10 things you didn't know about languages

The other day I was thinking of the world. Yeah! How wonderful it is to be here to be able to communicate with everyone. I think this is our superpower: to be able to talk to whoever you want. Is crazy, right!?

So, I was searching some curiosities about idioms and I want to share with you what I found. Let's go!

1. There are more than 7.000 spoken languages

We will only know a few, but the reality is that there are more than 7,000 languages ​​worldwide. More than half are variations of an original language, and are known as dialects. These varieties depend on various factors, such as the surface of a country or its cultural influence. Surprisingly, almost half of the languages ​​lack a written form, so they only exist orally.

2. The most common language is...

Although English has more than 171,000 words in its dictionary and is spoken in many countries, Chinese is the most widely used language, followed by Spanish. However, for a person to be considered a native Chinese speaker, they have to learn about 3,000 different symbols and their meanings.

3. The Bible is the most translated book

Despite the popularity of the Harry Potter saga, the Bible is the most translated book in the world. Translated into exactly 554 languages, there are 2,900 other languages ​​into which the text has been translated, but it is incomplete. The second most translated book (and no, we are not referring to any Harry Potter books yet) is Pinocchio, although compared to the Bible it does not seem so much: "only" has been translated into 250 languages.

4. In the USA more than 300 languages are spoken

But with so many spoken, what is the official language of the United States? The correct answer is none. During the process of creating laws for the Continental Congress, no official language was chosen. Since that time, diversity has been the general trend in the country, which has recently become the nation with the second largest Spanish-speaking community in the world.

5. The country where more languages are spoken is...

If you hit this one, then you know what we are talking about. Papua New Guinea has more than 800 languages, 841 to be more precise. Of those 841 languages, virtually all are indigenous, with very little immigrant influence. Despite there being so many languages ​​in a single country, the three that enjoy official status are English, Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin.

6. The most difficult language to learn is ... Basque

As a mother tongue, there is no language more difficult to learn than another, because the learning mechanisms are the same. Another thing is that they want to learn as a second language and, in that case, anyone who dares to speak Basque will find it extremely difficult, but it is the only one that survived the arrival of the Indo-European peoples, later it is considered the oldest from Europe and has no linguistic relationship with any other language currently spoken.

7. Spoken languages could be extinguished

It is true: if no one speaks a language or registers its written varieties, then it could disappear. With dialects it happens often and, to be more exact, to date a total of 241 have been extinguished. Of the 7,000 languages ​​spoken on the planet, there are currently 2,400 that are in danger of disappearing forever. National Geographic claims that we lose a language every two weeks.

8. The most common letter in English is...

The letter "E", which is also the most common letter in Norwegian, Finnish, French and Italian. The “E” is equivalent to more than 11% of all the letters that appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the least frequent letter is the “Q”. The letter "A" is the second most common letter in most European languages.

9. The 86 % of the world population speaks European or Asian

Despite the large total number of languages ​​that exist, oral languages ​​are dominated by Asian and European languages, which is mainly due to the high population density of these areas and their diffusion due to recent colonization. Due to this majority, it is not difficult to understand why smaller or less used languages ​​are beginning to become extinct.

10. The oldest languages ​​are ... Chinese and Greek

It depends on the criteria that are applied, of course, but among the oldest languages ​​that are still widely used today are these two. Its origins date back to approximately 1,500 B.C. Many linguists judge the age of a language by the first time it appeared in writing. In that case, the world’s oldest language is from mainland China. In 1962, a piece of Yangshao culture pottery was discovered. The pottery, which has been dated to between 5000 and 4000 BCE, shows proto-characters for the numbers five, seven and eight. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this is the first written language.