"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Literature in the News: The Languages of the World

Here is a very interesting article from the Washington Post: “The World’s Languages,in 7 Maps and Charts.”  The article provides a really fascinating breakdown of what the world speaks.  Here are a few highlights.

1.      There are 7,102 living languages in the world, and Asia and Africa by far have the most by continent.  Europe has the least.

2.      Of the 7.2 billion people of the world, two-thirds have these twelve languages as their native tongue: Chinese, Hindu-Urdu, English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Bengali, Portuguese, German, Japanese, French, and Italian.

3.      The number of countries that speak English is 101, the largest number.  Arabic is a distant second.

4.      English is the actual official language in 35 countries, of which the United States is not one of them.  The US does not have an official language.

5.      English is by far the most commonly learned language in countries that have other languages as their native.



There are lots of other interesting facts and worth going over to read it.


2 comments:

  1. You don't mention the language I use when the hammer hits my finger hard instead of the nail.

    God bless.

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    Replies
    1. That's got a language group of its own. ;)

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