What are the romance languages?

Romance languages have nothing to do with love or affection. This phrase actually refers to a set of related languages that were derived from Latin, the language of the Ancient Romans.

Now here is the catch, the Latin of the elite literati (like the politician, lawyer and philosopher Cicero) that dominates the written classical texts was different from the one used by the populous in their day-to-day life.

Vulgar Latin

The unpolished, simplified Latin of the commoners was called Vulgar Latin. Even Cicero used this version of the language in personal correspondence. In that period the word vulgar was just an adjectival form for the crowd (unlike the meaning it holds today). Simply put vulgar Latin was the language of the masses. The one traders and soldiers took with them, as they travelled to different parts of the world and mingled with people who spoke other native languages. As the empire grew so did the people who spoke Latin.

The birth of the Romance Language

The fall of the Roman Empire at the end of the 5th Century lead to its newly liberated far-flung territories forming their governments and dialects of the spoken tongue giving birth to the earliest Romance languages. Linguists suggest that there are a total of 27 different ones in existence today. The five most prominent of those are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.

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HOW MUCH POPULAR IS SPANISH LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD?

Hola, buenas noches, adiós amigos, o despacito, son algunas de las muchas famosas palabras en español que muchos conocen. Español or Spanish is a beautiful language, one of the "romance languages" imbued in our culture today, including songs, movies, dances, sports, etc. Who hasn't heard about salsa, flamenco, merengue, tango, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Messi, Iniesta or Picasso?

Yes! At least 21 countries have Spanish as their official language, which makes it the second most widely-spoken language in the world. Apart from Spain, twenty countries in Latin America have Spanish as their first language, plus Equatorial Guinea in Africa. A significant number of people from other countries also make use of it.

In total numbers, Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world after Chinese and English and the second most used language amongst businessmen. If you intend to start a business in future, you won't want to lose a big market of prospect clients or buyers who speak Spanish (many of them do not know English). Spanish can be a great asset for a business. In a globalized world, it is no secret that knowing other languages can open many doors for you in the job market. Language proficiency gives you more value as an employee and can bring you a better income. Speaking Spanish is good for your resume as today more and more companies want to make contacts with Spanish speaking countries.

Besides this, Spanish is the third most used language on the Internet and the second most used in the two main social networks in the world: Facebook and Twitter. In addition, the use of Spanish on the internet has experienced a great growth in the last years, and of the 285 languages in which the contents of Wikipedia  are currently published, Spanish occupies the second position in terms of number of visits.

The Spanish language is one of the top three foreign languages opted for by students in India. There is an increased demand for Spanish in the recent years. One of the major reasons behind the increased popularity for the Spanish language in our country is job opportunities, love for Spanish football, dances, movies and music. Also there is a lot of business between India and all the Spanish-speaking countries. Indians are becoming more aware of the importance of this language, since it is more spoken in the world than French or German.

Are you a travel lover? If you like to travel, knowing Spanish will make your travel much easier and safe. A good knowledge of the language will allow you to travel to Spain and Latin America much more confidently and safely. With so many countries where Spanish is spoken, knowing the language will act as a great advantage that will make your travel experience even more wonderful. Besides, many people in other countries know Spanish as their second language.

And last but not the least, Spain, and the countries of Latin America, are countries full of artists, music, sports and fun. Studying Spanish will open one's doors to art, literature, theatre, music or cinema. You will be able to enjoy each work in its original version and feel the real emotion that each of them transmits, without intermediaries, without subtitles, in its purest form.

Learn Spanish, it's a beautiful language, it's not very difficult and it will open many doors in your life!

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In which country are nearly 850 languages spoken the most in the world?

Papua New Guinea has 832 living languages, making it the most linguistically diverse place on earth. Its official languages are Tok Pisin, English, Hiri Motu and Papua New Guinean Sign Language.

