How many languages are there? What did the first language sound like?
History · High School · Tue Nov 03 2020
Answered on
Estimating the exact number of languages is challenging due to dialects and variations. Ethnologue, a widely cited resource, lists over 7,000 living languages. However, language extinction and new discoveries can change this number.
As for the first language, it's impossible to determine precisely what it sounded like because it predates recorded history. The first language, often referred to as Proto-Human or Proto-World, existed among early human communities. Linguists use reconstructions based on the comparative method to theorize about the features of ancestral languages, but the specifics remain speculative.