There may be up to 6000 different languages spoken in the world today – no-one is quite sure how many. Of these, 90 per cent are spoken by very few people and are in danger of becoming extinct. More than a third of the world’s population speak one of five languages – Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish and Russian. People first developed languages to communicate with one another. Languages spread and changed as people moved to new lands, often as a result of invasion and conquest.
Languages fall into a number of different families. Most European languages and many of those of southwest Asia and India belong to a single group, known as the Indo-European language family. More than 80 languages in all, they developed from a single original language, probably spoken by farming peoples who lived in Eastern Europe about 6000 years ago. As these people spread out over a wider area, their language gradually changed as communities lost contact with each other.
The four most common first languages are: Chinese – more than 1 billion speakers; English – 450 million speakers; Hindi – 400 million speakers; and Spanish – 350 million speakers.
More than 800 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.
The main language of India is Hindi but there are hundreds of others. More than 20 million people in Gujarat and another state, Maharashtra, speak Gujarati. It is descended from the ancient Indo-European language.
The most common Chinese language is Mandarin, which is spoken by 70 per cent of the population. Mandarin was the language of the government officials who were appointed in China until 1911. However, China has many different peoples who still speak their own languages.
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