There are 6,909 different languages spoken around the world, according to the Ethnologue compendium, which catalogs the languages of our planet since 1950. But most of these languages we hardly hear: 6,520 languages (about 94% of the total) are in the mouth of only 6% of the Earth’s inhabitants, while the rest of the world’s population uses only 389 languages. There are at least 172 languages with at least 3 million speakers – from Chinese to Tachelhit in Morocco and Kimbundu in Angola. Already among the “dwarf” languages are languages that struggle to survive. There are nearly 500 languages that are at risk of extinction. In China, Chinese predominates, but there is one language, Ayizi, with just 50 speakers in a country of over 1 billion people.
GLOBAL BLÁ-BLÁ-BLÁ
ASIA
33.6% of languages
Asia is the Babel of the continents: there are 2,322 languages – 33% of the total – practiced there. In addition to having the most variety, Asians also have the most speakers – 3.6 billion, an average of 1.5 million per language.
AFRICA
30.5% of languages
Africans speak 2,110 different languages – on average, 344,000 people each! In Mozambique, for example, the official language is Portuguese. But there you can also hear Makonde, Chona, Tonga and 40 other languages
AMERICA
14.4% of languages
From Alaska to Patagonia, there are 993 languages on the continent, with an average of 50,852 practitioners each. Did you know that French is spoken in Haiti? And Dutch in Aruba? And that 700,000 Mexicans still speak Mayan, a pre-Columbian language?
EUROPE
3.4% of languages
There are 234 languages in the Old World, with 6.6 million people speaking each one. Among the languages of European origin, the most popular is Spanish, the second most common in the world, written and spoken in 44 countries by 329 million «personas»
OCEANIA
18.1% of languages
Despite having only two large countries – Australia and New Zealand – Oceania has dozens of islets, with hundreds of dialects, adding up to 1,250 varieties. The result: on average, each language is spoken by only 5,144 people
MOST SPOKEN
Populous China has the most performed language: Chinese, with 1.2 billion speakers across its 14 varieties. Mandarin is one of them – and it is the most spoken, with 845 million adherents. The least popular type of Chinese is min zhong, with 3.1 million
LESS SPOKEN
On the verge of extinction, with only one speaker remaining, are several languages. This is the case of Iuo, from Cameroon. Brazil also has languages in the UTI category, such as Catuquina, Lakondê and Sabanese
COUNTRY WITH LESS VARIETY
Five countries and territories are monolingual – North Korea (100% Korean), Falkland Islands (English), British Indian Ocean Territory (English), Vatican City (Latin) and Saint Helena (British territory in the Atlantic where only English is available)
COUNTRY WITH THE BIGGEST VARIETY
Papua New Guinea, an archipelago north of Australia, has 830 languages in use – not counting the 11 extinct ones! On average, each language is spoken by 4,624 Papuans. The second most polyglot country also comes from Oceania: in Vanuatu, 108 languages are spoken
ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE
The list of “invented” languages only includes Esperanto, created by a Pole in the 19th century. Artificial languages such as Klingon (from Star Trek), Sindarin (from The Lord of the Rings) and Na’vi (from Avatar) were left out
IT’S FROM BRAZIL!
Portuguese is the seventh most spoken language in the world. We are 178 million speakers in 37 countries (Brazil being the most numerous representative). In front of us are, in descending order, Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, Hindi and Bengali
SIGN LANGUAGES
Languages made for deaf-mutes also enter the language catalog. And, even without sound, they vary around the world: there are 130 types! Only Switzerland has three different signal codes: Swiss-French, Swiss-Italian and Swiss-German