It is home to about 8.1 million people according to the preliminary census done in 2016. As one of the world’s most rural countries, only about 18% of the population is located in the urban centers of the independent state. But one of the distinguishing characteristics of the state is its linguistic diversity. It’s known to have about 852 living languages although 12 of them have no known living speakers. Many of the inhabitants live in their own communities. The communities in Papua New Guinea are also quite diverse. It seems that this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Up until now, the state isn’t fully explored, geographically or culturally. So many more people have no contact with the outside world, and like the communities and the languages, it is believed that many more species of animals and plants in the interior of Papua New Guinea are still undiscovered.

It is astonishing that a state which is only 462,840 square kilometers (178,700 square miles) with 8 million inhabitants can have that many living languages. Compare this to India that has 1.3 billion people living in a land that is 3,287,263 square kilometers (1,269,219 square miles), which officially recognizes 22 languages. However, the people here speak hundreds of languages. Yes, some of them unofficially recognized. On the other hand, some are not native to India.

The “Papuan” languages are the oldest group among the hundreds of languages. The first human settlers introduced languages to the area some 400,000 years ago. They might fall under the umbrella of Papuan languages, however, they do not have similar roots. The languages belong to unrelated families. Plus, in many cases, most of them are language isolates. Austronesian languages landed in the state some 3,500 years ago. It is probable that only one Taiwanese source was the origin of these languages. In the 1800s, German- and English-speaking settlers arrived in Papua New Guinea, which added to the number of languages already spoken in the state.

Papua New Guinea has a tribal society, and this is another reason why languages survive in the state. In each tribe, their unique identity is signified by the language they speak. Each tribe is proud of their own language.

Credit : Day Translations

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How many languages are spoken in the world?

LANGUAGE

People communicate through language, whether the words are spoken or written down. Today, there are some 7,000 different languages spoken around the globe. Many more languages were spoken in the past, which have now been forgotten. The languages of the most powerful economic and political nations are spoken by millions of people.

  1. Chinese 1.3 billion people are native speakers of one of the family of Chinese languages. Some 880 million people communicate in Mandarin Chinese, a group of dialects (language variations) from northern and southwestern China.
  2. French Spoken by 220 million people worldwide, French is an official language of the United Nations. It is one of the family of Romance languages, which developed from Latin.
  3. Hebrew The holy language of the Jewish faith, Hebrew is spoken by 9 million people around the world. Many religious texts are written in an ancient form of Hebrew, in use from the 12th to the 6th century BCE.
  4. Arabic Some 300 million people communicate with a dialect of Arabic, a family of very old languages closely related to Hebrew. The Qu’ran, the holy book of the Islamic faith, is written in Arabic.
  5. Hindi The family of languages spoken in northern and central India is known as Hindi. As well as 425 million native speakers, there are many Indians who use Hindi as a second language.
  6. Portuguese This Romance language originated in Portugal, but spread to parts of South America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today, it has 230 million speakers Worldwide.
  7. Japanese Used by 130 million people, the Japanese language can be adapted by the speaker to show respect to someone, according to their age and social status.
  8. Spanish Originating in northern Spain, this romance language has 577 million speakers. It is widely spoken in Central and Southern America. Today, Mexico has the most Spanish speakers.
  9. Bengali Also known as Bangla, this language is India’s second most spoken language. Bengali is also used in other parts of southern Asia, with 230 million native speakers.
  10. Greek This ancient language has used the same alphabet since the 9th century BCE. Today, about 13 million speakers in Greece and Greek communities worldwide keep this language alive.
  11. Latin The language of the Roman Empire, Latin developed into the family of Romance languages, as well as lending its vocabulary to a number of other languages.
  12. Russian With 160 million native speakers and many more using it as a second language, Russian is an important language in Europe and one of six official languages of the United Nations.
  13. English This widely spoken language went global through British colonization. Today, there are 400 million native speakers, and it is the most used language on the Internet.

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Why is Bengali not in the list of classical languages of India?



At present there are 6 languages which are marked as classical language in India.




