More than half of the world's languages have no written form.
True. Probably fewer than a quarter of the world's languages (only around 1,700) have written forms.
15
Most people in the world are monolingual; that is, they only know how to speak one language.
False. Most people throughout the world speak more than one language.
15
There is a dictionary of every language in the world.
False. Fewer than a quarter of the world's languages have a written form, a necessary step towards having a dictionary.
15
You can translate information from any language to any other language and have the translation mean exactly the same thing as the original.
False. Translations lose important cultural context and layers of meaning.
15
If everyone in the world spoke the same language, we would all benefit in increased understanding and efficiency, and lose nothing.
False. Languages hold huge amounts of knowledge, cultural importance, and information about the brain.
15
The speakers of the world's 3,586 smallest languages make up less than 1% of the world's population.
True. There is a huge imbalance between the number of speakers of the smallest languages of the world and the number of speakers of the largest languages.
15
Even though many languages are extinct or endangered, there are no entire families that are endangered.
False. There are many endangered and recently extinct language families.
15
All speakers of endangered languages want linguists to record their languages.
False. Many speakers of endangered languages are ashamed of their language, or do not want to talk to foreign linguists.
15
Most people who speak more than one language learn their second and third languages in school.
False. Many people in the world grow up speaking different languages in different contexts during daily life.
15
If you trace them back far enough, all languages are related to each other.
False. If there was one original source of language, it was too long ago for linguists to trace it to its roots.
15
There are around 7,000 languages spoken today.
True
15
50% of the languages that exist now are expected to disappear during this century.
True
15
100 million speak English as their first language.
