How many languages?
- Difficult to say…
- Estimate: 6k ~ 7k languages around the world given by Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue is free and you can use it to find information about countries, about languages, about language families, etc..
Language Diversity
- Language with around 20 different vowel sound v.s. others that may only have 2 or 3
- some language put information mainly on word, Turkish v.s. others with short words, Vietnamese
Language Families
Languages that are historically related to each other are grouped into language families.
- Romance -> Indo-European, Germanic -> Indo-European
- Other families: Dravidian, Niger-Congo(Swahili)
- There are also confusion
- Isolated, do not seem related (Basque)
Why can languages be so similar?
- reasons of contact
- physical reasons