Language

LanguageSpread, diversity and decline of languages

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Origin of language ??Primate vocalisationWarningAngerFriendshipRecognition and identificationCooperation (hunting and war)Innate Baby vocalisationWant (food, water and attention)PainAnger

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Hominid languageNeanderthalsdid not have the anatomy necessary to produce the full range of sounds that modern humans makeHomo habilisandHomo erectushad some form of communication during the stone age around 50,000 years agoa group of Homo sapiens left Africa and proceeded to inhabit the rest of the world, including Australia and the AmericasThis group probably developed a proto language that spread with their spread through out Europe and Asia

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Indo-European languages ca. 3,500 BC

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Indo-European languages ca. 2,500 BC

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Indo-European languages ca. 1,500 BC

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Indo-European languages ca. 500 BC

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Indo-European languages ca. 500 AD

Basque languageHungarian language

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Indo European language tree

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Approximate present day distribution

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distribution of Indo-European languages within the Americas

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Human Language families

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A very large fraction of the worlds languages, although probably not all, are descended from one spoken quite recently, something like 15 to 20,000 years ago. Now its very hard to believe that the first human language, modern human language, goes back only that far. For example, 45,000 years ago we can already see cave paintings in Western Europe and engravings and statues and dance steps in the clay of the caves in Western Europe, and we can see some quite interesting advanced developments in southern Africa that are even earlier, like 70 or 75,000 years ago or something like that. Its very difficult for some of us to believe that human language doesnt go back at least that far. So I dont think that were talking about the origin of human language I would guess that thats much older. But what were talking about is what you can call a bottleneck effect, very familiar in linguistics.

And we see that with Indo-European, which spread widely over such a tremendous area; we see it with Bantu, which spread over a big fraction of the southern two-thirds of Africa. We see it with the spread of Australian. The Australian languages seem to be related to one another. Although there were people in Australia 45,000 years ago, it doesnt look as if the ancestral language of the Australian languages could go back more than 10 or 12,000 years, maybe even considerably less. So there was a huge spread also. I personally suspect that it was some group from a certain area in New Guinea that we can point to that gave the language ancestral to the Australian languages. Communication between Australia and New Guinea was easier then.13

Top 25 languages spoken by 50% of the world population

There are about 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. However, the numbers of speakers of these languages are vastly uneven. To put it simply, there are a few languages each with a lot of speakers, and a lot of other languages each with a small number of speakers. In fact, the distribution is so skewed, that half of the worlds population speaks one or other of only 25 big languages, while the other half of the worlds population speaks one or other of the remaining 6,975 or so languages. And these smaller languages are increasingly losing ground to the big languages.14

Density of different languages

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World map of living languages

This map uses data from 'Ethnologue: Languages of the World', and shows the number of languages considered indigenous to each country that are still spoken there. Due to issues of language identification (see technical notes), it is possible to dispute the data used here, and a review of Ethnologue by Campbell and Grondona (2008) does just that; they claim "... the number of indigenous ('living') languages of different countries is inflated ...".However, the map presents a good picture of linguistic diversity. Papua New Guinea has nearly 10% (820) of the world's indigenous living languages, so that there are only an average of 7000 speakers per language living there. Indonesia (737), Nigeria (510), and India (415) also have a large number of native languages.At the other end of the scale, Belarus, Maldives, DPR Korea and Holy See each have only one indigenous living language.16

Average number of native speakers per language in Central AfricaGabon 30,738 (42 languages)Equatorial Guinea 34,571 (14 languages)Congo 58,225 (62 languages)Central African Republic 59,028 (71 languages)Botswana 63,310 (29 languages)Cameroon 64,010 (278 languages)Guinea-Bissau 76,047 (21 languages)Chad 77,450 (131 languages)Liberia 114,733 (30 languages)Benin 157,222 (54 languages)Togo 159,974 (39 languages)Gambia 161,700 (10 languages)

