There is always room for more knowledge. But if we tell you there are seven thousand languages in the world, you may well think otherwise. At AlosIdiomas we love languages and translation. And today we wanted to write a post devoted entirely to surprising facts about languages.
Surprising facts about languages
The world’s longest alphabet
There is one alphabet, the longest in the world, with 72 letters. Yes, you read that correctly. Thirty-two are vowels and the rest are consonants. It is the alphabet of Cambodia and, although it looks as though it must be far harder than any other language, its grammar is much simpler than Spanish grammar.
Synonyms
The Inuit have around a hundred words for snow, the colour white and ice. Presumably they can identify different states of water and tell the shades apart. Curious, extremely curious.
How many speakers a language has
Some languages have very few speakers, such as Piraha, Yukip or Taushiro, which in 2014 had just one remaining speaker.
Cash machines in Latin
Who says Latin is a dead language? In the Vatican, one of the languages you can choose when using your credit or debit card is precisely that: Latin.
The United States and its languages
If you ask anyone what the official language of the United States is, they will almost certainly say English. However, despite it being the language most people speak there (217 million according to 2015 figures), the United States has no official language. Almost 300 languages are spoken there, with Spanish in second place at 45 million speakers, and that is why, when the Continental Congress was drawing up its laws, it did not choose any of those 300 languages as the official one.
South Africa
Although its population is under 60 million, it has 11 official languages. That said, apart from English, the rest are difficult even to pronounce. These are South Africa’s official languages: “Afrikaans, English, IsiNdebele, IsiSwati, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.”
Chinese, the language with the most native speakers
Mandarin Chinese is the language with the largest number of native speakers: more than a billion people. As a non-native language, however, it is outstripped by English, which has more than 1,120,000 speakers around the world.
Spanish reaches every continent
That is right. Spanish is a language with a presence on every continent on the planet. In fact, after Mandarin Chinese and English, it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Anyone who learns several languages has more opportunities in life. People who master more than three languages have far more options, professionally and personally alike. At AlosIdiomas Valencia we always encourage you to learn more languages and to find out about our language courses in Valencia. Do you know any surprising fact we have not mentioned? Tell us about it on facebook, instagram or Linkedin. At Alos Idiomas we know how difficult availability and timetables can be for many people, which is why we offer all kinds of alternatives for those who cannot come to our centre or need specific schedules. Get in touch with us and we will tell you more.