7,168 languages ​​are spoken in the world

SAccording to the site Ethnologist It has a reference in the field of linguistic inventory, with 7,168 languages ​​currently in use in the world. 2,314 in Asia, or 32% of the total, 2,158 in Africa (30%), 1,320 in Oceania (18.5%), 1,064 in America (15%) and 312 in Europe (4%).

The 200 most spoken languages ​​alone represent the mother tongue of 88% of the world’s population. Conversely, 90% of languages ​​are spoken by less than 100,000 people, and 3,045 languages ​​are considered endangered. These are used by less than 1,000 people, of whom only forty-six.

Read moreFrench language, a powerful anti-segregation weaponIn the last century, 110 languages ​​have been declared extinct, twelve since the beginning of the 21st century.^e century Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages ​​spoken (840), almost three times the total number of languages ​​recorded in the entire European continent.

English is spoken by 1.45 billion people in 148 countries

English is the most spoken language in the world, with 1.45 billion people – 373 million of whom have it as their first language. followed by Mandarin Chinese (1.15 billion people, including 920 million native speakers). English is the most geographically widespread language: it is spoken in 146 countries, while Chinese Mandarin is spoken in only 38 countries.

It is followed by Hindi (609 million), Spanish (559 million), French (310 million), Modern Standard Arabic (274 million), Bengali (273 million), Portuguese (263 million) and Russian (255 million). Germany ranks twelfth (133 million), just behind Indonesia (199 million) but ahead of the Japanese (123 million).

dmp