Matters of Scale - Unspoken Words
Percentage of the world's languages that are of European origin | 4 percent |
Percentage of the world's languages that originated in Africa | 30 percent |
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Number of languages once spoken in the Peruvian Amazon (an area half the size of Alaska) | 500 |
Number that survive today (almost half of which are in danger of extinction) | 57 |
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Number of world languages that exist today | 6,800 |
Number of languages that have speaking populations robust enough to ensure their
survival past the end of the century | 600 |
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Number of languages spoken by more than 1 million people | 250 |
Number of languages spoken by less than 2,500 people | around 3,000 |
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Percentage of the world's 6 billion people that are considered indigenous | 4 percent |
Percentage of the world's 6, 800 languages that indigenous people speak | 60 percent |
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Percentage of the world's children raised as bi-lingual speakers | 66.0 percent |
Percentage of U.S. residents who are bi-lingual | 6.3 percent |
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Sources: Barbara F. Grimes, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 14th ed., CD-ROM version (Dallas, TX: SIL, 2000); Michael
Krauss, "The World?s Languages in Crisis," vol. 68, no. 1 (1992); Jonathon Knight, "Lost for Words," New Scientist, 12 August 2000;
Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine, Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World?s Languages (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000); Barbara Walcraff, "What Global Language," The Atlantic Monthly, November 2000; U.S. Census Bureau data, www.census.gov
and Worldwatch estimate.