Living language
The term living language refers to the languages currently used by a language community . In many cases, languages have developed through national expansions ( trade , colonization ) or migration to modern world languages .
distribution
The most common living languages (speakers in millions) are:
| native language | source | |
|---|---|---|
|
English Company (2006) |
ethnologue (2006) |
|
| Chinese | 1,113 | 917 (2020) |
| English | 372 | 379 (2020) |
| Hindi | 316 | 341 (2020) |
| Spanish | 304 | 460 (2020) |
| Russian | 155 | 288 |
| Arabic | 201 | 202 |
| Portuguese | 165 | 170 |
| Bengali | 125 | 189 |
| Japanese | 123 | 125 |
| German | 102 | 98 |
| Cantonese | 71 | |
| French | 70 | 72 |
| Italian | 57 | 63 |
| Malay | 47 | 47 |
The dead and extinct languages include Etruscan , most of the Celtic languages , Egyptian and numerous indigenous languages of America.
special cases
Revived languages
A special case can arise when an extinct language is revived. The best-known example of this is modern Hebrew ( Ivrit ), which today is one of the living languages as the official language of Israel . However, Hebrew was only extinct as a mother tongue, it survived the past millennia as a sacred language and was read and spoken by hundreds of thousands - even if not in everyday life. Other examples are the Cornish language and Manx .
Dead languages that continue to be used
Another special case are those languages that are no longer used by any language community, i.e. are no longer learned by children as their mother tongue, but are still used within a certain framework. An example of this is Sanskrit , which is still used in a religious context and for which there should also be a daily news broadcast in this language. Other dead languages used are modern Latin as the official language of the Vatican State or Old Ethiopian , which is still the church language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches . The Koran is still written in Altarabish today .
Planned languages
A third special case are the planned languages , for which a separate language community only developed in exceptional cases. Some of these languages are practically no longer spoken (such as Volapük , Ido and Interlingua ). Esperanto is spoken by more than a million people, according to ethnologue.com.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Language Technologies for Europe. Accipo Consulting, April 2006, p. 12.
- ↑ a b c d What is the most spoken language? Ethnologue.com. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
- ↑ Harald Haarmann: Small Lexicon of Languages. Beck, Munich 2001, p. 330. ISBN 3-406-47558-2 .
- ^ Hans Joachim Störig: Adventure language. A journey through the languages of the earth. 2nd, revised edition. Humboldt, Munich 1997, p. 368ff. ISBN 3-581-66936-6
- ↑ See 2001 census in Hungary: 2 Ido and 2 Interlingua speakers each
- ↑ Esperanto at ethnologue.com