LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGES

■ More than 250 indigenous Australian languages including 800 dialectal varieties were spoken on the continent at the time of European settlement in 1788. Today, approximately only 13 indigenous Australian languages have enough young people speaking them to sustain the language into the future.

■ Almost half the world’s people speak the 10 most widespread languages (going by total number of native speakers): Mandarin; Spanish; English; Hindi; Arabic; Portuguese; Bengali; Russian; Japanese; Punjabi

■ The most linguistically diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea, where around 840 languages are spoken.

■ On average, people only use a few hundred words in daily conversation, while most languages have 50,000+ words.

■ Over 200 artificial/ constructed languages have been created since the 17th century. Modern-day artificial languages (such as Elvish, Klingon, Na’vi, and Dothraki) have been created for popular culture, commerce, and trade.

■ There are somewhere between 138 and 300 different types of sign language used throughout the world.