How Many Languages Are There in the World?

Stephen R.Anderson

在學習語言的時候，你有沒有對世界上的語言數量感到過好奇？根據全球民族語言數據庫“民族語”（Ethnologue: Languages of the World）的統計，世界上目前大約有7,000 種語言，不過這個數字在不斷變化。

More than you might have thought!

When people are asked how many languages they think there are in the world,the answers vary quite a bit.One1)random [?r?nd?m] adj.任意的；隨機的randomsampling of New Yorkers,for instance,resulted in answers like “probably several hundred”.However,we choose to count them,though,this is not close.

When we look at reference works,we find2)estimate ['est?m?t] n.估計值estimatesthat have3)escalate [?esk?leit] v.提升escalatedover time.The 1911 (11th) edition ofEncyclopedia Britannica,for example,implies a fiɡure somewhere around 1,000,a number that climbs steadily over the course of the 20th century.That is not due to any increase in the number of languages,but rather to our increased understanding of how many languages are actually spoken in areas that had previously been underdescribed.

Fewer than there were last month...

Whatever the world’s linguistic diversity at the present,it is steadily declining,as local forms of speech increasingly become4)moribund [?m?r?b?nd] adj.垂死的；停滯不前的moribundbefore the advance of the major lanɡuaɡes of world civilization.When a lanɡuaɡe ceases to be learned by young children,its days are clearly numbered,and we can predict with near certainty that it will not survive the death of the current native speakers.

What happens when a language “dies”?

Some would say that the death of a language is much less5)worrisome [?w?ris?m] adj.令人擔憂的worrisomethan that of a species.After all,are there not instances of languages that died and were reborn,like Hebrew? And in any case,when a group6)abandon [??b?nd?n] v.拋棄abandonsits native language,it is generally for another that is more economically advantageous to them: why should we question the wisdom of that choice?

The economic argument does not really supply a reason for speakers of a “small” and perhaps unwritten lanɡuaɡe to abandon that lanɡuaɡe simply because they also need to learn a widely used language such as English or Mandarin Chinese.Where there is no one dominant local language,and groups with diverse linguistic heritages come into regular contact with one another,multilingualism is a perfectly natural condition.

When a language dies,a world probably dies with it,in the sense that a community’s connection with its past,its traditions and its base of specific knowledge are all typically lost as the vehicle linking people to that knowledge is abandoned.

詞組加油站

over the course of 在……的過程中

at the present 目前

in any case 無論如何

比你想象的要多！

當人們被問及他們認為世界上有多少種語言時，答案會大相徑庭。例如，我們對紐約人進行一次隨機抽樣，得出了“可能有幾百種”這樣的答案。然而，無論我們如何計算它們，這并不接近實際數字。

當我們查看參考文獻時，我們發現估計值會隨著時間的推移而增加。例如，1911 年版（第11 版）的《大英百科全書》給出了大約1000 種的數字，這個數字在20 世紀一直在穩步攀升。這并不是因為語言數量增加了，而是因為我們對以前被低估的地區實際使用多少種語言有了更多的了解。

比上個月少了……

無論目前世界語言的多樣性如何，隨著世界文明中的主要語言的進步，方言情勢越發危險。當一門語言不再被幼兒學習時，它已時日無多，我們可以近乎肯定地預測，當使用這門語言的母語人士去世，它也將不復存在。

當一種語言“消亡”時會發生什么？

有人說，一種語言的消亡比起一個物種的消亡不那么令人擔憂。畢竟，難道沒有像希伯來語那樣消亡又重生的例子嗎？無論如何，當一個群體放棄其母語時，通常會選擇對他們的經濟更有利的另一種語言：我們為什么要質疑這種選擇的智慧呢？

經濟論點并不能真正為“小語種”和或許是不成文語言的使用者提供放棄這種語言的理由，僅僅因為他們還需要學習另一種廣泛使用的語言，如英語或普通話。如果一個地方的當地語言既沒有占主導地位，而且有不同語言群體在此經常接觸、交流，那使用多種語言就是一種完全自然的狀態。

當一種語言消亡時，一個世界也可能隨之消亡。從某種意義上說，一個社區與其過去、傳統和特定知識基礎的聯系都會消失，因為連接該知識的載體被拋棄了。