Billy Adams, age 12, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, for his question:

How many languages are there?

Would you guess a dozen or a hundred? Actually 3,000 different languages are spoken by various peoples in the modern world. This number does not include the dialects of the major languages. Perhaps this multitude of tongues explains why the peoples of the world have such a hard time trying to understand each other. Many experts claim that we would all be better off if the peoples of the world shared one common language, perhaps along with a mother tongue of their own.

Some of those 3,000 languages are spoken by only a few hundred or a few thousand people. Most of them are classed in major groups, or families, that are traced back to common ancestor languages. English is in the Indo European family which also includes German, Dutch and the several Scandinavian languages. This group is traced back to early Sanskrit which may have originated in the Balkan region. About half the people in the modern world speak languages in this Indo European group.