Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1893 — The Number of Languages. [ARTICLE]

The Number of Languages.

The least learned are aware that there are many languages in the world, but the actual number is probably beyond the dreams of ordinary people. The geographer Balbi enumerated 860, which» are entitled to ba considered as distinct languages, and 5,000 which may be regarded as dialects. Adulguns, another modern writer on this subject, reckons up 3,064 languages and dialects existing, and which havje existed. Even after we have allowed either of these as the number of languages, we must acknowledge the existence of almost infinite minor diversities; for almost evAy province has a tongue more or less peculiar, and this we may wall belif ve to be the case throughout the world at large. It is said there are are little islands, lying close together in the South Sea, the inhabitants of which do not understand each other. Of the 860 distinct languages enumerated by Balbi, 53 belong to Europe, 114 to Africa, 123 to Asia, 417 to America, 117 to Oceanica—by which term he distinguishes the vast number of islands stretching between Hindostan and South America.