While it is easy for Nigeria with its over 140 million people to be the leader in linguistic diversity by the sheer number of languages, what about smaller countries such as Equatorial Guinea or the Gambia? While they boast fewer languages (14 and 10 respectively), there is another measure which shows how highly multilingual such countries are. This measure is the average number of speakers per language (i.e., the total population of a state divided by the number of living languages listed). When this figure is calculated, many smaller African countries emerge as highly multilingual, alongside such multilingual countries as Cameroon (278 languages), Congo (62 languages), Central African Republic (71 languages) and Benin (54 languages). In fact, 12 Sub-Saharan African countries (again, I am excluding the southern portion of the continent from consideration) have the figures of 1 language per less than 200,000 people. Heres the list:

Read more:http://languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/linguistic-diversity-in-africa-and-europe.html#ixzz3Srbr94rn17

Diversity of languageSilent languageSign languageBody languageSemaphores (Flags)

Sound languagesWhistling languageClick languagesEsperanto

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Silent language sign languageThere are about 70 million deaf people who use sign language as their first language or mother tongue. It is also the first language and mother tongue to many hearing people and some deafblind 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 spoken languages do.

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Silent language body languageBody languageis a kind ofnonverbal communication, where thoughts, intentions, or feelings are expressed by physical behaviors, such asfacial expressions, body posture,gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Body language exists in bothanimalsand humansIt is also known askinesics.

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Flag signals - SemaphoresSignal flags is one system of signals to or from ships.flags can be used in different ways;each flag spells an alphabetic message, letter by letter.individual flags have specific and standard meanings.one or more flags form a code word whose meaning can be looked up in a code book held by both parties.NATOuses the same flags, with a few unique to warships, alone or in short sets to communicate various unclassified messages

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Whistling languageWhistled languagesusewhistlingto emulate speech and facilitate communication over long distances.Whistled languages exist or existed in such parts of the world as Turkey (Kuky, "Village of the Birds") France (the village ofAasin thePyrenees) Island ofLa Gomerain theCanary Islands (Silbo)Mexico (theMazatecsandChinantecsofOaxaca)South America (Pirah), Asia (theChepangof Nepal), andNew Guinea West Africa languages whistled by many people (YorubaandEwe) EvenFrenchis whistled in some areas of western Africa

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Click languagesA few of the BantulanguagesofSouth Africa have clicksTheXhosa language is one of theofficial languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like mostBantu languages, Xhosa is atonal languageOne of the most distinctive features of the language is the prominence ofclick consonants; the word "Xhosa" begins with a click.

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Universal language - EsperantoEsperanto is a language, but not of any country or ethnic groupit is a neutral, international language. Estimates of the number of people who speak Esperanto today range from 10,000 to two million. Created by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887, Esperanto has a very regular structure, which means it is easy to learn.

EnglishEsperantoHelloSalutonYesJesNoNeGood morningBonan matenonGood eveningBonan vesperonGood nightBonan noktonGoodbyeis revidoWhat is your name?Kio estas via nomo?My name is Marc.Mia nomo estas Marko.Do you speak Esperanto?u vi parolas Esperante?I don't understand youMi ne komprenas vinAll rightBoneOkayusteThank youDankonYou're welcomeNe dankindePleaseBonvolu

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Key geographical languages

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Most spoken language

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Spoken language over time

The changes in the number of mother-tongue speakers are associated with shifts in the use of a given language in adult speakers, as well as with a decline in the transmission of that language to new generations.27

Classifying English LanguagesNew EnglishesOlder Englishes(English-based) Pidgins, Creoles and Decreolized varietiesAfricaKenyan EnglishNigerian EnglishSouth AsiaIndian EnglishLankan EnglishPakistani EnglishSoutheast AsiaFilipino EnglishMalaysian EnglishSingpore EnglishEtc.North AmericaAmerican EnglishCanadian EnglishGreat BritainEnglish EnglishScotsNorthern Ireland and the Republic of IrelandIrish EnglishSouthern Indian and Pacific OceansAustralian EnglishNew Zealand EnglishEtc.AfricaWest African PidginPapua New GuineaTok PisinSierra LeoneKrioUSABlack EnglishVernacularHawaii English CreoleVanuatuBislamaEtc.

