The Chukchi-Kamchatkan ("Paleosiberian") Family Perhaps the smallest family, this one includes 5 languages with 23,000 speakers in the farthest northeastern reaches of Siberia. Many linguists consider these two unrelated families.
The Afro-Asiatic language family includes 381 languages, making it the smallest language family on this list. These languages are primarily spoken in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and several islands in Western Asia.
Some of the languages in the world that no one ever knows or heard of (except linguists and historians) are in a very critical state – Tsuu t'ina language (also known as Sarcee) with only 80 native speakers, Ongota with 12 native speakers, Liki with 11 native speakers and Taushiro (1 native speaker).
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.
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Basque in Europe, Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi in Australia are all examples of language isolates.
The oldest living language, still in use to date, might be Tamil. This fact is widely debated across linguistic communities. Tamil is proposed to be first attested somewhere between 5320 BC and 8th century CE. The Dravidian language has speakers in Southern India and Sri Lanka.
Although the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language families two of the largest in the world, linguists have categorized more than one hundred language families around the globe. As linguists continue to study language and its origins, our understanding of language families will continue to evolve.
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.
What is the rarest language in the world? Kawishana is the rarest language in the world.
Examples of a Dead Language
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.
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.
Dating back to at least 3500 BC, the oldest proof of written Sumerian was found in today's Iraq on an artifact known as the Kish Tablet. Thus, given this evidence, Sumerian can also be considered the first language in the world or one of the ancient languages.
However, oftentimes, asking children to juggle many languages can result in lower language fluency levels. This is the trade-off that you might want to avoid. If you want your child to become completely fluent in multiple languages, it is safe to stay at a maximum of three languages at a time.
The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
Whether your child is learning English, French, or Spanish, all three are among some of the most widely spoken and easiest languages to learn. However, the best way to support your child in their language learning endeavor is to immerse them in the language with bilingual education.
Like Spanish, French is an awesome language for children to learn because they may have more real-life opportunities to practice the language with others and learn from local community organizations. Plus, French is one of the most common languages to teach in American schools, alongside Spanish.
For the entire world, American accent is most universal. British, Scottish, Irish and Australian accents are pretty unfamiliar with all ears of the people around the globe. Irish English is the easiest to understand.
Spanish is the second most widely spoken language globally in terms of native speakers. In addition, it is the most spoken of the Romance languages and the third most used on the internet.
English is not a Romance language. Instead, it belongs to the Germanic language family, and includes the following languages: Afrikaans. Danish.
Hindi, Bengali, Persian, English, German, Spanish, and Greek, all come from the same root, known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). In total, 400 languages and dialects originate from PIE. German linguist August Schleicher reconstructed its vocabulary back in 1868. He wondered what PIE sounded like.