Language with the shortest alphabet: Rotokas (12 letters). Approx. 4300 people speak this East Papuan language. They live primarily in the Bougainville Province of Papua New Guinea.
In Toki Pona: The Language of Good, Lang presents around 120 words, while the later Toki Pona Dictionary lists 137 "essential" words and a number of less-used ones. Its words are easy to pronounce across language backgrounds, which allows it to serve as a bridge of sorts for people of different cultures.
Rotokas of central Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea has fewest letters, with 11 (a, b, e, g, i, k, o, p, rÆ, t and u).
Inuktitut is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada.
Arabic Doesn't Actually Have an Alphabet
Instead, the system is called “abjad” or consonantal alphabet. For English speakers, reading and writing without vowels seems impossible, but it's something common among Semitic languages – such as Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic or Maltese. How does it work?
One reason Swedish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn is the large number of cognates the two languages share (cognates are words in different languages that stem from the same ancestral language and look and/or sound very similar to one another).
On average, native speakers use 150 syllables a minute. But Spanish people go along at an amazing 300 syllables a minute. Japanese is another fast language. Mandarin is probably the slowest.
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.
Unless you're speaking Esperanto, it's best to cover your ears. It's been suggested people can't swear in Japanese or Finnish, but the rumours are wrong in both cases - the only languages in which one cannot swear are 'artificial' ones such as Esperanto.
The list of six-letter countries in Europe continues with Norway, which is considered by many to be the best country in the world to live in, as well as Cyprus, Greece, and the tiny coastal country of Monaco, the smallest country in the world other than Vatican City.
As you can guess, the letter Z is the least commonly used letter in the English alphabet. (In American English, this letter is “zee.”) The letter Q is the second least commonly used letter. In English words, Q is almost always followed by the letter U.
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.
That metaphorical process is at the heart of Toki Pona, the world's smallest language.
Around 1,500 known languages may no longer be spoken by the end of this century. Current levels of language loss could triple in the next 40 years. Greater education and mobility marginalize some minor languages. One language per month could disappear, without intervention.
It's unlikely that we'll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each individual countries' cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as beautifully diverse as it's always been.
For example, Latin, Sanskrit, Coptic, Biblical Hebrew, etc., are the dead language.
1. English – 1,121 million speakers. It is the most widely spoken language in the world because of the global impact of England and the United States in the last three centuries.
Currently, there are 573 known extinct languages. These are languages that are no longer spoken or studied. Many were local dialects with no records of their alphabet or wording, and so are forever lost. Others were major languages of their time, but society and changing cultures left them behind.
2. Arabic. Arabic is the queen of poetic languages, the 6th official language of the UN and second on our list of toughest languages to learn.
1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world.
British, Australian, and French were named the sexiest accents in the world, and also the most likely to make someone seem more attractive.