Natural and constructed languages

There are not only languages in the world that have developed in the course of human history. There are also languages that were invented for entertainment.

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You can divide spoken languages into natural and constructed languages. Natural languages have emerged in the course of human history and are in turn subdivided into language families. According to Ethnologue.com, there are over 7,000 languages worldwide, divided into 152 language families, of which the Niger-Congo language family accounts for the most with 1,540 individual languages. Of all these languages, only a fraction is widely spoken. About 94% of the world's population speak 6% of the languages and 6% of the world's population speak 96% of the existing languages.

 

 

Among the most widely spoken languages are mainly Indo-European languages such as English, Spanish and Hindi. The most widely spoken native language is Mandarin Chinese with 909 million people and 198 million who have learned it as a second language. As opposed to the 378 million people who speak English as their native tongue and 744 million as their second language, this makes English the most widely spoken language in the world.

Constructed languages or artificially created languages are based on logic and have been conceived for a specific purpose. Programming language is intended, for example, for programming software. There are constructed languages like Esperanto, which are very easy to learn. The inventor thought early on of an universal language that should be spoken worldwide and could perhaps even bring about world peace. Esperanto never prevailed.

 

 

Fictional languages such as Dothraki, belong to the constructed languages. Many of these languages invented for film, television and computer games have evolved in reality and are no longer just fictional languages. Many fans learn the fictional languages and speak at conventions and other occasions in these languages.

J.R.R. Tolkien invented the Elvish languages "Sindarin" and "Quenya" for his fictional world "Arda" where "Middle-earth" is located. In the 1980's, the creators of Star Trek commissioned a linguist to invent an alien language. The result is "Klingon". This language has developed strongly outside the films. For the series Game of Thrones, as mentioned above, "Dothraki" was invented, which is spoken by the nomadic people of the "Dothraki". The language "Valyrian" is much used in film. For all these fictional languages you will find whole dictionaries and explanations about grammar on the Internet. So if you want to try something new, why not learn a language that very few people around the world understand?

 

Thanks for your time!

Your Helena

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