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Speakers vary their speed of speaking according to contextual and physical factors. A typical speaking rate for English is 4 syllables per second, [5] but in different emotional or social contexts the rate may vary, one study reporting a range between 3.3 and 5.9 syl/sec, [6] Another study found significant differences in speaking rate between story-telling and taking part in an interview.
Individuals classified at level 4 are able to understand the details and ramifications of concepts that are culturally or conceptually different from their own language and can set the tone of interpersonal official, semi-official and non-professional verbal exchanges with a representative range of native speakers; examples include playing an ...
When the languages are just two, it is usually called Bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. [1] [2] More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue; [3] but many read and write in one
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
Speech compares with written language, [1] which may differ in its vocabulary, syntax, and phonetics from the spoken language, a situation called diglossia. The evolutionary origin of speech is subject to debate and speculation.
A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family; in contrast, a language that has been demonstrated not to have any living or non-living relationship with another language is called a language isolate.
Linguistic distance is the measure of how different one language (or dialect) is from another. [1] [2] Although they lack a uniform approach to quantifying linguistic distance between languages, linguists apply the concept to a variety of linguistic contexts, such as second-language acquisition, historical linguistics, language-based conflicts, and the effects of language differences on trade.
[1] [2] Later studies added additional speaker types such as rememberers (who remember some words and phrases but have little or no grammatical competence and do not actively speak the language), and passive speakers (who have nearly full comprehension competence but do not actively speak the language). In the context of language revitalization ...