European Day of Languages 2021

  • Tongue twisters, try them!

    Fun facts about languages:

     

    Sanskrit is "mother of all languages" and belongs to the Indo-European languages family. The meaning of the word "Sanskrit" is refined, decorated and produced in perfect form. This is the oldest language ever attested on Earth.

     

    When it comes to the languages Europeans consider the most useful English followed by Russian, German and French as the most dominant.

     

    Europe is home to 24 official languages, while as many as 200 languages are spoken across the continent. That might not seem like many, compared to some continents. Africa, for example, is home to 1,500 to 2,000 languages. However, Europe's 200 or so languages still encompass a huge amount of variety.

     

    Hungarian is widely considered as the most difficult language to learn in Europe.

     

    Mandarin is unanimously considered the toughest language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

     

    Language families: The vast majority of EU languages belong to the Indo-European family: the three dominant subfamilies are the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic.

     

    The Greek language is the oldest language in Europe, spoken since 1450 years before Christ. Currently Greek is spoken in Greece, Albania and Cyprus. About 13 million people still speak Greek today.

     

    The easiest language to learn for English speakers:

    1. Norwegian
    2. Swedish
    3. Spanish
    4. Dutch
    5. Portuguese
    6. Indonesian
    7. Italian
    8. French

     

    English is the king among languages in terms of its roles and impact as a global language. It iis the primary vehicle for communication and a tool for understanding.

     

    According to a UNESCO survey, Bengali has been voted the sweetest language in the world; positioning Spanish and Dutch as the second and third sweetest tongues.

     

    An English pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet. The most well known English pangram is probably “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. ... A perfect pangram is a pangram where each of the letters appears only once.

     

    The longest word in the English language is made up of a whopping 43 letters. Are you ready for it? Here it is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis, the name of a lung disease that is the result of inhaling silica dust, such as from a volcano.

     

    Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary — and, in an ironic twist, is the name for a fear of long words. Sesquipedalophobia is another term for the phobia.

     

    Languages By Total Number Of Speakers:

    1. English 1.348 billion total speakers.
    2. Mandarin Chinese 1.120 billion total speakers.
    3. Hindi 600 million total speakers.
    4. Spanish 543 million total speakers.
    5. Standard Arabic 274 million total speakers.
    6. Bengali 268 million total speakers.
    7. French 267 million total speakers.
    8. Russian 154 million total speakers.

    Languages By Number Of Native Speakers:

    1. Chinese — 1.3 Billion Native Speakers
    2. Spanish — 471 Million Native Speakers
    3. English — 370 Million Native Speakers
    4. Hindi — 342 Million Native Speakers
    5. Arabic — 315 Million Native Speakers
    6. Portuguese — 232 Million Native Speakers
    7. Bengali — 229 Million Native Speakers
    8. Russian — 154 Million Native Speakers
    9. Japanese — 126 Million Native Speakers