how many languages are there in the world?

[glenis]

i read somewhere that over 300 languages are spoken in london it got me wondering just how many are spoken world wide?

[Clanad]

Hmmm. one Googled source says deffinitevly 6,800, another says between 2,000 and 7,000.  Seems to depend on the exact defnition of the word language...

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages.html and a link will take you to a dictionary website... possibly the one Clanad refers to. There, you will see a claim - more or less universally accepted - that there are about 6,800 languages.  About 1,000 of these are to be found in New Guinea alone!  (These are supposedly distinct languages and not just related dialects.)  Some linguists will tell you that it is impossible to be accurate on total numbers, since there is no agreed definition - even among themselves! - of what a language actually is.

There are about 120 languages which have over a million speakers and about 4,000 with fewer than 10,000.  The vast majority of the 6,000 + total are under threat of extinction, as Chinese, English and Spanish increasingly dominate world communications.  Over a billion speak Mandarin Chinese and about half a billion English. 

[glenis]

many thanks to you both,what a fantastic web site that is, quizmonster,i've stored in in my favourites

[bernardo]

The total of natural languages is rapidly declining as small languages become extinct, or are subsumed by the global imperialism of the main languages (especially English), although the total number is also increasing due to the proliferation of invented languages (which are more easily spread on the internet).

[Romeo]

Is Klingon included in the list of 6,800?  Some Star Trek fans (I'm not one myself) actually have conversations in Klingon at conventions.  Very sad.