28Rashi

English - One language many dialectsReceived PronunciationReceived Pronunciation is the closest to a standard accent that has ever existed in the UK. Although it originally derives from London English, it is non-regional. It emerged from the 18th- and 19th-Century aristocracy, and has remained the gold standard ever since.

CockneyCockney is probably the second most famous British accent. It originated in the East End of London, but shares many features with and influences other dialects in that region.

Estuary English (Southeast British)Estuary is an accent derived from London English which has achieved a statusslightly similar to General American in the US.

West Country (Southwest British)West Country refers to a large swath of accents heard in the South of England, starting about fifty miles West of London and extending to the Welsh border.

Midlands EnglishMidlands English is one of the more stigmatized of Englishes. The most famous of these dialects isBrummie(Birmingham English).

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English - One language many dialectsNorthern England EnglishThese are the accents and dialect spoken north of the midlands, in cities like Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool. Related accents also found in rural Yorkshire.

GeordieGeordie usually refers to both the people and dialect of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in Northeast England. The word may also refer to accents and dialects in Northeast England in general.

Welsh EnglishThis refers to the accents and dialects spoken in the country of Wales. The speech of this region is heavily influenced by the Welsh language, which remained more widely spoken in modern times than the other Celtic languages.Scottish EnglishThis is the broad definition used to describe English as it is spoken in the country of Scotland. Note thatScottish Englishis different thanScots, a language derived from Northumbrian Old English that is spoken in Scotland as well.

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Internet language

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Most common second language

Belgium and Switzerland are multilingual countries. French is the number one second language in Belgium because a small majority of the population speak Flemish as a first language (this data comes from the Eurobarometer report). Switzerland publishes data about languages spoken at home and at work, but no definitive stats about second language learning nationwide.32

Who can speak the most foreign languages?

Well done Luxembourg!

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Seductive accentsThe study found that the French people consider the English accent to be the most attractive

Worldwide the French language is considered to be the most seductive.French at the top with 34% of the vote, followed by Italian and Spanish. French was also the most attractive accent when speaking another language.

However, for the French people who were surveyedthe language of love was Italianthe most attractive accent to hear someone speaking French was the English (39% of the vote).

Nearly 95% of respondents worldwide said they would be ready to learn a new language for a relationship!The poll of 14,000 people worldwide for the Babbel app

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Writing systems of the world

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Declining number of remaining languages

The Index of Linguistic Diversity (ILD) is the first quantitative study that tells us the worlds languages not just their number, but also the linguistic and cultural diversity they represent are being severely diminished.* The ILD shows that global linguistic diversity has declined 20% in just 35 years, between 1970 and 2005.36

Regional decline of language

The dramatic decline in linguistic diversity is due to ever-growing social and economic pressures that are inducing or even forcing people to switch from generally smaller, more geographically restricted languages to larger languages, especially global languages like Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, English, or Spanish, or regionally dominant languages like Swahili. The top 16 languages spoken worldwide increased their share of the global population from 45% in 1970 to 55% in 2005.37

The final decline in Language?LolLaugh out loudGtgGot to goLylasLove you like a sisterBrbBe right backwazWhats up?NmNothing much

CtnCant talk nowTmiToo much informationLuvyaLove yaBfBoyfriendBffBest friendGfGirlfriend

and as we close . . . TtfnTata for nowCul8rSee you laterTtyl Talk to you later

Rebecca L. Oxford (c) 200838RO

silboUnknownUnknown, track 2001Other57546.75XXX - THOMSON mp3PRO Encoder v1.0Click consonants and an African click language demonstrated by Sibs60263.344