Of the more than 7,000 different languages in use around the world today, 41% are endangered. Some languages still thrive, however, when given the right conditions.
Latin is probably the most widely known dead language. No one speaks it as their everyday language anymore, but it's still studied for academic purposes, and it teaches us a lot about other commonly spoken languages that are still in use.
Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.
Sumerian language, language isolate and the oldest written language in existence. First attested about 3100 bce in southern Mesopotamia, it flourished during the 3rd millennium bce.
Around 1,500 endangered and rare languages are at a high risk of being lost in the next century, according to a study of thousands of spoken languages.
One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?
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.
Latin is now considered a dead language, meaning it's still used in specific contexts, but does not have any native speakers. (Sanskrit is another dead language.) In historical terms, Latin didn't die so much as it changed -- into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian.
Of the original number of more than 250 known Australian Indigenous languages, only about 145 are still spoken and 110 are critically endangered (http://arts.gov.au/indigenous/languages).
A dead language, on the other hand, is “one that is no longer the native language of any community”, even if it is still in use, like Latin. The archaeological proof we have today allows us to state that the oldest dead language in the world is the Sumerian language.
The number of Chinese speakers online is estimated at 888.4 million, which has risen an astounding 2600% over the same time period. The Chinese language is catching up quickly and is set to overtake English in the near future.
Mandarin. Mandarin is likely to be the most spoken language in 2050 because of its vast number of speakers. The economic influence of China will also prove vital for the continued use and spread of Chinese languages around the world.
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.
Covers A Larger Precinct. Though not for all the languages, Sanskrit is surely the mother of many languages, especially languages spoken in Northern India. Even many words from Dravidian languages are derived from Sanskrit.
Derived from Dutch, the Afrikaans language boasts 7.2 million native speakers.
1. English (1,132 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the largest language in the world for both native and non-native speaker.
That metaphorical process is at the heart of Toki Pona, the world's smallest 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.
Some Christians see the languages written on the INRI cross (Syriac, Greek and Latin) as God's languages.