Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 1 of 31 LanguageLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems ofcommunication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics. The approximately 3,000–6,000 languages that are spoken by humans today are the most salient examples, but natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditory stimuli, for example insign languages and written language. Codes and other kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as those used for computer programming can also be called languages. A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decodinginformation. The English word derives ultimately from Latinlingua, "language, tongue", via Old French. [2] When used as a general concept, "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate a sign with a particular meaning. Spoken and signed languages contain a phonological system that governs how sounds or visual symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are used to form phrases and utterances. Written languages use visual symbols to represent the sounds of the spoken languages, but they still require syntactic rules that govern the production of meaning from sequences of words.
Transcript
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Dialect - The term dialect (from the Greek word dialektos, ∆ιάλεκτος) isused in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers toa variety of alanguage that is a characteristic of a particular group of thelanguage's speakers.
Number of living languages: 7,358
Number of those languages that are nearly extinct: 516
Country with the most languages spoken: Papua New Guinea has 830living languages.
How long have languages existed: Since about 100,000 BC
First Oldest language ever written is Sumerian(Cuneiform script -2900BC). Second is ancient Egyptian (2700 BC)
The oldest continuously written language is either Chinese or Greek,
both being about 3500 years old.
Oldest Spoken Language currently existing except in Asia is Greek.
Chinese is the Oldest Spoken language currently existing in Asia
Language with the most words: English, approx. 250,000 distinct words
The first true alphabet is believed to be the Greek alphabet.
The most common alphabet being used today is the Latin alphabet which was derived from Greek.
English
Language spoken by the greatest number of non-native speakers:English (250 million to 350 million non-native speakers)
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
English is the mostly used language in internet and most widely published.
The collection of all the letters in English is called “the alphabet.” It ismade up of twenty-six (26) letters. Do not refer to any individual letteras “an alphabet.” This is incorrect, because only the collection of ALLthe letters taken together is referred to as “the alphabet.” So theEnglish language has only one alphabet which is made up of twenty-six(26) letters. The English alphabet contains two types of letters: vowelsand consonants. Here is a list of which letters are which. Vowels (6) Consonants (20) A B C D F
E G H J K I L M N PO Q R S TU V W X Z
Y (sometimes)
Diphthong a combination of two vowel sounds or vowel letters, for
example the sounds /aǺ/ in pipe /paǺp/ or the letters ou in doubt
Africa
More than 2100 ( nearly 3000) different languages are spoken on thecontinent of Africa. 2006 was declared by the African Union as the "Yearof African Languages"
Afrikaans is the only Indo-European language known to have developedin Africa. Afrikaans is Indo-European language, as are the lexifiers of most
African creoles and one of the official languages of Africa.
Many languages in Africa include a “click” sound that is pronounced atthe same time as other sounds. You must learn these languages in
childhood to do it properly.
Somali is the only African country in which the entire population speaksthe same African language, Somali .
India
Number language spoken in India:438
The oldest script used in India is Believed to be Brahmi
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 10 of 31
The Brahmi script was the ancestor of all South Asian WritingSystems. In addition, many East and Southeast Asian scripts, such
as Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, and even Japanese to a very small extent (vowel
order), were also ultimately derived from the Brahmi script. Thus the Brahmi
script was the Indian equivalent of the Greek script that gave arise to a host of
different systems. The Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the Brahmi script which
has been found in old inscriptions at Bhattiprolu, a small village in Guntur
district, Andhra Pradesh, South India. The best-known Br āhmī inscriptions are
the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India
The Gupta Script was descended from the Ashokan Brahmi script.
The Gupta script (sometimes referred to as Gupta Brahmi Script or LateBrahmi Script ) was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated withthe Gupta Empire of India. The first king of Gupta dynasty was
Chandragupta I , the son of Ghatotkacha. The Gupta script was descended
from Brahmi and gave rise to the Nagari, Sharada and Siddham scripts. These
scripts in turn gave rise to many of the most important scripts of India,
including Devanagari (the most common script used for writing Sanskrit since
the 19th Century), the Gurmukhi script for Punjabi Language and theTibetan
script.
Vedas are written in Brahmi .
Oldest Spoken Language currently existing in India is Sanskrit sincemost of religious slokas recited in Hindu temples are in SanskritThe
oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pāṇini Aṣṭ ādhy āy ī ("Eight-Chapter
Grammar").
Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system
most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1888/1912.
Hindi is a "Sanskritized register" of the Khariboli dialect. However, all
modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Munda and Dravidian languages,
have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or
indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhavawords). There are lot of
Sanskrit Universities across India and one at Kerala in the honor of Sree
Sankaracharya known as Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 11 of 31
Tamil is one of the oldest classical language in the world from available
evidences. Tamil is only Indian language other than Sanskrit to be considered to be ancient and authentically original in its form and rich literature.
