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How Many Languages Are Used In The World Today

postman1 — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:49:03 +0000

How Many Languages Are Used In The World Today?

Well, let’s see. There’s French, Spanish, um, English…oh boy, we can already tell this is going to be a tough one. After all, what is a language? Do different dialects count? What about languages not widely used? With so many variables, we thought it best to stop counting and consult the experts.

This report by Stephen R. Anderson of the Linguistic Society of America explains how complicated the question really is. According to Anderson, estimates have risen steadily over time. A 1911 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, “implies a figure somewhere around 1,000.” Throughout the century, that figure grew as experts broadened the “language” definition.

In his report, Anderson cites the Ethnologue organization. According to Ethnologue, there are currently 6,912 living languages, defined as languages that people speak today. Interestingly, the part of the world with the highest level of linguistic diversity is Papua New Guinea. The region has approximately 830 languages for around 5.4 million people. That’s about one language for every 6,500 residents.

Ethnologue also reports a total of 238 languages in the United States, 162 of which are “living.” Those wondering why the country has never declared English its official language may finally have their answer.

How Many Words Are in The English Language

postman1 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:00:58 +0000

How Many Words Are in The English Language ?

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

The English language has exactly 258,031.5 words. 2 words are added to it every tuesday before pimms o’clock and friday morning just before elevenses.

How Many or How Much usage in English

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:56:12 +0000

How Many or How Much usage in English.

It is very easy to distinguish MUCH and MANY. The first thing you have to do is to recognize what are countable nouns and what are uncountabe nouns. MUCH is always used with UNCOUNTABLE NOUN. MANY is used with COUNTABLE NOUN in plural.

For example:
I have many books.
There was much discussion about the reasons for the failure.

Remember these rules:

We use “How many” for questions using countable or plural objects Example: How many books do you have?

We use “How much” for questions using a non-countable or singular object Example: How much juice is left?

We use “How much” for questions asking about ONE object Example: How much does the book cost?

Most plurals are formed by adding “-s” to the noun or object Example: book -s = books. Some of the more important exceptions include: man – men, child – children, person – people, woman – women

Simple, isn’t it?