How Many Languages Are There in the World?

Stephen R.Anderson

在学习语言的时候，你有没有对世界上的语言数量感到过好奇？根据全球民族语言数据库“民族语”（Ethnologue: Languages of the World）的统计，世界上目前大约有7,000 种语言，不过这个数字在不断变化。

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 [ˈrændəm] adj.任意的；随机的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 ['estɪmət] n.估计值estimatesthat have3)escalate [ˈeskəleit] 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 [ˈmɒrɪbʌnd] adj.垂死的；停滞不前的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 [ˈwʌrisəm] adj.令人担忧的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 [əˈbændən] v.抛弃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.

词组加油站

over the course of 在……的过程中

at the present 目前

in any case 无论如何

比你想象的要多！

当人们被问及他们认为世界上有多少种语言时，答案会大相径庭。例如，我们对纽约人进行一次随机抽样，得出了“可能有几百种”这样的答案。然而，无论我们如何计算它们，这并不接近实际数字。

当我们查看参考文献时，我们发现估计值会随着时间的推移而增加。例如，1911 年版（第11 版）的《大英百科全书》给出了大约1000 种的数字，这个数字在20 世纪一直在稳步攀升。这并不是因为语言数量增加了，而是因为我们对以前被低估的地区实际使用多少种语言有了更多的了解。

比上个月少了……

无论目前世界语言的多样性如何，随着世界文明中的主要语言的进步，方言情势越发危险。当一门语言不再被幼儿学习时，它已时日无多，我们可以近乎肯定地预测，当使用这门语言的母语人士去世，它也将不复存在。

当一种语言“消亡”时会发生什么？

有人说，一种语言的消亡比起一个物种的消亡不那么令人担忧。毕竟，难道没有像希伯来语那样消亡又重生的例子吗？无论如何，当一个群体放弃其母语时，通常会选择对他们的经济更有利的另一种语言：我们为什么要质疑这种选择的智慧呢？

经济论点并不能真正为“小语种”和或许是不成文语言的使用者提供放弃这种语言的理由，仅仅因为他们还需要学习另一种广泛使用的语言，如英语或普通话。如果一个地方的当地语言既没有占主导地位，而且有不同语言群体在此经常接触、交流，那使用多种语言就是一种完全自然的状态。

当一种语言消亡时，一个世界也可能随之消亡。从某种意义上说，一个社区与其过去、传统和特定知识基础的联系都会消失，因为连接该知识的载体被抛弃了。