Vatteluthu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhutthualphabet (Tamil:y¸{¢ va ṭṭ e ḻ uttu ; Malayalam: Va ṭṭ e ḻ utt ŭ) (means
rounded letters) is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil
people of Southern India. This rounded form of writing was also used
in Kerala to write in Tamil as well as in proto-Malayalam and Malayalam
language.
Some Indian language became vulnerable due to partition betweenIndia and Pakistan
Constitution of India provides that Hindi in Devanagari script shall bethe Official Language of the Union. The Constitution also lays down that
both Hindi and English shall compulsorily be used for certain specified
purposes such as Resolutions, General Orders, Rules, Notifications,
Administrative and other Reports, Press Communiqués; Administrative and
other Reports and Official Papers to be laid before a House or the Houses of
Parliament; Contracts, Agreements, Licences, Permits, Tender Notices and Forms of Tender, etc.
Regional language with English is mostly used for the communication purpose
in state legislative assemblies. In some of the states Contracts, Agreements,
Licences, Permits, Tender Notices and Forms of Tender are issued in English.
The principal language being used in Kerala is Malayalam. The term
'Malayalam' as referring to the language of Kerala is of comparatively recent
origin. To begin with, it denoted the land itself. It is probable that the term is
the resultant of a combination of two words, mala meaning mountain and alammeaning the land or locality (which lies along side the mountain). Subsequently
the synonyms Malayanma and Malayayma came into being as denoting the
language of the Malayalam County and finally the name of the land itself was
taken over as the name of its language. Evidently Malayalam belongs to the
Dravidian family of languages, but there is considerable difference of opinion
about the exact nature of its relationship with the other languages of the stock,
with Tamil in particular towards which it bears the closest affinity. Quite a few
scholars are of the opinion that Malayalam is but an offshoot of Tamil, or
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 12 of 31
rather, a daughter. Linguistic research has yet to discover unmistakable
evidence to prove its antiquity.
WorldHebrew is an example of a nearly extinct spoken language that becamea lingua franca and a liturgical language that has been revived to becomea living spoken language.
Language with the greatest number of native speakers: Mandarin (SinoTibetan, Chinese).
Language with maximum number of Alphabet: Chinese. A well-educated
Chinese reader today recognizes approximately 5,000–7,000 characters;
approximately 3,000 characters are required to read a Mainland newspaper
Language with the fewest words: Taki Taki (also called Sranan), 340
words. Taki Taki is an English-based Creole spoken by 120,000 in the South
American country of Suriname.
Language with the largest alphabet: Khmer (74 letters). This Austro-
Asiatic language is the official language of Cambodia. Consisting of 67letters.(Guinness Book of World Records, 1995). It consists of 33 consonants, 23 vowels and 12 independent vowels.
Language with the shortest alphabet: Rotokas (12 letters). Approx. 4300
people speak this East Papuan language. They live primarily in the
Bougainville Province of Papua New Guinea.
Language with the fewest consonant sounds: Rotokas (6 consonants)
The language with the fewest sounds (phonemes): Rotokas (11phonemes)
The language with the most sounds (phonemes): !Xóõ (112 phonemes). Approx. 4200 speak !Xóõ, the vast majority of whom live in the African country
of Botswana.
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 13 of 31
Language with the most consonant sounds: Ubyx (81 consonants). This
language of the North Causasian Language family, once spoken in the HaciOsman village near Istanbul, has been extinct since 1992. Among living
languages, !Xóõ has the most consonants (77).
Language with the fewest vowel sounds: Ubyx (2 vowels). The related
language Abkhaz also has 2 vowels in some dialects. There are approximately
106,000 Abkhaz speakers living primarily inGeorgia.
Language with the most vowel sounds: !Xóõ (31 vowels)
The most widely published language: English
Language with the fewest irregular verbs: Esperanto (none)
Foreign Language which has won Most of Academy Awards (OSCARS):Italian (with 10 awards won and 27 nominations).
The most Oscar-successful British film to date is Richard
Attenborough's epic bio-pic GANDHI , which achieved 8 awards for 1982,
including Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor
The most translated document: Universal Declaration Of Human
Rights, written by the United Nations in 1948, has been translated into321 languages and dialects.
The most common consonant sounds in the world's languages: /p/, /t/,/k/, /m/, /n/
Longest word in the English language:pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters) mean lungdisease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust.
The most difficult language to learn is Basque, which is spoken in
northwestern Spain and southwestern France. It is not related to any other language in the world. It has an extremely complicated word structure and
vocabulary.
The population of Europe is about 740 million; of the whole world, but Europeans speak only 234 languages.
Tamil is one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world. It has been described as "the only language of contemporary India which is
recognizably continuous with a classical past" and having "one of the richest
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 14 of 31
literatures in the world".
