Leonese is one of the most obscure languages in the entire world- only being spoken by between 20,000 and 50,000 people, and only known by a handful more people! Like most other languages in Spain, Leonese too, is a romance language.
Dumi is the world's least spoken language and one of the rarest.
Kawishana. Spoken near the Japura River in Brazil, Kawishana (Kaixana) was once a popular language utilized by many. The numbers began dwindling, eventually dropping down to 200. Now, there remains only one documented person still able to speak the language.
Argot, strictly a proper language with its own grammar, used to prevent understanding by outsiders; sometimes argot is used as a synonym of cant or jargon. Sacred language, also called a ceremonial or a ritual language, which is only learned and used by a select initiated group.
ghost language (plural ghost languages) A language which has lost its speakers. quotations ▼synonyms ▲ Synonyms: dead language, extinct language. A language posited against actual evidence, a merely fancied natural language.
CIA agent positions that work in a foreign country may require you to be fluent in more than one language. Middle Eastern and Asian languages such as Arabic, Korean, Russian and Japanese are particularly useful due to the intelligence work being conducted in these areas.
Paakantyi. This Australian Aboriginal language is still spoken in regions alongside the Darling River, but only by a few people.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
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.
But Latin isn't the only dead language, some of the other known dead languages are Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Gothic, all of which are still studied both academically and religiously. However, not all hope is lost for dead languages.
As we've already mentioned, Japanese is considered the fastest language in the world. It is always mentioned as the first on the list. So, here are 6 of the fastest spoken languages in the world, based on the average number of syllables spoken per second (SPS): Japanese - 7.84 SPS.
Some of the most well known Aboriginal words for hello are: Kaya, which means hello in the Noongar language. Palya is a Pintupi language word used as a greeting much in the same way that two friends would say hello in English while Yaama is a Gamilaraay language word for hello used in Northern NSW.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages
Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact.
The Bureau has 1,400 linguists who work in 114 locations domestically and overseas. We consider nine languages critical to our investigations—Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
Language skills and cultural knowledge, specifically in Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Somali, Uzbek, Korean or another language are highly sought after by the FBI.
Roles & responsibilities
You'll also help us to piece together information from a range of sources, giving us valuable insights. Across GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, we typically look for people who are experts in Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Korean, and - from time to time - South Asian and African languages.
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.