Languages Facts for Kids
Weird and wonderful language facts
There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, though linguists disagree on the exact count because it is sometimes unclear whether two speech varieties are separate languages or dialects of the same language. About half of the world's population speaks just 23 of these languages. Meanwhile, about 40% of languages are endangered, with fewer than 1,000 speakers.
Japanese uses three different writing scripts simultaneously. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic alphabets with about 46 characters each, while Kanji consists of thousands of Chinese-derived characters. A typical Japanese newspaper uses all three scripts in the same article. Japanese children spend years in school learning to read and write all three systems.
In an extraordinary number of unrelated languages, the word for 'mother' starts with the sound 'm' — mama, mère, madre, Mutter, māma, mā. Linguists believe this is because 'm' is one of the easiest sounds for infants to make, and the sound naturally emerges during nursing. The same pattern appears with 'p' or 'b' sounds in many languages for 'father' — papa, père, padre, Vater.
The Korean writing system, Hangul, was deliberately invented in 1443 by King Sejong the Great and a team of scholars with the specific goal of making literacy accessible to ordinary Koreans. Before Hangul, only the educated elite could read and write using complex Chinese characters. Hangul is now considered one of the most scientific and systematically designed writing systems in the world.
The term 'lingua franca' (meaning a shared language used between speakers of different native languages) originally referred to a specific pidgin language based on Italian used by traders throughout the Mediterranean from the 11th to 19th centuries. Today English often serves as a global lingua franca. The term itself has become a common English phrase.
The island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands has a unique whistled language called Silbo Gomero, in which Spanish is converted into whistling sounds that carry across the island's deep ravines for up to 5 miles. It is now taught in all primary schools on the island and recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. The human brain processes whistled Silbo in the same areas as spoken language.
The longest word in the English language — pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters) — is the name of a lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust from volcanoes. It was deliberately coined to be the longest word. The longest non-coined word is the 29-letter antidisestablishmentarianism, referring to opposition to separating church and state.
Cuneiform, the world's oldest known writing system, was developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3400-3100 BC. It was written by pressing a stylus into wet clay tablets, leaving wedge-shaped marks. Cuneiform was used for over 3,000 years and was eventually deciphered by 19th century scholars, unlocking a vast library of ancient texts on trade, law, and literature.
France has an official government body called the Académie française, founded in 1635, whose job is to protect and regulate the French language. The 40 members, called 'the immortals,' vote on which foreign words should be replaced with official French alternatives. For example, they recommend 'courriel' instead of 'email' and 'baladodiffusion' instead of 'podcast' — though many French people ignore the recommendations.
The island of New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse place on Earth. The half of the island that forms Papua New Guinea alone contains over 800 distinct languages — about 11% of all the world's languages — spoken by a population of just 9 million people. Many of these languages are spoken by communities of only a few hundred people separated by mountains and rainforest.