How many languages are there in the world?
The standard reference lists roughly 7,150 living languages, but the count is a judgement rather than a measurement, and other catalogues differ by more than a thousand. The distribution is brutally uneven: about half the world speaks one of the top 25 languages, while half of all languages have fewer than about 7,000 speakers each. Roughly 40% are endangered, and a language stops being spoken somewhere in the world every few months. Papua New Guinea alone has over 800.
How the figure is arrived at
A language is distinguished from a dialect largely by mutual intelligibility, plus literary tradition and speaker identity — which is why Chinese is often counted as one language despite containing varieties as different as Spanish and Romanian, while Serbian and Croatian are counted separately despite being mutually intelligible. Catalogues assign codes under ISO 639-3 and the count is simply how many codes exist.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 6,500
- High estimate
- 7,500
- Spread
- 1.2× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
- How many miles of road are there in the world? about 64 million km — roughly 40 million miles
Common questions
- How many languages are there in the world?
- about 7,150 living languages
- How is that estimated?
- A language is distinguished from a dialect largely by mutual intelligibility, plus literary tradition and speaker identity — which is why Chinese is often counted as one language despite containing varieties as different as Spanish and Romanian, while Serbian and Croatian are counted separately despite being mutually intelligible. Catalogues assign codes under ISO 639-3 and the count is simply how many codes exist.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place