Believe It or Not

• According to the Ethnolog there are 6,809 living languages.

• Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse nation; its citizens speak 823 languages.
• The world's most widely spoken languages are Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish and Bengali, each with over 200 million native speakers.
• Only about 10,000 words in modern English date back to Anglo-Saxon.

• More than half the world's languages have disappeared; 200 documented languages have disappeared no longer spoken.

• Not all languages have 8 parts of speech:
      ¤ Cherokee has three: nouns, verbs, and particles

• In previous sessions, members of the Alabama State Legislator used the reading aloud of titles of bills, which could run to hundreds pages, to prevent legislative action.

• Amy Tan has a graduate degree in Linguistics