Random Thursday

Today's theme from Weird But True by Leslie Gilbert Elman, so to speak is language and boy, that's going to be a doozie I feel like. There are so many languages in the world. I never did get the hang of them...I have a pretty rotten memory for these kinds of things! Lol.

(image borrowed from Wikipedia)

Radio waves travel at the speed of light, but if you were to make a cell phone call from Earth to Mars there would be a 4-20 minute delay depending how far away the planets were in their orbits at the time. If you were to call from Earth to Jupiter, there would be a 35-52 minute delay.

I'm still wondering if a cell phone could work in space. I mean I guess it could with satellites right? I'm not very scientific tech savvy here. Lol!

(image borrowed from Youtube)

There are an estimated 6,909 "living" languages that are used as the primary language of conversation in a community. Though unfortunately, Klingon, is not one of them.

Sheldon weeps.

(image borrowed from Voices of Glass)

There are over 450 languages that have been designated as endangered. This means that the number of people who speak these languages is getting lowered as populations die out. Over 70 endangered languages were ones that were native languages of the United States.

This is extremely sad. Feeling like among those 70 languages have to be a great deal of language from the Native Americans. What a sad and troubled world we live in.

(image borrowed from Houston Chronicle)

It was estimated that 91 languages went extinct between 2005-2009. This means that there were no longer any living native speakers. In 2008, Chief Marie Smith Jones died and so too did the language of the Eyak people of central Alaska.

FUN FACT: The Bo or Aka-Bo was a language of India's Andaman Islands went extinct in 2010 when the last native speaker died. Aka-Bo had been in used for 65,000 years.

I wonder how long until English dies out...

(image borrowed from World Nomads)

South Africa has the most languages of any nation in the world. They have 11; Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Sepedi, Southern Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu.

FUN FACT: India has 22 commonly used languages. Many of these are official languages in particular states or regions in the country. Hindi and English are the only designated official languages of India's national government.

Dude. That's insane! Over 20 languages but only 2 are recognized as "official?!"