  • Tamil (declared in 2004)

  • Sanskrit (2005)

  • Kannada (2008)

  • Telugu (2008)

  • Malayalam (2013)

  • Oriya (or Odia) (2014)



The reason why Bengali is not in this list is - Bengali has been derived from Magadhi-Apabhransha which is again derived from Sansrit-Prakrit. Unlike the classic languages which predates bengali and are more of a direct language.



According to information provided by the Ministry of Culture in the Rajya Sabha in February 2014, the guidelines for declaring a language as ‘Classical’ are:



“(i) High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years;



(ii) A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers;



(iii) The literary tradition be original and not borrowed from another speech community;



(iv) The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may also be a discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or its offshoots.”



Bengali does not satisfy all the criteria mentioned above.



 



Credit : Quora



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What is body language?



Every day, you use your arms and hands and head or other parts of your body to help you say things. Sometimes your actions say things almost better than words can.



In school, you raise your hand. This tells the teacher you are asking for a turn to speak. When riding a bicycle, you let others know you are going to turn by signalling with your arm. Once in a while, you might shrug your shoulders to tell someone, “I don’t know,” or “Hmmm, maybe”.



Babies “speak” almost from birth. They frown, laugh and snuggle. Their mothers and fathers respond to every “word”.



Everyone around the world uses body languages to speak. We all greet a friend with a smile, and we all frown or cry when we are sad. But be careful! Some body language means different things in different places.



Did you stick out your tongue? In Tibet, you’re saying, “I respect you”. In Western countries, you’re saying just the opposite!



Did you tap your forehead? In the U.S.A., you are saying “smart”. In the Netherlands, you are saying “crazy”.



Did someone tell you “Shhh”? In Australia, you need to be quiet. In Germany, you’d better “hurry up”.



Did you nod your head, then shake your head? In most countries, you said “Yes”, then “No”. In Bulgaria, you said “No”, then “Yes”.



Saying good-bye? Wave to the English with your palm facing out, fingers waving. Wave to Italians or Peruvians with your palm facing in.



Are you making a circle with your forefingers and thumb? In most countries, that means “Okay!” In France, it means “It’s worthless”. In Greece and Italy, it’s an insult.



Want to point to something? In most countries, you use your finger. In Thailand, you use your chin.



A pinch on the cheek is a friendly greeting and a sign of affection in some parts of Eastern Europe.



 



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What are the different ways to say hello?



How many different ways can you say hello? Here are seven different ways. Try them!




  • In French, you say Bon jour

  • In Portuguese, you say Ola

  • In Turkish, you say Merhaba

  • In Vietnamese, you say Xin Chao

  • In Spanish, you say Hola

  • In Lithuanian, you say Labas

  • In Swahili, you say Jambo



Now, how do you “see” hello? It depends on who’s writing it! Try copying some of these friendly written greetings from around the world.



Do you want to learn more words in another language? Find a radio station or TV channel on which people are speaking another language. Listen for a while. See if you can work out what some of the words mean. Practise saying them. Or read product labels and public signs that include your language and another language. Compare the words and see how much you can understand.



 



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Why do children speak more than one language?



How many ways can you say “Hello”? Some children speak more than one language, because the people they live with speak different languages. Children who live in places like Western Europe, where many countries and cultures are close together, often learn a second language.



Even people who speak the same language don’t always say words the same way. In the U.S.A., people in the northeastern states may say “dahg”. People in the southeastern states may say “dawg”. They are all saying the word dog, but they have different ways of saying it.



There are about 6,000 languages in the world, and most people speak and understand only one or two. People who know more than one language can become interpreters. Interpreters are people who translate words from one language into another. When world leaders meet, they often exchange ideas through an interpreter.



When people who do not speak the same language get together, they talk through interpreters.



Canada has two official languages, English and French. Many children there learn to speak both.



 



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WHEN WAS BRAILLE DEVELOPED?


Braille is a system of writing that uses raised dots, punched into paper or plastic. It enables people with little or no vision to read with their fingers. The system was invented in the first half of the nineteenth century by Louis Braille (1809-52), a Frenchman who had him been blind since the age of three.



