Interesting facts about languages
Learning a new language is a challenging task but it also has a lot of benefits that most people don’t know. And there are a lot of interesting facts about languages which most people don’t know.
Here are some facts about languages:
- Learning a foreign language has been shown to have benefits from an academic as well as information retention point of view. Improvements include those of critical thinking skills, creativity and flexibility of the mind. Students who study a second language tend to perform better in other subjects.
- Career-wise, bilingualism is a strong asset and it is said that in certain fields, bilingual candidates can earn up to 20% more than monolinguals.
- Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because non-humans do not communicate by using language.
- Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants’ acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second language acquisition which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages.
- 1,619 (or 23%) of all world languages are spoken by fewer than half-a-million people, 548 (about 8%) are spoken by fewer than 100 people, and 204 (or 3%) of all world languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people. This is because at least 50% of endangered languages are spoken within small communities.
- Currently, between 6000 to 7000 languages are spoken in the world today. This figure decreases every day. It is estimated that 50-90% of these languages will become extinct by 2100.
- The small country Papua New Guinea has 12% of all spoken languages on Earth. They boast 840 living languages.
April 6, 2017
