Tom Evans, age 11, of Barrington, I11., for his question:
HOW MANY SPOKEN LANGUAGES ARE THERE?
Man began to develop speech thousands of years ago. Prehistoric people probably discovered that speech has two great advantages over other systems of communications, such as gestures. With speech, the talker was able to exchange ideas even when it was dark and he could not see the other person. It also left the hands of both the speaker and hearer free to do other things.
About 3,000 spoken languages can be heard on earth today. Some of these are dialects and many are spoken by very small groups of persons.
Yet there are more than 100 different languages with a million or more using each.
A majority of the people on earth use 13 different languages. Each of the following has more than 50 million speakers: Chinese, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, German, Japanese, Indonesian, French, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali.
The origin of the word language comes from the Latin word lingua, meaning tongue. A language is still often called a tongue. About 90 percent of all human communication takes place through spoken language.
Most of us learn our own language automatically. A child does it easily by listening to other persons and then imitating them. He quickly learns to select and to make the sounds used in the language spoken around him. And at the same time he learns to connect individual words with objects, ideas and actions.
When a child goes to school, the language learning process becomes conscious and deliberate. He learns the reasons for speaking and writing in the proper way.
In itself, no language is difficult or easy. The ease or difficulty of any language depends on the age of a person learning it. Before the age of 10, all languages are equally easy when learned by the natural speaking method of listening and imitating. After 10, our language habits are set in our own tongue. From then on, another language is difficult insofar as it differs from our own.
Most educators agree that it is very desirable to start learning foreign languages as early as possible. Some schools start foreign language study in kindergarten.
In using the spoken language method of learning a foreign language, students try to duplicate the process by which young children learn language. They listen to the teacher and then imitate his sounds, words and sentences.
The ideal method of learning for older children and adults is to combine the natural speaking method with the grammar method where students learn rules of grammar and then apply them to specific situations.