Around 1.3 billion people speak Chinese, making it the most widely spoken language in the world. That being said, there are many different dialects of Chinese, and not all of them are mutually intelligible. This means speakers of one dialect might not understand speakers of another dialect. However, the most common dialect of Chinese is Mandarin.
Given how widespread the language is, learning Chinese can help you communicate more easily with a massive population. This can help you on your travels, in school or even in the business world.
germanic language of 128 million pdf 16
DOWNLOAD: https://jinyurl.com/2vFf1i
English is the most widely spoken second language, with over 753 million people speaking it as a non-native language. That means around twice as many people speak English as a second language than people who speak it as a first language.
Hindustani is a language from the Indian subcontinent that can also be broken down into two separate languages: Hindi and Urdu. As separate languages, Hindi has 531 million speakers, less than half of whom are native speakers. Urdu has another 109 million speakers, the vast majority of whom speak it as a second language. With these numbers combined, Hindustani is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Around 77 million people speak Korean. While this population is mostly centered in North Korea and South Korea, nearby countries, including China and Japan, also have notable Korean-speaking populations.
Portuguese pairs well with other Romance languages, including French, Italian and Spanish. Because they have some similarities, you might have an easier time learning Portuguese alongside any of them, thereby adding an extra language to the total count of languages you speak. Being trilingual is cooler than being bilingual, right?
Like soccer and want to impress your friends? Learn Portuguese! Soccer is huge in both Brazil and Portugal, so learning the language will open you up to infinitely more soccer viewing options.
Russian is spoken by over 265 million people, including nearly 154 million native speakers. While the largest concentration of speakers is in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are also home to many speakers.
If you live in the United States, speaking Spanish is a highly marketable job skill. The United States is home to over 58 million Spanish speakers, including over 43 million native speakers. The widespread nature of the language means that it can be a useful skill across industries.
Spanish is also unique in that it has a body devoted to the language. Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy) promotes common, shared language standards in the use of the Spanish language. How many other languages can claim they have their own governing bodies?
Over 12 million people speak Swedish, over 9.5 million of whom are native speakers. It should come as no surprise that Swedish is most widely spoken in Sweden. However, Finland is also home to 2.6 million Swedish speakers, most of whom speak it as a second language.
Tamil is spoken by nearly 69 million people, most of whom are native speakers. While Tamil is most associated with India and Sri Lanka, there are also speakers in Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa.
ilanguages.org is a great resource for learning a little Xhosa on your own. The site will introduce you to common vocabulary, basic phrases and grammar rules. Words and phrases are accompanied by audio to help you get the challenging pronunciations down. Flashcards and a quiz can also help reinforce your learning.
Studying any of these 16 languages can help you earn instant cool points, all without risking life and limb for the perfect Instagram pic. Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England.[3][4][5] It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then most closely related to the Low German and Frisian languages, English is genealogically Germanic. However, its vocabulary also shows major influences from French (about 28% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 28%),[6] plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language).[7][8][9] Speakers of English are called Anglophones.
Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States of America. Through all types of printed and electronic media of these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law.[3] English is the most spoken language in the world[15] and the third-most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish.[16] It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005[update], it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English.[17] English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland (see Anglosphere), and is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.[18] It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. English accounts for at least 70% of speakers of the Germanic language branch of Indo-European.
English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages.[19] Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages in the British Isles, and into the Frisian languages and Low German/Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic) languages, though this grouping remains debated.[8] Old English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English.[20] Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other Anglic languages, including Scots[21] and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy (Yola) dialects of Ireland.[22]
Like Icelandic and Faroese, the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, differing in vocabulary, syntax, and phonology, although some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages.[23]
English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German, and Swedish.[26] These shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic. Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs, and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm's and Verner's laws. English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English Palatalization).[27]
Old English is essentially a distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms, and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns (he, him, his) and has a few verb inflections (speak, speaks, speaking, spoke, spoken), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings.[39][40][41] Its closest relative is Old Frisian, but even some centuries after the Anglo-Saxon migration, Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility with other Germanic varieties. Even in the 9th and 10th centuries, amidst the Danelaw and other Viking invasions, there is historical evidence that Old Norse and Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility.[42] Theoretically, as late as the 900s AD, a commoner from England could hold a conversation with a commoner from Scandinavia. Research continues into the details of the myriad tribes in peoples in England and Scandinavia and the mutual contacts between them.[42]
Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting.Although, from the beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing. 2ff7e9595c
Comments