Did You Know?

Chinese has several prominent dialects and two different writing systems.

Written language:
- Simplified characters are used in the People's Republic of China.
- Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Singapore, and other Chinese-speaking areas.
Spoken language:
- Mandarin Chinese is the official dialect of the PRC and is spoken in northern China and in Taiwan and Singapore.
- Cantonese is spoken in Shanghai, along the southern coast of China and in Hong Kong.
70% of the Dutch population speaks three languages.
On average, the world loses one langage every two weeks.
The US state of Oklahoma boasts the highest density of indigenous languages in the United States.
The National Geographic Society has established an Enduring Voice project to document disappearing languages. Their site says: “Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them never yet recorded—will likely disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and how the human brain works.” (Learn more)
The United Nations uses six official languages in its intergovernmental meetings and documents, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish; the Secretariat uses two working languages, English and French.

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