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UNIT 1
LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
1. Read the following text, translate it into Ukrainian.
There are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world. Some of these languages have
almost disappeared and only have a few speakers left, but others are still spoken by millions
of people! There are many languages which were widely spoken in the past and now no one
speaks them anymore, for example, Latin or Ancient Greek.
Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world. It’s the official language of
China and about 900 million people living there speak it as their native language. Mandarin
is also spoken in other Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and
Thailand. So, altogether, Mandarin is spoken by almost 15% of the world’s population!
Hindi, English and Spanish are each spoken by over 300 million native speakers.
Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, German and French each have 100-300 million
speakers. That’s a lot of people!
More people speak Chinese than English, so why is English the international
language? The reason is perhaps because English is spoken in so many different continents.
People in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand speak English as
their first language. It’s also recognized as an official language in more than 70 countries
around the world!
International companies often have businesses in different countries. This is one
reason why young people in these countries may learn the more dominant languages of the
world and stop learning their own languages. Today, about 2,000 languages have less than
1,000 speakers. As time goes on, fewer and fewer people are speaking these languages and
soon they may not exist anymore.
Some scientists predict that half of the languages spoken in the world today will
disappear by the end of the century, as young people stop learning the language of where
they come from.

2. Answer the questions.
1. How many languages are there in the world? 2. What’s the most widely spoken language
in the world? 3. What are the next most widely spoken languages in the world? 4. Why do
some languages disappear? 5. How many languages will there be in the future?

3. Read again and match.
1) _ 7,000 a) The number of people that speak Hindi, English and
Spanish.
2) _ 900 million b) The number of countries where English is an official
language.
3) _ 15% c) The percentage of the world than speak Mandarin.
4) _ over 300 million d) The number of languages with less than 1,000 speakers.
5) _ more than 70 e) The number of people that speak Mandarin in China.
6) _ 2,000 f) The number of languages in the world.

4. Find the words in the text to match the definitions.
1) … adj worldwide; used in all parts of the world;
2) … noun one hundred years;
3) … adj the most used, most powerful, etc.;

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