Braille is a system of touch reading and writing for blind persons in which raised dots represent the letters of the alphabet.  It also contains equivalents for punctuation marks and provides symbols to show letter groupings.



Braille is read by moving the hand or hands from left to right along each line.  The reading process usually involves both hands, and the index fingers generally do the reading.  The average reading speed is about 125 words per minute. But, greater speeds of up to 200 words per minute are possible.



By using the braille alphabet, people who are blind can review and study the written word.  They can also become aware of different written conventions such as spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and footnotes.



Most importantly, braille gives blind individuals access to a wide range of reading materials including recreational and educational reading, financial statements and restaurant menus.  Equally important are contracts, regulations, insurance policies, directories, and cookbooks that are all part of daily adult life.  Through braille, people who are blind can also pursue hobbies and cultural enrichment with materials such as music scores, hymnals, playing cards, and board games.



Various other methods had been attempted over the years to enable reading for the blind. However, many of them were raised versions of print letters.  It is generally accepted that the braille system has succeeded because it is based on a rational sequence of signs devised for the fingertips, rather than imitating signs devised for the eyes.



At eleven years old, Braille found inspiration to modify Charles Barbier’s “night writing” code in an effort to create an efficient written communication system for fellow blind individuals. One year earlier he was enrolled at the National Institute of the Blind in Paris. He spent the better part of the next nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come to be known by his name, Braille.



After all of Braille’s work, the code was now based on cells with only 6-dots instead of 12. This crucial improvement meant that a fingertip could encompass the entire cell unit with one impression and move rapidly from one cell to the next. Over time, braille gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals. Today it remains basically as he invented it.



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HOW AND WHY ARE NEW WORDS INVENTED?


Languages grow and change because they need to. New words are invented when new ideas or articles require a name. Usually, new words are based on earlier ones. When the television was invented, the word chosen to describe it was a combination of an ancient Greek word, meaning “far” and a Latin word to do with “seeing”. Sometimes a writer takes delight in inventing words. Lewis Carroll wrote a poem about a creature he called the “Jabberwock”, for example.



Sometimes a “new” world simply borrowed from another language. “Chocolate” came into the English language as a version of the Aztecs used to describe a drink made from the cocoa bean. This drink was unknown in Europe until the Spaniards discovered the Aztecs in South America. Once it was known, it had to be named! Borrowing the local name for it was an easy solution.



Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English language are just created from scratch, and often have little or no etymological pedigree. A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries. Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly inexplicable way (e.g. jaw, askance, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, slum, log, dodge, fuss, prod, hunch, freak, bludgeon, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, slouch, bash, etc.).



Words like gadget, blimp, raunchy, scam, nifty, zit, clobber, boffin, gimmick, jazz and googol have all appeared in the last century or two with no apparent etymology, and are more recent examples of this kind of novel creation of words. Additionally, some words that have existed for centuries in regional dialects or as rarely used terms, suddenly enter into popular use for little or no apparent reason (e.g. scrounge and seep, both old but obscure English words, suddenly came into general use in the early 20th Century).



Sometimes, if infrequently, a "nonce word" (created "for the nonce", and not expected to be re-used or generalized) does become incorporated into the language. One example is James Joyce's invention quark, which was later adopted by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann to name a new class of sub-atomic particle, and another is blurb, which dates back to 1907.




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WHAT IS THE ROSETTA STONE?


This stone was found near Rosetta, in Egypt. On it was an inscription, given three times in three different languages. One of the versions was in Greek, which scholars could read. Another version was in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a kind of picture-writing that no one in modern times had been able to decipher. Given the Greek “key”, it became possible to read the hieroglyphs on the stone, and later, thousands of other hieroglyphs carved on monuments and buildings.



In the 19th century, the Rosetta Stone helped scholars at long last crack the code of hieroglyphics, the ancient Egyptian writing system. French army engineers who were part of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egypt campaign discovered the stone slab in 1799 while making repairs to a fort near the town of Rashid (Rosetta).