About 94% of all languages are regularly spoken by just 6% of thepopulation of the world.
Most languages are constantly used by less than one thousand nativespeakers.
K. David Harrison, a linguist from the Swarthmore College, predicts that by 2050 about 90% of spoken languages will be dead.
In Papua New Guinea there are less than 5.5 million citizens and about830 languages spoken by them.
The United Nation has six official languages, used in meetings: Arabic,Mandarin (Chinese), French, English, Spanish, and Russian.
The Charter of the United Nations, its 1945 constituent document, didnot expressly provide for official languages of the UN. The Charter was
enacted in five languages (Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish)
and provided (in Article 111) that the five texts are equally authentic.
Esperanto is the most popular artificial language.
The number of speakers of English in China is larger than in the USA.
It’s estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken aroundthe world. 90% of these languages are used by less than 100,000 people.Over a million people converse in 150-200 languages and 46 languageshave just a single speaker!
2,200 of the world’s languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has amere 260.
Most of the Endangered/Extinct languages are in United States of America and Australia. Endangered languages are Native Americanlanguages and Australian Aboriginal Languages
Sacred Languages are Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic (ancientEngyptian), Biblical Hebrew, Ge'ez, Sanskrit and Latin .
Except Latin (Vatican City or Holy See) and Sanskrit(India) and Coptic(Coptic Christian Church), other sacred languages are dead languages.
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 16 of 31
Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SILInternational (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics),
a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-knownlanguages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native languageand support their efforts in language development.
In 1984, the Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, calleda SIL code, to identify each language that it describes
The Ethnologue contains statistics for 7,358 languages in the 16thedition, released in 2009
Ethnologue lists 1,300 languages with 100,000 speakers or more, 750 with 300,000 or more, some 400 with a million or more, 200 with atleast 3 million, 80 with 10 million, and 40 with 30 million.
Languages used to Control Ships and Airplanes
International treaties have designated English as the official languagefor airplane communication, though airports may use another languageif both the pilot and the controller can speak it. The controllers must speak
in English if the flight crew is not comfortable speaking the native language.
According to International Code for the Security of Ships and PortFacilities ( ISPS) , The records shall be kept in the working language or
languages of the ship. If the language or languages used are not English,
French or Spanish, a translation into one of these languages shall be included .
Language used by Disability People
Research in Sign languages started in 1960’s in United States andNetherlands.70 million deaf people uses sign language as their firstlanguage or mother tongue. It is also the first language and mother tongue
to many hearing people and some deaf blind people (tactile sign languages).
Each country has one or sometimes two or more sign languages, although
different sign languages can share the same linguistic roots in the same way as
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 17 of 31
spoken languages do. Any forcible purification or unification of sign languages,
conducted by governments, professionals working with Deaf people, and
organizations for or of the Deaf, is a violation of the UN and UNESCO treaties
In 1989 a group of American Deaf artists created the term De’VIA meaning ‘art with a Deaf view’. It is to entertain, share and educate in ways that express Deaf experience through their eyes.
Greek Alphabet
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 30 of 31
en.wikipedia.org
TRANSCRIPTS OF ROCK EDICT - 2 OF THE EMPEROR ASOKA AT GIRNAR, GUJARAT, DATED 257 BC
SANSKRITIZED TRANSCRIPT OF ORIGINAL TEXT :
svRÇ ivijte devana<iàySy iàydizRn> ra}a> @vmip àTyNte;u ywa caela>pa<f(a> sitypuÇ> ker¦puÇ> Aataèpi[R AiNtyk> yaenraj> ye va Aip tSyAiNtkSysamIpa> rajan> svRÇ devana<iàySy iàydizRn> ra}a>Öe icikTsek«te manu:y icikTsa c pzu icikTsa c , AaE;xain c yain manu:ypaegain cpzUpgain c yÇ yÇ n siNt svRÇ hairtain c raeiptain c , mUlain c )lain c yÇyÇ n siNt svRÇ hirtain c raeiptain , piw;u kªpa> c oainta> v&]a c raeipta>pir-aehay pzumnu:ya[am! ,
7/31/2019 Interesting Facts About Languages - 2012
Interesting Facts on Languages- 2012 Page 31 of 31
ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF ORIGINAL TEXT :
Everywhere in the domain of King Priyadarshin, beloved of the gods, andof his neighbours the Cholas, Pandyas, Satyaputra, Keralaputra up toTamraparni, of the Greek King Antiyoka and his neigbouring kingdoms,everywhere has provision been made for medical treatment of two kinds,for men and for animals. And where no medicinal herbs suitable for menand animals are grown, such herbs have been caused to be planted. Andalong the roads wells have been dug and trees planted for the use of menand animals.
Note: Facts are mostly taken wikipedia and other websites. Charts and language alpabet
