How many languages in world?

Question

Does anyone knows how many languages are there is world...including national, international and regional.

Answer 1

As many as the stars in the sky.

Truth be told, there's no accurate way to measure how many languages there are. There's no way to tell the difference between a dialect and an actual language, and even more languages are created by the handful (that includes many forms of sign languages and computer languages).

By the way, one poster said that there was only one language in Japan. That's incorrect. Another language found there is Ainu, and I'm sure there are more.

Answer 2

PRIMARY IMPORTANCE LANGUAGES ARE ABOUT 80.

AND IF YOU COUNT THE TOTAL LANGUAGES THEN THEY ARE MUCH MORE.SOMETIME  @ EVERY 30 KILOMETERS YOU MAY FIND NEW LANGUAGE.

  IN INDIA 16 ARE MAIN LANGUAGES. WE FOUND THOSE ON OUR CURRANCY NOTE.

Answer 3

Well originally there was one language. Then it split into a bunch of languages, one of these langugaes was Proto Semitic so lets take it as an example.

Proto Semitic split into two languages, Western Semitic and Eastern Semitic.

Western Semitic split into three languages, one of these languages is Central Semitic of which Arabic is descended from.

Now Arabic has split into many languages (around 20 including Maltese). The languages that split from Arabic will have other languages split from them and it will be endless.

There are already more than 5,000 languages.

Answer 4

Well, for example, The Bible is translated into more than 2,200 languages by year 2000.

There are 200 Indo-European languages.

In Papau New Ginuea alone, there are 800 language spoken in the small country!

There are 2000 languages in Africa, 1000 in the Americas, 2000 in Asia, 200 in Europe and 1000 in the pacific.

That makes over 6000 languages.

These figures are rounded up, but if you want to know more visit: http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november...

Answer 5

You can't really give a definite number. Like with writing systems, its kinda always changing over time as new languages are created from other languages a lot. There are also probably other languages in the world, today even, that have not been documented.

Answer 6

200 billion

Answer 7

There's no definite, exact number to this question because of not being able to explore places within the world that is hard to access, navigate, and decipher what languages or language is spoken there. However, according to ethnologue.com there are 6,809 languages. Even though they may very well be incorrect.  

Answer 8

well yeah theres thousands of languages if you add in the artificialy made ones in video games and movies and that kinda c**p

Answer 9

D. S. Parlett's A Short Dictionary of Languages (1967) estimated the number of languages in the world at about 3000, rising to as many as 5000 if certain dialects were considered languages. As for what consitutes an actual language as distinguished from a dialect, there's a saying of unknown origin "A language is a dialect with an army and navy": the difference is often more political than linguistic.  At any given time, some languages are in danger of extinction (defined as no longer anyone's mother tongue) and others are developing, usually as a result of isolation from other speakers.  

Answer 10

there are a total of 23 european languages, 37 regional languages in india, three in china, one in japan, several unique to south america as well as hundreds in africa. then keep in mind cross cutting cleavage as imperialism took their languages with them!...i'd say its impossible to count

Answer 11

No way to tell...it's like if u ask how many stars are out there....

First thing you need to do is WHAT Classified  as a LANGUAGE!

Do you have to have a writing system to go with the speaking part of the language?

For example.  Chinese have over 2000 local dialogs!!!

AND WHAT’S WORSE? The differences between the major variants Chinese are great enough that they are mutually unintelligible!!!

However, the most of the local dialogs share the same (single) writing system of Chinese. So do you count that as 1 language ? or 2000 languages?

(or 2 languages as there are a simplified writing system called “Simplified Chinese” and the older more complicated one called “Traditional Chinese”)

Within China, it is common perception that these varieties are distinct in their spoken forms only, and that the language, when written, is common across the country. Therefore even though China is home to hundreds of relatively unique spoken languages, literate people are usually able to communicate through written language effectively.

so again. You need to define "What is the definition of a language"  How about computers? does computer  codes such as C++ ,  Java , HTML etc count as languages (Because thats how computer communicate with each other)?

Below you will find more info about the languages of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lan...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lan...

This is a list of the top ten families with wide recognition as phylogenetic units, in terms of numbers of native speakers, listed with their core geographic areas.

Indo-European languages (Europe, Southwest to South Asia, America, Oceania)

Sino-Tibetan languages (East Asia)

Niger-Congo languages (Sub-Saharan Africa)

Afro-Asiatic languages (North Africa to Horn of Africa, Southwest Asia)

Austronesian languages (Oceania, Madagascar, Southeast Asia)

Dravidian languages (South Asia)

Altaic languages (Central Asia, phylogenetic unity uncertain)

Austro-Asiatic languages (Southeast Asia)

Tai-Kadai languages (Southeast Asia)

Japonic languages (Japan)

AND here is just a ballpark number of languages By variety.  

again. those are not abosulute answers either...

According to the numbers in Ethnologue, the largest language families in terms of number of languages are:

Niger-Congo (1,514 languages)

Austronesian (1,268 languages)

Trans-New Guinea (564 languages) (validity disputed)

Indo-European (449 languages)

Sino-Tibetan (403 languages)

Afro-Asiatic (375 languages)

Nilo-Saharan (204 languages)

Pama-Nyungan (178 languages)

Oto-Manguean (174 languages) (number disputed; Lyle Campbell includes only 27)

Austro-Asiatic (169 languages)

Sepik-Ramu (100 languages) (validity disputed)

Tai-Kadai (76 languages)

Tupi (76 languages)

Dravidian (73 languages)

Mayan (69 languages)