Languages and Communication

The total number of languages in the world is from 2.500 to 5.000.The most widespread among them are Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian and some others. These languages are considered alive, because they are in use. There are also the so-called "dead" languages which are no more means of communication. These are, for example, Latin, old Greek, old Slavonic, etc. All these languages are called natural, but there are also artificial or universal languages, such as Esperanto. We have also programming languages, used in computers. They are called specialized languages.

The most popular language spoken practically all over the world is English. It is spoken as the mother tongue in Great Britain, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. A lot of people speak English in China, Japan, India, African and other countries. English is one of 6 official and working languages of the United Nations Organization. It is studied as a foreign language in secondary schools and higher educational institutions of Ukraine.

The rise of English is a remarkable success story. When Julius Caesar landed in Britain nearly 2 000 years ago, English did not exist. Today English is used by at least one billion people, and almost half of them speak it as their mother tongue. At the end of the 2O-th century English is more widely spoken, read and written than any other language has ever been. It has become the language of the planet, the first truly global language. The statistics of English are astonishing. Three-quarters of the world's mail, telexes and cables are in English. So are more than half the world's technical and scientific periodicals. English is considered to be the language of technology. About 80% of the information stored in the world's computers is in English.

Nearly half of all business deals in Europe are conducted in English. It is the language of sports, glamour festivals, competitions, the official language of the Olympics. Five of largest broadcasting companies in the world CBS, NBS, ABC, BBC, CBS transmit in English to audiences that exceed one hundred million people. English has no equals!