One of the challenges we face as a language solutions provider is covering demand for the languages that our clients request on a daily basis. So how many languages are there in the World and how do we go about providing translation and interpreting in all of them….?
The invaluable Ethnologue quotes 6909 living languages, that’s one language for every 862,000 people on Earth. Let’s look at some more figures from Ethnologue’s database.
Europe, with ¼ of the World’s population has only 234 languages spoken on a daily basis.
Although English does well as the World’s business language-at least for the time being- it is only 3rd in the league table of native speakers of a first language, with 328M, only 1m behind Spanish but a long way from the 845M Mandarin speakers.
94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the World’s population, which tells us that there are hundreds of languages with just a few thousand [or hundred] speakers.
Many of these languages would be classified by some as dialects i.e. languages that have evolved from but are still quite closely related to another. This definition, of course, falls down very rapidly as most Western European languages can trace their roots to Latin but would not normally be described as dialects. Some of the African and Caribbean Patois are still seen as dialects, as was Ulster-Scots until fairly recently when it was recognised as a language. http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/
The most famous phrase “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” is wrongly attributed to Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich, who was probably quoting an anonymous teacher from New York, but it is a neat way to make the definition.
So how many of these languages are regularly translated by Applied Language? Well, it’s a lot but not quite 6909…….we reckon that about 200 languages are translated regularly by our global offices into documents, websites, brochures and anything else you can imagine. The range of languages required by our interpreting team is rather smaller at about 100.
The difference is no mystery; companies that translate their promotional material may be selling into every part of the globe and therefore their need is very broad whilst a hospital in Manchester, for example, will only have to deal with the resident non-native speakers and unwell tourists that come through its doors. Although the interpreting requirement is significant, it rarely exceeds 100 different languages.
Some of the most difficult requests are for languages that unfortunately don’t exist; enquiries for “Indian” or “Eastern European” do pop up occasionally. Similarly, “African” or “South American” can have us scratching our heads.
As a final thought for those of you currently learning another language you might be slightly discouraged by a report from Swarthmore College linguist K. David Harrison who predicts that 90% of the World’s languages will be extinct by 2050. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4387421/
This might make finding translators a little easier, but would surely make our World a rather less interesting place?
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I also stumbled upon the Ethnologue article, and was impressed because I did not realize that there were so many languages in the world.
Your quoting of Mr. Harrison is disturbing, but makes sense when you consider that there are 133 languages with less than 10 people speaking it, 472 languages with less than 100 native speakers, and only 8 languages with more than 100 million people having them as their native language.
It is interesting to see the viewpoint as an agency about the actual number of languages that are translated regularly ((I am a freelance translator, and hence my vision is limited to the languages I speak), but when you think about it, it makes sense – people only translate into langauges where there is a need, usually an economic one.
I recently wrote also a post in my blog about this issue ( http://www.seo-translator.com/into-which-language-should-i-translate-my-website/ ), though more oriented towards which language should be considered for a website translation. And I highlighted that the most spoken langauges were not necesarily the ones with the greatest Internet presence, but also that people could make a nice living by translating into more obscure languages, as they make attractive niche markets that many companies are forgetting…
.-= SEO Translator´s last blog ..Multilingual Websites – Where do I place my translated pages =-.
Ever heard about ADA-I ? An artificial language developing between some 45 different nationalities.
Very interesting post. Speaking “only” five languages, I suddenly realize how little I know…
My comment is how to know for sure how many languages in our world speaking.
It is impossible to say how many languages there are in the world. As shown in this blog post on the Koro language, there are languages being discovered and lost all the time.
I speak 5 different languages. English (obviously), Cree, Ojibway, French, and Spanish. Cree is my native tongue. It is the native American language spoken by Aboriginals of Canada. Approximately there are 117,000 speakers. Ojibway is another native American language. Approximately there are 57,000 speakers. And statistics show that both languages are having fewer speakers every decade since the 80′s. There are few native American languages that can now be classified as extinct.
I learned English growing up as a child. My Mom would say “speak English outside and in school but when you’re home, you speak in Cree”. She would say in Cree. I learned how to speak and write in French and Ojibway in high school and later Spanish after graduation. But after reading this post, I wish to make an effort to speak more languages!!
I stopped reading when I saw that English has 328 million speakers…There are 300 million people in the US alone; does that mean there are only 28 million Anglophones over the entire rest of the globe? Always gotta be on your toes taking info from the internet.
Hello Tony,
Yes there are probably more than 320 million English speakers in the world, however the blog entry is referring to “native speakers of a first language”. These statistics have been taken from the information supplied at Ethnologue.org.
