Languages Facts for Kids
Weird and wonderful language facts
There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today.
A language dies roughly every two weeks — about 40% of all languages are now endangered.
South Africa has 11 official languages — more than almost any other country.
Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers in the world — over 900 million people.
The Cambodian (Khmer) alphabet is the longest in the world, with 74 letters.
The Pirahã people of Brazil speak a language that has no words for specific numbers — they only have words meaning "few" and "many."
English has more words than almost any other language — the Oxford English Dictionary has over 170,000 words in current use.
Silbo Gomero is a language made entirely of whistles, used on the island of La Gomera in Spain.
The word "set" has the most definitions of any English word — over 430 different meanings!
Babies can hear and distinguish every sound in every language until about 10 months old, then they start specialising.