Dumi is the world's least spoken language and one of the rarest.
Kawishana is the rarest language in the world.
Mandarin (1,118 million speakers)
Looking at total speakers, Mandarin is the second most widely spoken language in the world. However, it's the most spoken language in the world if you count only first-language (native) speakers due to China's significant population.
Kallawaya. Kallawaya is the endangered language of the Quenchua family. Only 20 people speak it as its second language. The interesting thing about this language is that this language does not have a standard writing system.
That metaphorical process is at the heart of Toki Pona, the world's smallest language. While the Oxford English Dictionary contains a quarter of a million entries, and even Koko the gorilla communicates with over 1,000 gestures in American Sign Language, the total vocabulary of Toki Pona is a mere 123 words.
Riau Indonesian is different from most other languages in how simple it is. There are no endings of any substance, no tones, no articles, and no word order. There is only a little bit of indicating things in time.
The shortest word is a. Some might wonder about the word I since it consists of one letter, too. In sound, a is shorter because it is a monophthong (consists of one vowel), while I is a diphthong. Both do consist of one letter in the English writing system, and in most fonts I is the narrowest letter.
According to the Engco Forecasting Model explained above, the 5 most spoken languages in 2050 will be Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. The key drivers behind the continued rise in popularity of these languages include population growth, economic predictions and national language policy.
Greek is the third oldest language in the world. Latin was the official language of the ancient Roman Empire and ancient Roman religion. It is currently the official language of the Roman Catholic Church and the official language of the Vatican City. Like Sanskrit, it is a classical language.
Co-author Professor Lindell Bromham said that of the world's 7,000 recognized languages, around half are currently endangered: “We found that without immediate intervention, language loss could triple in the next 40 years. And by the end of this century, 1,500 languages could cease to be spoken.”
Bengali: Originated from Sanskrit, Bengali has been ranked the sweetest of all languages in the world. It is spoken mainly in parts of east India (West Bengal) and all over Bangladesh. Even though there is a slight difference in accent and style at different parts, the main dialect remains the same.
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada. It is designed to express more profound levels of human cognition briefly yet overtly and clearly, particularly about human categorization. It is a cross between an a priori philosophical and a logical language.
Mandarin
As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Linguistic predictions say that of 6,000 languages that are globally spoken today, around 600 of them after 100 years will have simplified versions or will not exist at all.
Types of Language Change
Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across time. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a nonsensical word that is sometimes used to describe something as being great or extraordinary. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is used especially by children and fans of Disney movies to describe something as being really good.
In that case, what's the longest word in the English language dictionary? It's pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
1. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl… isoleucine. You'll notice there's an ellipsis here, and that's because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it's the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin.