42 phonemes. Although it has few sou...
There are around twomillion Esperanto speakers in the world. Not so obscure, you’d think? Well, the unusualthing about Esperanto is that it’s an entirely constructed language. Created by Polishophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was designed as a tool to encouragebetter international relations. His dream was for Esperanto to become theunivers...
Sentinelese is completely different from the other languages on this list. Most unusual languageshave a unique quality recognized and revered by linguists. But with Sentinelese,we actually know nothing about it! The Sentinelese tribe,thought to be between 15 and 500 people, inhabit North Sentinel Island, part ofthe Andaman archipelago located in th...
On the island of GreatAndaman, in the same archipelago as Sentinel Island, the Andamanese languagefamily is found. Now close toextinction, the Andamanese languages suffered significantly from the linguisticinfluences of colonization, with Hindi and English now widely spoken on theislands. These languages havesome interesting lexical quirks. Firstly...
Spoken by an isolatedindigenous population in northwestern Brazil, the Pirahã language has only eightconsonants and three vowels. The vocabulary isconcise, with few or no words for concepts that exist widely in otherlanguages. 1. There is not much vocabulary to describe family members. The Pirahã do not track family further than immediate siblings ...
At the other end ofthe phonemic diversity spectrum is the Taa (or !Xóõ) language, spoken by tribesin Botswana and Namibia. Taa has the mostphonemes of any known language, at over 100, comprising 58 consonants, 31vowels, and four tones. Like Silbo Gomero, Taais outwardly different from other languages, even to the casual observer. Thehigh number of ...
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Jun 12, 2023 · Humans. The unique, vanishing languages that hold secrets about how we think. Language isolates, like Chimané from Bolivia, are unrelated to any other known tongue. Studying them is revealing how...
List of languages by the number of countries in which they are the most widely used. This is a ranking of languages by number of sovereign countries in which they are de jure or de facto official, co-official, an administrative or working language.
- All That's Interesting
- Unique Languages: Lemerig. Spoken in the remote island paradise of Vanuatu, 1,000 miles from northern Australia, Lemerig is a language now spoken fluently by only two people in the world.
- Taushiro. A language native to Peru, Taushiro exists solely along the banks of the Aguaruna River by one man, Amadeo Garcia. The loneliness is almost palpable; aware that no one else would be able to understand him, Garcia can only share the cultural wealth and heritage that comes with that language with himself.
- Unique Languages: Tanema. Today, the Solomon Island-originating Tanema is a language only spoken by one person in the world. The incredibly uncommon tongue is something of an amalgamation of several linguistic influences which include Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern and Oceanic.
- Chamicuro. Once spoken commonly in Peru, Chamicuro is another unique yet endangered language. Across the world, only eight people still speak it–none of which include children.
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.)
Mar 1, 2024 · The world's obscure languages are super cool, exotic and some are just plain strange. Check out this post to learn about 10 obscure languages from around the globe. You've probably never heard them spoken, sung, whistled or clicked in real life.
