(I = Interviewer; KT = Kim Thomas)
I: … so, if we could turn to the origin of language? Um, do we know when, where and how language originated?
KT: Ah, that's a difficult question to answer, or rather the answer is no one really knows. What we do know is when language was first written down.
I: Ah hah, and that was …
KT: That was about five and a half thousand years ago, in about 3500 BC. The Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, were the first people to write down their language. They used symbols called pictographs to represent everyday objects - a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphics - and the first actual alphabet was developed around 3,500 years ago by the Phoenicians, who lived on the eastern coast of what is now Syria. Today there are around 65 alphabets in the world. Interestingly, the shortest of them, the one used in the Solomon Islands, has only 11 letters.
I: Hah, hah. And the longest?
KT: Er, the Cambodian, I think. I believe it's got 74 letters.
I: So, how many languages are there in the world today?
KT: Somewhere in the region of 4,000. I don't think we'll ever find out the exact figure.
I: Um, and which of these are the most spoken?
KT: Well, Mandarin Chinese has about a billion speakers. English is next with about half a billion speakers and Hindi, Spanish and Russian are not too far behind. These five languages account for half of all the conversations in the world!
I: Hah, hah, hah. And is it true that Mandarin is the biggest language? I mean the one with the most number of words.
KT: Again, it's difficult to say, but the latest thinking is that English is actually the biggest, largely due to the number of technical and scientific words it contains. There are at least a million words in English. Most native speakers only use about 10,000 words, that's one per cent of them.
I: Hah. Only 10,000?
KT: Yeah, and can you guess which are the most common of these? The most used words in English.
I: Huh. Let me think. Um, maybe `be'?
KT: Well, according to recent research, where tens of thousands of hours of conversation have been fed into computers and analysed, the most common word is `the'.
I: Oh, and `be'?
KT: Well, `be', we think, is the most used verb in English. But of course there are different forms. Er, what do you think the most common noun in spoken English is?
I: Mm, the most common noun? Erm, maybe something like … er, oh, I've no idea. You're going to have to tell us.
KT: Hah, hah, hah. Well, you just said it, actually. Apparently it's `thing'.
I: Mm. Hah … OK … hah. What about the origins of words? Where does English come from?
KT: Well, modern English, which is about 500 years old, is a mixture of mainly Romance and Germanic languages. Greek and Arabic have also provided English with many words. Er, did you know `sugar' comes from Arabic? And, surprisingly, so does `alcohol'. In fact many, many words have been `borrowed' from other languages. For example, did you know that `coffee' comes from Turkish and that `chess', the game, is a Persian word?
I: Oh, no.
KT: Where do you think `ketchup', as in tomato ketchup, comes from?
I: Er, I've never really thought about it. I've no idea. Hah, hah, hah. America?
KT: Hah, hah, hah. It's from the Malay language. A traditional Malaysian sauce I believe.
I: Ah.
KT: How about `shampoo'?
I: Mmm, it sounds a bit oriental to me. Maybe Japanese?
KT: It's actually a Hindi word, from India. The list is endless.
I: Er, you mentioned India just then. Isn't that a country with hundreds of languages?
KT: Well, I don't know about hundreds. I think Papua New Guinea has got the most with over eight hundred and fifty separate languages, but India has got dozens of languages. The bank notes there have got thirteen languages written on them. I suppose they're the main languages. Um, most people there speak at least two or three languages.
I: Um, talking of which … and one final question. To speak two languages fluently is difficult enough, but have you any idea what the highest number of languages spoken by one person is?
KT: There is, or was, a Frenchman, I, er, can't remember his name, but he spoke 31 different languages. All of them fluently!
I: Oh. On that note, Professor Thomas, we'll say thank you very much and, or, au revoir, auf Wiedersehen, arrivaderci, er, sayonara, adios …