The Book of Languages: Talk Your Way around the World

The Book of Languages: Talk Your Way around the World — page 3 — Why language is important One of the most important differences between human beings and other animals is our use of language Language allows us to tell other people what we want what we think and what we feel and also understand what others are saying to us Nearly 7,000 languages are spoken in the world Some languages have many millions of speakers whereas some may have fewer than ten All of these languages do the same thing allow us to communicate with others We all need to greet people say who we are tell stories and jokes discuss and persuade even let off steam if we hit our thumb with a hammer To do these things we need language Qué You what In this book This book looks at 21 of the world’s languages You can ﬁ nd out about their history and where they are spoken You can see what they look like and also learn to speak a few words and phrases pages 12 53 Despite their differences languages are related like humans You can ﬁ nd out about the different language families on pages 10 11 Language is so important to us that we have created ways to communicate even when we cannot speak or hear On pages 54 57 you can ﬁ nd out about some non verbal languages 6 Scripts and pronunciation Not all languages are written in the same way The written forms are called scripts Chinese can be written using characters like tiny paintings (cid:9209)(cid:11658) Russian script uses the Cyrillic alphabet with letters like this Ж English and lots of other languages use the Latin alphabet A B C etc In this book we have changed all the words into the Latin script so you can read them more easily This is called transcription The alphabets for each language with the names of the letters are shown on the side of the right-hand pages To make reading as easy as possible we have used the most simpliﬁ ed transcriptions and also written the alphabets of all languages from left to right You’ll also ﬁ nd short pronunciation guides that describe the way that letters sound when they are spoken

The Book of Languages: Talk Your Way around the World — page 5 — Language facts Th e most spoken language The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese which has over a billion speakers This is based on the number of people who use it as their ﬁ rst language or mother tongue It is followed by Hindi-Urdu Spanish and English (cid:3234)(cid:3042)(cid:3900) Latin Although Latin is considered a dead language there are Latin phrases that are still used a lot today Lawyers speak of prima facie evidence which is Latin for at ﬁ rst sight You’ll also hear people say gratis free persona non grata someone who’s not welcome and et cetera and other things written as etc Offi cial languages A country’s ofﬁ cial language is the language that is used within government which includes courts of law and public administration A country can have more than one language as its ofﬁ cial language For example English Maori and New Zealand Sign Language are all ofﬁ cial languages in New Zealand 8 Th e least spoken language Lots of languages are spoken by just a handful of people Deep in the Amazon rain forest on the Brazilian border with Bolivia Guarasu has just two speakers Brazil Bolivia New languages Languages are still being discovered In 2010 researchers learned about a unique language in India It is called Koro and is spoken by farming people in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh near the borders with China Tibet and Burma China India Burma

JavaScript Required

Whoops! We're sorry but Epic doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Check your web browser's settings to make sure it's enabled.