- How many languages are there?
(fast-paced rock music)
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com.
How many different languages are there in the world?
Ah-ha!
Interesting question indeed.
However, I will say right off the bat,
that like many questions in the field of language science,
we don't have a definite answer.
Although we do have some pretty good estimates.
More on that in a moment.
Part of the problem, of course,
is that we keep finding new languages.
Meaning that there are still many, many languages
in the world totally undiscovered.
A couple of years ago, for example,
linguists found a new language in India called Koro.
And then a couple of months ago this year,
linguists working in the Malay Peninsula
found another language called 'Jedek'.
How many more undiscovered languages are there in the world?
We have absolutely no idea.
Another big problem when trying to answer questions like,
how many other languages are there is that,
simply put, linguists can't actually agree on
whether some languages are languages or dialects.
I mean, if you take, for example, two languages
such as English and Japanese, well,
they are pretty obviously completely separate languages.
But what about languages such as Swedish,
Norwegian, and Danish?
For all intents and purposes,
they're actually pretty much the same language.
Technically speaking, they're all continental Scandinavian.
But for historical, and mainly political reasons,
we consider them to be separate languages.
Even though native speakers of those languages can all talk
to each other in their respective languages
and still understand each other.
That is, the languages are mutually intelligible.
But again, for historical and political reasons,
they are considered separate languages.
And me, standing here saying,
"Oh, they are basically the same language",
is gonna piss people off because
of those historical and political reasons.
But then on the other hand, take a language such as Chinese,
which has many dialects, they are considered dialects
and not separate languages, that are completely different.
So different in fact, that they are mutually unintelligible.
You could be speaking this dialect,
I could be speaking this dialect,
and we wouldn't have a clue what each other are saying.
But they are still considered the same language.
So, simply put, when trying to answer a question like this,
our judgement is as clouded by factors such as,
again history and politics.
As well as, of course, personal opinion
and personal preference, as it is
of what features actually constitute a language or not.
For more information on that by the way,
check out this video, where I attempted to answer
the question of what language actually is.
So now we know some of the problems involved,
we come full circle back to the original question.
How many languages are there?
Well a general ball-park figure would be around
about 6,000 to 7,000 languages and indeed,
most references are citing numbers in about this range.
Probably the best estimate that we have however,
comes from the annual publication "EthnoLogue" who,
quite decisively, state that there are
7,097
known living languages.
And, they are quite adamant that
they are right on this as well.
They even use the words "To be exact" on their website.
Again however considering the problems involved with
answering this question and the fact that it ultimately
comes down to personal opinion on the part of the person
doing the question answering we probably need to take this
"To be exact" figure with a pinch of salt.
But, well for all intents and purposes, 7,097.
Hey, sounds like a pretty good number to me.
Regardless of how many languages there are,
if you're struggling to speak this one,
the English language, really, really well,
I recommend you pick up a copy of my book,
"Master English Fast:
An Uncommon Guide To Speaking Extraordinary English."
It will show you step by simple step how to master
the English language and speak it extraordinarily well
as an intermediate to advanced English learner.
It comes as a paperback version, an Amazon Kindle version,
and regardless of which one you get,
it also includes a complete audio version
for your listening enjoyment.
Again, click on the link in the description,
or masterenglishfast.com.
Got any interesting questions about language,
or about learning the English language?
Ask in the comments and I will answer in a future video.
Providing of course that it's a question that
one, I can answer and two, that I am interested in
enough to answer.
No boring questions please 'cause I'm done with boring.
Right, that's it from me Julian Northbrook,
signing off from another video.
See you tomorrow, same time, same place.
Good-bye!
If you found this topic interesting,
you're also definitely gonna wanna check out this video,
where I answer the question of what language is,
and this video where I talk about
Gaelic and the Celtic languages.