CURSO

ACTIVIDAD

1
Departamento de Educacin
y Ciencia

Escuela Oficial de Idiomas n 2

de Zaragoza

C.E.
INGLS

SOPORTE

COMPRENSIN
ESCRITA

N FICHA

04

AULA DE
AUTOAPRENDIZAJE
Before you read
1 What languages do you speak?
2 What languages would you like to speak?

The wonderful world of languages

There are more than 5,000 languages in the world. Some of them are spoken by very
large numbers of people 14 languages are spoken by more than 100 million people. And
some are spoken by very small numbers of people 300 languages have nearly
disappeared, with only a few old people who speak them. Some languages only have one
speaker! Here are some more facts about the world of languages.
1

Who speaks what?

885 million people speak Mandarin Chinese at home.
375 million people speak Hindi at home.
358 million people speak Spanish at home.
322 million people speak English at home.

The longest English word in the Oxford English Dictionary is

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

The shortest words in the Oxford English Dictionary are I and a.

There are more than 200 artificial languages.

All pilots speak English.

90% of e-mails are in English.

There are 328 different languages spoken in the USA.

English has more words than all other languages.

The official languages of the United Nations are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French,
Russian, and Spanish.

10 English is the official language for 1.7 billion people.