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Practice 9 SPEAKING WELL MAKES THE WORLD GO´ROUND

Academic and educational environment
SOCIAL LANGUAGE PRACTICE: Present information about linguistic diversity.

Academic and educational environment

European Day of Languages

Language facts
Did you know that...

1. There 7 billion people living in 189 independent
states and among them there are between 6000
and 7000 spoken languages.
2. Some 225 languages,about 3% of the languages
spoken in the world, are spoken in Europe.
3. Asia and Africa have the largest number of
languages spoken.
4. At least 50% of the world’s population is bilingual or
multilingual, meaning they speak two or
more languages.
5. Europeans come into contact with foreign
languages every day. Therefore, European citizens
have a greater interest in learning
foreign languages.
6. In general, people having a conversation use
only a fraction of the vocabulary available in their
language. They use the same few hundred words,
even though most languages consist of at
least 50,000.
7. There is a constant exchange of words between
languages and they influence ach other in many
ways: Many words and expressions from other
languages have been incorporated into English, and
now other languages are borrowing words
from English.

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