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Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
It is the only index associated with the age distribution of a population. [1] Currently, the median age ranges from a low of about 18 or less in most Least Developed countries to 40 or more in most European countries, Canada, Cuba, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world. [2] [3] ... South Africa: 30 12 42 ... United Arab Emirates: 10 17 27
In general, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language in the Arab world, but additional languages are often used in the daily lives of some citizens. Arabs, however, don't natively speak MSA but their native varieties of Arabic, which are grouped based on shared features into Peninsular, Mesopotamian, Levantine, Egyptian, and Maghrebi.
The world population more than tripled during the 20th century from about 1.65 billion in 1900 to 5.97 billion in 1999. [16] [17] [18] It reached the 2 billion mark in 1927, the 3 billion mark in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, and 5 billion in 1987. [19] The overall population of the world is approximately 8 billion as of November 2022.
Arabic (alongside English) was an official language in South Sudan from 1863 (these days a part of Egypt Eyalet (1517–1867)) until 2011 (that time the independent state Republic of South Sudan), when the former government canceled Arabic as an official language. Since 2011 English is the sole official language of South Sudan.
In Arab-dominated Yemen and Oman, on the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula, a few tribes continue to speak Modern South Arabian languages such as Mahri and Soqotri. These languages differ greatly from both the surrounding Arabic dialects and from the languages of the Old South Arabian inscriptions.
The Latin alphabet (as "Arabizi") is used by Arabic speakers over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the Arabic alphabet is unavailable or difficult to use for technical reasons; [31] this is also used in Modern Standard Arabic when Arabic speakers of different dialects communicate each other.