The artifact, which is made of granitoid, came into the possession of the British after they defeated the French in Egypt in 1801.



The stone features a decree issued in 196 B.C. by a group of Egyptian clergy and Egypt’s ruler, Ptolemy V, attesting to his generosity and devoutness. It originally was displayed in a temple, possibly near the ancient town of Sais, then centuries later moved to Rosetta and used in the construction of Fort Julien, where it was eventually uncovered by the French.



The decree on the stone is written in three ways: in hieroglyphics, which was used mainly by priests; in ancient Egyptian demotic, used for everyday purposes; and in ancient Greek. The use of hieroglyphics died out after the 4th century and the writing system became an enigma to scholars.



British scientist Thomas Young, who began studying the Rosetta Stone’s texts in 1814, made some initial progress in analyzing its hieroglyphic inscription. Young surmised that the cartouches—hieroglyphs enclosed in ovals—contained the phonetic spellings of royal names, including Ptolemy, who was referenced in the Greek inscription.



Ultimately, it was French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion who deciphered the Rosetta Stone and cracked the hieroglyphic code. Between 1822 and 1824, Champollion showed that hieroglyphics were a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs rather than just symbolic picture writing that didn’t also represent sounds of language, as earlier scholars had suspected. For his discoveries, Champollion is heralded as the founding father of Egyptology.



Today, the Rosetta Stone, which measures about 44 inches tall and 30 inches wide, is housed in the British Museum in London, where it’s been since 1802, except for a temporary re-location for safekeeping during World War 1 to an off-site, underground spot.





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ARE ALL LANGUAGES RELATED?


Not all languages are related, but they do seem to form related groups. Most languages that were originally European, some of which are now spoken all over the world, are thought to have developed from an ancient and unknown language those linguists known as “Proto Indo-European”.



Most languages belong to language families. A language family is a group of related languages that developed from a common historic ancestor, referred to as protolanguage (proto– means ‘early’ in Greek). The ancestral language is usually not known directly, but it is possible to discover many of its features by applying the comparative method that can demonstrate the family status of many languages. Sometimes a protolanguage can be identified with a historically known language. Thus, provincial dialects of Vulgar Latin are known to have given rise to the modern Romance languages, so the *Proto-Romance language is more or less identical to Latin. Similarly, Old Norse was the ancestor of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. Sanskrit was the protolanguage of many of the languages of the Indian subcontinent, such as Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu. Further back in time, all these ancestral languages descended, in turn, from one common ancestor. We call this ancestor Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Language families can be subdivided into smaller units called branches. For instance, the Indo-European family has several branches, among them, Germanic, Romance, and Slavic.



Sometimes it is relatively easy to establish relationships among languages. Let us look at the Romance languages. We know that Italian is a descendant of Latin, a language that was spoken in Italy two thousand years ago and one which left a great number of written documents. The Roman conquest helped spread Latin throughout Europe where it eventually developed into regional dialects. When the Roman Empire broke up, these regional dialects evolved into the modern Romance languages that we know today: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and others. These languages form the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. By looking at the word for ‘water’ in three Romance languages, one can easily see the similarities among them.



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IS THERE A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE?


Many people have dreamed of a world in which everyone speaks the same language. Some international jobs use one language to avoid dangerous misunderstandings. However, even gestures can be misunderstood, as a shake of the head can mean “yes” in some countries and “no” in others!



There already is a universal language -- a statement that is backed with ample evidence. That language is modern American English, also referred to as proper English. There are many good scientific and historic reasons for what has already happened, and the evidence is literally within these words that I type.



Yes, there is a tendency for languages to propagate and diverge, and yes, language and culture are one. As long as there are different cultures there will be different languages. But this has to do with how they are born. We do have a tendency to want to communicate with more people and the right people in the proper way. So there is a desire for a universal language.



But universal never meant international until very recently. If all you knew were the people in your village and had no contact with the outside world, universal would be your village. With media and better transportation, countries became smaller, and universal became national. So governments chose their national language and made it official. This is all hard evidence that backs this statement:



Hence, the real question is, (1) why doesn't English diverge and (2) why doesn't English immediately retrofit to cultures?



