| The Department
of Foreign1 Languages2 promotes global awareness3 and intercultural understanding4 by providing instruction5 in various languages6.
We prepare majors7 and minors8 to function9 effectively10 in a foreign language by offering courses11 in literature12, culture13, linguistics14, pedagogy15 and language for professional purposes16. |
Languages:
Language is the primary means of communication among humans and permeates every aspect of our lives. Although other animals certainly think and communicate, no other system represents the complexity and variety of human language. We use language to share information, express emotion, interact socially, and control our reality(1). Some believe that complex thought is not possible without language(2).
There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the world today. In the United States there are 176 different languages spoken by native speakers. Most of these are spoken nowhere else(3).
The twenty most widely spoken languages worldwide are:
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Chinese
Spanish
English
Arabic
Hindi
Bengali
Portuguese
Russian
Japanese
German
Javanese
Lahnda
Telugu
Vietnamese
Marathi
French
Korean
Tamil
Italian
Urdu
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1.2 billion
329 million
328 million
221 million
182 million
181 million
178 million
144 million
122 million
90.3 million
84.6 million
78.3 million
69.8 million
68.6 million
68.1 million
67.8 million
66.3 million
65.7 million
61.7 million
60.6 million |
- Cristal, David. (1987). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press, pp. 10-13.
- Sapir, Edward. (1921). Language. New York: Harcourt Brace.
- Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). (2009). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.
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