Knowledge
Language fun facts: NUMBERS
May 22, 2023
It’s no secret: we love words! But words and languages can also have numbers! Quantities! Amounts! Data! Statistics! Over the years, we have compiled a little collection of language fun facts that revolve around numbers.
Here is a collection of 13 fun facts for you, our fellow language enthusiast, to enjoy. This edition is called: NUMBERS.
More than 300 languages are spoken in the United States of America.
With so many languages, which one is the official language of the United States?
The correct answer is: none of them!
Although English is the de facto official language, it’s not officially official – there is no law about America’s official language. Some allege that this is because the country is so diverse, and declaring an official language would disregard the historical and current linguistic diversity of the US.There are 27 Albanian words for “mustache” and 43 words in Somali pertaining to camels.
We knew about the many different Greenlandic (kalaallisut) words for snow, but the plethora of expressions for mustaches and camels were new to us, when we discovered them a few years ago. (Please bear in mind: scientific evidence for our fun facts may vary 😉.)
Linguistic diversity and abundance can be wonderful indicators of cultural differences - we love it!
Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, has the longest alphabet with 74 characters.
The world’s longest alphabet apparently has letters that aren't even used anymore.
Some might say: "It's time for an update!" Others might respond: "Please don't destroy the history of the language."The Papuan language of Rotokas only has 12 letters in its alphabet.
The paucity of letters in the alphabet of Rotokas makes us wonder if the speakers are better than the rest of us at cutting to the chase? …
The most frequently translated book in the world is the Bible (670 languages), followed by The Little Prince (approx. 425 languages and language variants).
Impressive numbers!
Over 300 languages are spoken in London alone.
London is certainly a city of cultural diversity, and the number of spoken languages there proves it.
After English, these are the top 10 most commonly spoken languages in London:
Bengali, Polish, Turkish, Gujarati, Panjabi, Urdu, French, Arabic, Tamil and Portuguese.
There are more bilinguals in the world (around 43%) than monolinguals (approx. 40%).
A bilingual person can use two languages with equal fluency. You are also considered a bilingual even if one language is dominant over the other. This is often the case, even if you learned the two languages simultaneously.
Some of the largest and best-known communities of bilinguals are Hispanics/Latinx in the US (English + Spanish) and French speakers in African countries (French + native language).
Languages by continent: There are more languages spoken in Asia than anywhere else in the world. There are more than 2300 spoken languages in Asia. Africa comes in at a close second with 2138 languages. Europe has the fewest languages with only 286.
Mandarin Chinese is considered to be the toughest language to learn in the whole world. All thanks to the lack of an alphabet! Chinese uses a logographical system with symbols instead. It’s estimated that the average Chinese speaker knows more than 8000 symbols, and you have to know more than 3000 symbols to able to read a newspaper.
There are over 200 fake languages. These are called constructed languages in the biz, and they are made up languages that come from books, TV, or film.
Some of the most famous constructed languages are probably Esperanto, Klingon and Na'vi.
Constructed languages can even be categorised in terms of their intended use: engineered languages (created to test or prove a hypothesis about how languages work or might work – learn more), auxiliary languages (constructed for the purpose of international communication – learn more) and artistic languages (designed for aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect - simply for the fun of it – learn more).
The translation industry is more than 2000 years old!
The oldest known work to be translated is the Sumerian epic “Gilgamesh”, which was translated into several ancient Middle Eastern languages around two centuries BC!In 2021 the translation industry was estimated to have an annual revenue of $56 billion!
In the rush to digitalise many products and services, companies often find themselves in need of professional translations of both their websites and other web content.
This growing demand for translation services has put the industry’s annual revenue through the roof!A full-time professional translator can translate around 520.000 words per year.
That’s more than 6 average-length novels!