If you look at most languages in most countries, you will indeed see that languages naturally diverge into their dialects, and often this divergence is problematic for countries that wish to act as a whole. So in Japan for example, there is Standard Japanese (Hyojungo) that is defined as the language of Japan. Yet, plenty of dialects still are used daily, and most Japanese, if they are not born and raised in Tokyo, speak fluently in their local dialect as well as in Standard Japanese.



However, if you look at American English dialects, you will find that the language has an uncanny ability to remain rigid. Most English dialects lean towards different accents and intonations, and certainly local idioms and favoritism persist, but overall, English never breaks where other languages always do. Spelling and grammar remain, and proper English reigns supreme, globally. This all happened quite naturally... No one polices English. It organically grew into the role of a global standard. So what was the secret? What special powers does the English language possess?



Something interesting happened with English when it became the language of choice for scientists. English became more scientific. This happened in the mid-19th century. The scientific community was international and tight. They needed to be able to communicate, and the language they chose was English. They didn't force their identity and wave their flags. They sought unity.




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WHICH IS THE MOST WIDELY SPOKEN LANGUAGE?


Languages are living things, changing all the time to meet the needs of their speakers and writers. It is only in the last few hundred years that attempts have been made to standardize the way in which languages are used, so that people using the same language can understand each other as well as possible. In the world today, Mandarin Chinese is the most widely used language, with over a billion speakers. English is next, with around half a billion speakers.



Chinese characters can be very complicated, with up to 26 strokes in each. The Japanese have adapted over two thousand characters to write their language, but they also have two alphabets, one for Japanese words and one for foreign words!



People sometimes speak of “Chinese” as if it's a single language. It's actually a group of related languages, of which Mandarin Chinese is by far the biggest. It's an official language in the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore.



The native name for Mandarin, Putonghua, literally means “common speech”, although in Taiwan people call it Guoyu – “national language”. Historically, it was also called Guanhua – “the speech of officials”. Since Mandarin is more common in northern China, it’s sometimes referred to as beifanghua (???) – “Northern Dialects”.



Mandarin is written using Chinese characters (sometimes called “Han characters”), an ancient pictorial system where each symbol represents a different word. There are two main versions – “traditional” characters, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, and “simplified” characters, used in China, Singapore, and Malaysia. It's estimated that you need to learn 2,000-3,000 characters to read a newspaper – an educated Chinese person will know about 8,000!



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DO ALL LANGUAGES HAVE ALPHABETS?


Alphabets consist of letters that represent sounds. By writing different combinations of letters, all the sounds in a language can be represented. The first alphabet was probably developed by the Phoenicians before 1500BC. Even if they use the same letter forms, not all languages have the same number of letters in their alphabets. English, for example, uses 26 letters to write all its sounds, but Italian uses just 21, with j, k, w, x and y seen only in foreign words. However, the most widely spoken language of all, Chinese, does not use an alphabet. Instead, it has over 50,000 characters, each representing a word or part of a word.



Alphabets, or phonemic alphabets, are sets of letters, usually arranged in a fixed order, each of which represents one or more phonemes, both consonants and vowels, in the language they are used to write. In some case combinations of letters are used to represent single phonemes, as in the English sh, ch and th.



The Greeks created the first phonemic alphabet when they adapted the Phoenican alphabet to write Greek. They used a number of Phoenician letters that represented consonant sounds not present in Greek to write Greek vowels.



The word alphabet comes, via the Latin word alphab?tum, from the Greek word ????????? (alphab?tos), which itself comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, ? (????/alpha) and ? (????/beta). The names of the Greek letters were based on Phoenican letter names. The first two letters of the Phoenican alphabet are '?leph (ox) and b?th (house).



The best-known and most widely-used alphabets are the Latin or Roman alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet, which have been adapted to write numerous languages. Most other alphabets are used for a single language or just a few languages.



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