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poisonedantidote's avatar

Is there any place I can find a list of all languages?

Asked by poisonedantidote (21675points) March 13th, 2012

I am just wondering how many active languages there are on our little planet. Is there any place I can find a list of all languages?

I am looking for languages that are still alive and active, not ancient or dead ones.

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4 Answers

serenade's avatar

This is an odd source, but a group that aims to provide audio translations of the bible in every current language counts 6,809.

marinelife's avatar

“It turns out, however, that there is no
such definite count—or at least, no such count that
has any status as a scientific finding of modern linguistics.

The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages,
generally taken to be as authoritative as
any, is that of the Ethnologue organization
(http://www.ethnologue.com), whose detailed classified
list currently includes 6,809 distinct languages.”

Linguistic Society of America

stardust's avatar

It’s not possible.

prasad's avatar

There are many languages used in India.

My mother tongue is Marathi. Hindi is national language. English is primarily used in academics, businesses, etc. Southern states practice English to more extent compared with other states.

Sanskrit, like Latin, has been origin to many languages here; though it is not dead. It is still used. Ancient books are in Sanskrit. And, I learned it as a third language in school and college.

And, it’s still not easy to count how many languages there are in India only. Thus, it will be extremely difficult to count them in the world.

As far as I know, there are six varieties of Chinese languages in addition to Mandarin.

And, there are dialects too. There are many dialects in Marathi only. Thinking about the world, it just spins my head right around!

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