Language is
one of the most amazing things that we are capable of. It may even be that we Homo sapiens are the
only creature on the planet that have it.
Only the dolphins show any indication of language, although we are as
yet unable to understand them.
How many
languages in the world?
It’s
estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the world. 90%
of these languages are used by less than 100,000 people. Over a million people
converse in 150-200 languages and 46 languages have just a single speaker!
Languages
are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. For example, English is
related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European familyof languages. These also include Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and
Italian, which come from Latin.
2,200 of
the world’s languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has a mere 260.
Nearly
every language uses a similar grammatical structure, even though they may not
be linked in vocabulary or origin. Communities which are usually isolated from
each other because of mountainous geography may have developed multiple
languages. Papua New Guinea for instance, boasts no less than 832 different
languages!
What are
the world’s most-spoken languages?
The world’s
most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second
language, according to figures from UNESCO (The United Nations’ Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization), are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish,
Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.
What are
the hardest languages to learn?
The ease or
difficulty of learning another language can depend on your mother tongue. In
general, the closer the second language is to the learner’s native tongue and
culture in terms of vocabulary, sounds or sentence structure, the easier
acquisition will be.
So, a
Polish speaker will find it easier to learn another Slavic language like Czech
than an Asian language such as Japanese, while linguistic similarities mean
that a Japanese speaker would find it easier to learn Mandarin Chinese than
Polish.
Dutch is
said to be the easiest language for native English speakers to pick up, while
research shows that for those native English speakers who already know another
language, the five most difficult languages to get your head around are Arabic,Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean
Endangered
Languages
Globalisation
and cultural homogenisation mean that many of the world’s languages are in
danger of vanishing. UNESCO has identified 2,500 languages which it claims are
at risk of extinction.
One quarter
of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people and if these are
not passed down to the next generation, they will be gone forever.
Alphabet
A-Z
The Latin,
or Roman, alphabet is the most widely used writing system in the world. Its
roots go back to an alphabet used in Phoenicia, in the Eastern Mediterranean,
around 1100 BC. This was adapted by the Greeks, whose alphabet was in turn
adapted by the Romans.
Here are
the world’s most widely-used alphabets (or scripts) which are still in use
today (in alphabetical order): Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Burmese,
Chinese script, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese script,
Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Sinhala, Thai and Tibetan.
Why
learn another Languages?
Around 75%
of the world’s population don’t speak a word of English and a grasp of a
different language improves your abilities to use your first language and
explore other cultures more successfully.
According
to research, on average, people who use languages in their jobs earn around 8%
more!
Many
scientists also believe that knowledge of another language can boost your
brainpower. A study of monolingual and bilingual speakers suggests speaking two
languages can help slow down the brain’s decline with age. And to quote Nelson
Mandela, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes tohis head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
“Ouch”,
”Mama” The origins of Languages
Some of the
oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.
A study of
macaque monkeys suggests that languages may have evolved to replace grooming as
a better way of forging social ties amongst our ancestors.
Another
theory is that our ancient predecessors imitated natural sounds: e.g. the bird
that made a “caw caw” sound became a ‘cuckoo’in a similar way to
today’s children calling things by the sound that they make: “Look,
there’s a moo, baa, choo-choo!”.
Human
communication might have been sparked by involuntary sounds such as
“ouch” or “eek” or by communal activities such as heaving
or carrying heavy objects, coordinated by shouts of “yo-he-ho”, etc.
Another
theory proposes that language evolved from the communication between mother and
baby, with the mother repeating the baby’s babbling and giving it a meaning.
Indeed, in most languages “mama” or similar “ma”-sounds
actually mean ‘mother’.
Artificial
Languages
Around 200
artificial languages have been created since the 17th century. The first were
invented by scholars for communication among philosophers. Later ones were
developed by less scholarly men for trade, commerce and international
communication. They include ‘Interlingua’ (a mixture of Latin and Romance with
Chinese-like sentence structure), ‘Ido’, ‘Tutonish’ (a simplified blend of
Anglo-Saxon English and German) and the more commonly-known ‘Esperanto’,
invented by Ludwig Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist from Poland, in 1887.
Esperanto
is a spoken and written blend of Latin, English, German and Romance elements
and literally means “one who hopes”. Today, Esperanto is widely
spoken by approximately 2 million people across the world.
The Best
way to learn a language
The first
language you learn, your mother tongue, usually comes with little conscious
effort. If you’re lucky, you might even acquire more than one language in the
so-called ‘critical period’ of language learning, believed to end sometime
between ages 4-12. After that, it doesn’t come so easy, as you might have found
out at school.
Something
that might help is finding out about your learning style: are you a visual,
auditory or kinaesthetic learner?
Arrow The
visual learner might benefit from writing down words and phrases over and over
again.
Arrow The
auditory learner could gain from reading out loud or recording their own
vocabulary lists and listen back to them.
Arrow The
kinaesthetic learner may enjoy learning in a group or using flash cards or
anything else that satisfies their hunger for ‘experience’.
Finding
what works for you could speed up your language acquisition – or at least make
it more enjoyable!
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