What? Extinct by 2050? That is really hard to believe. I speak German, and don’t think that it will die out. But it is true that the current young generation of Germans pretty much all speak English. But the real hard core folks are the French. They even translate Big Mac. They have a law that disallows foreign words in their marketing. They may be on to something though!
I am guessing that although Mandarin is the most widely used language, English will stay #1 since it is the language of the internet.
Since English is the language of Hollywood, I predict English will continue to have the greatest impact of all the languages.
This is as interesting comment Mark. With Google translate becoming increasingly popular and sophisticated it might well be that over time we see a shift in the relationship between the English language and the internet. Of course we are a long way from machine translation being able to rival human translation for elements such as style and accuracy, however that’s not to say that with the rapid rate in which technology and the internet shape the way the world works that this won’t be a consideration in the future.
I know 6 languages Canadian Italian,
Portuguese,
Canadian English,
Japanese,
Canadian Spanish,
Canadian French,
Canadian German,
I speak 10 languages very well and can teach them. There are about 5 other languages I can understand and slowly communicate in them. I’m currently learning Swedish and Finnish
…Esa Petrosen METHEW
I would like to know more about the artificial language ADA-I.
Some 45 different nationalities communicating via one language could be a first attempt at reversing the sabotage a “God” committed at Babel.
This could be another evolutionary step for the human species.
By the way, in Hungarian, when something is very good it is said to speak seven languages.
I am from Iran. I can speak 7 languages fluently including : English, French, German, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Spanish. This piece of news was not really amazing to me and I am sure that there are even more languages in the world which are not still recognized by linguists. As an evidence, over 20 languages are being spoken in Iran .
I am thinking there are 6912
I would love to know how many diffrent languages there are in the world, I know 2 languages my own language which is English and the language I know a bit of is French.
Hello to all of the other maybe 80 plus visitors.
Right-So now right down to the hard numbers. Yes Rishav Kant you are perfectly right there are 6,912 big languages. But however, there are also another, furthered 39,491. So this then all adds up to 46403. But 6,912 is pretty much 7,000. And we only have to add a perfect whole ten to the 39, 491 to make it over 39, 500 at 39,501. Which actually, in fact would all add up to 46501-Which then can easily round up to and because itis very close to it anyways relatively speaking- 47,000. That’s a lot for sure!! Also congrats to Esa Petronen Mathew for being able to speak 17 different languages! The All Time Guiness World Record is actually an incredible 61! You just need 44 more to tie that Esa-so Good Luck (And I mean it in a very good way)!
I can only speak a wee bit of German (as well as English obviously). Having said that, if you count Scots as a separate language (not everyone does) I can speak that as well. Other than that, I’ve only ever managed to scrape together a few indispensable phrases in French, Greek, Polish, Dutch & (Scottish) Gaelic. Honestly, the last 5 are hardly worth mentioning: my knowledge of them is negligible. I would like to change this, however. Speaking, hearing & writing in other languages is an experience which I think we can all agree is a source of enjoyment,as well as on occasion being of practical use. It has helped me appreciate my own language more.
So no one knows how many are they,I just know less than thirty languages.Thank you for your answer.
Interesting…well, I know very little English, much Hausa, little of French and Irigwe…I am from Nigeria and in my Local Government alone, we have more than 20 languages, and if that’s so, that 6912 is very small because in Nigeria alone, we have a lot of languages (close to a thousand I guest)
Hi to everybody,
I agree that the 328 million world’s English language speakers refers to native speakers only. Native speakers of English in this case are people from UK, US, Australia, NZ and Canada. It should be noted, however that, although there are 300 million inhabitants in the United States alone, not all of them are English native speakers! People should understand the difference between a native and a citizen: a Pakistani national might go and reside in Britain, and after a couple of years s/he may become a British citizen. This does not mean s/he is now a British native – and even if s/he may become a fluent English speaker, s/he does not fall among the 328 million. Note also that although his/her children who are born in Britain may be regarded as native speakers of English languages, in some deeper sense they are NOT British natives!
My wife and I were born in Mozambique. Our parents too, were born in Mozambique, even our fore-fathers, and tracing back to our indigenous tribal origin. I reckon that this defines the two of us as Mozambican natives. The two of us are presently residing in South Africa, and are both South African citizens. Our two children were both born in South Africa – they speak Sotho and Zulu just like any child in our neighbourhood. Yes, they are Sotho/Zulu native speakers because they they learned Sotho/Zulu from childhood. Our native language is Ndau. My son can speak Ndau tentatively, but my daughter even pronounce a Ndau word! My wife and I are not South African natives at all. Are my children South African natives though? I do not believe so, can anyone please answer me?
I think this is why there is this confusion about the 328 million English speakers. Yes, there are 300 million people in US, but among them, a pretty significant number are migrants from other countries where English is not the first language, or is not spoken at all.