The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages
Above - The written form of Mandarin, the world's most widely spoken language.
The world's 6,692,030,277 population speak around 6,500 languages between them.
A language is classified by having at least 1,000 natural speakers, although there are many other languages spoken around the world that have less than this number.
A dialect is defined as a variety of largely spoken language, or by a speech pattern that alters a largely spoken language.
An accent is defined as a manner of pronounciation defined by area or geographical location, or by speech of a language which is not natural to the speaker.
THE WORLD'S MOST WIDELY SPOKEN LANGUAGES
Chinese / Mandarin - 1.39 billion.
Hindi / Urdu - 588 million.
English - 527 million.
Arabic - 467 million. Arabic is made up of the following ten dialects - Algerian, Egyptian, Morrocan, Saidi, Sudanese, Levantine, Mesopotamian, Najdi, Tunisian & Sanami.
Spanish - 389 million.
Russian - 254 million.
Bengali - 250 million.
Portuguese - 193 million.
German - 132 million.
Japanese - 125 million.
French - 118 million.
Turkish - 80 million.
Italian - 67 million.
Hausa - 50 million.
SOURCED FROM; Ulrich Ammon, University Of Dusseldorf, 2015.
THE WORLD'S LANGUAGE GROUPS
There are ten major language groups in use around the world which are further divided into thousands of language families. The largest language group is the Niger / Congo language group - spoken in central Africa - with around 1,500 different languages.
English is derived from the Germanic language family, of which there are 53 different languages including English, German, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages and Afrikaans, which is a language family derived from the Indo - European group of languages, of which there are around 439 different languages including Spanish, French, Russian, Hindi and Urdu.
The Indo - European language group is the group with the largest number of natural speakers, with around 3 billion natural speakers worldwide.
COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST NATIONAL LANGUAGES
Below is a list of the countries that have the most nationally recognised languages -
Papua New Guinea - 820 recognised languages - Official language English.
Indonesia - 742 recognised languages - Official language Indonesian
Nigeria - 516 recognised languages - Official language English.
India - 427 recognised languages - Official languages English and Hindi/Urdu.
China - 241 recognised languages - Official language Mandarin.
Brazil - 200 recognised languages - Official language Portuguese.
Philippines - 175 recognised languages - Official languages Filipino and English.
THE WORLD'S OLDEST LANGUAGES
No one really knows for sure which language is the world's oldest as there are vast differences between old spoken languages and their written forms. Languages also evolve over time, making their modern day equivalents totally unrecognisable from their original form. Many of the world's modern languages stem from a mixture of several languages, making them totally different from their original root language.
However, linguists have ascertained that the world's oldest written form of languages are most probably the two ancient languages of Sumerian , spoken in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) from around 3,000 BC until around 1,800 BC and Egyptian, spoken in modern day Egypt, from around 3,000 BC until around the 17th century.
The world's oldest, surviving, spoken languages have been identified as Albanian, Armenian, Bantu, Basque, Tamil and Welsh although some linguists are now of the opinion that the Australian aboriginal language of Pama Nyungan could well have survived since the last Ice Age.
THE WORLD'S YOUNGEST LANGUAGE
According to linguists, the world's youngest language is Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa. The language comes from the Germanic family of languages and is descended from Dutch and German Protestants fleeing persecution from the Roman Catholic Church during the 17th century.
Afrikaans is spoken by around twenty three million people, eight million natural speakers and fifteen million as a second language.
LANGUAGE ISOLATES
There are several language isolates around the world, that is a language with no genetic relationship to any modern language group. The vast majority of these language isolates are found on the South American continent, although the language isolate which has baffled linguists the most is Basque / Euskara, spoken in northern Spain and southern France, of which linguists can find absolutely no common root or language family what so ever.
THE WORLD'S LONGEST & SHORTEST ALPHABETS
The language with the world's largest alphabet is Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, with 74 letters. Khmer is an AustroAsiatic language spoken by around 12 million people.
The language with the world's smallest alphabet is Rotokas, an East Papuan language, with just 12 letters. Rotokas is spoken by around 4,000 people on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.
A CHART OF THE WORLD'S TOP TEN LANGUAGE GROUPS
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