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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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