Some like to make parallels to biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations, with modification. (See dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)
The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degree of difference between languages or dialects.
Linguistics examines different theoretical perspectives on human language in detail. The Linguistics article is a useful introductory article about language.
One prominent artificial language, called Esperanto, was created by L. L. Zamenhof. It was a compilation of various elements of different languages, which was intended to be an easy-to-learn language.
Other writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, linguistic, or personal reasons. One of Tolkien’s languages is called Quenya, which is a form of Elvish. It includes its own alphabet and pronunciations aligned with those of Germanic-heritage humans.
While the term ‘Non-Human Animal Languagess’ is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as the human language. Some researchers also argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are not related.
Other researchers argue that a continuum exists between the communication methods of all animals. Almost all researchers agree that human language is more complex than communication between other animals. For more on communication among non-human animals, see The Animal Communication Project.
Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse provides a useful listing of 4000 languages and dialects (grouped by their relationships), where the numbers one to ten in each language can be found
A Web of On-line Grammars This website contains links to all of the serious if not complete grammars of languages on the Web. It currently contains links to grammars of more than 80 different languages. http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammars.html
Vocabulary Test A java applet to test your language skills in French, Spanish, German and Czech. http://www.mujweb.cz/www/valsoraj/jazyky/a2f.html
Ethnologue Extensive database of the world's languages, organized/searchable by map, language family, country, and language name. From Summer Institute of Linguistics. Also offers print and CD-ROM versions. http://www.ethnologue.com/
The Linguist List: Language Resources Searchable information on language families, employment opportunities, publications, text and computer tools, language study and pedagogy. http://saussure.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/langres/index.cfm
Language Museum Short sample texts of more than 1200 languages and dialects in the world. http://www.language-museum.com/
Language Families Maps of the various language families, with background reference material, based on Encyclopaedia Britannica material. http://home.wanadoo.nl/arjenbolhuis/language-family-trees/
Language Tree List of world language hierarchies. http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/langtree.txt
Language Miniatures Mini-essays about human language in its endless kaleidoscope of aspects. http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/
Barrett Translations' Language Resources Language and linguistics resources for Asian languages including Japanese hiragana with vocabulary, a Korean linguistics glossary, Mandarin Chinese and Old English with romanization and transliteration. http://www.btranslations.com/Resources.asp
The Language Museum Lists of basic words in various languages grouped by family. http://www.concentric.net/~yoman1/home/words.shtml
The Rosetta Project Working to develop a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone, a meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,000 languages. http://www.rosettaproject.org
The Human-Languages Page The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources. The over 1900 links in the HLP database have been hand-reviewed to bring the best language links the Web has to offer. http://www.ilovelanguages.com/
Language Portraits Translations of one poem into 82 languages by native speakers. http://languageportraits.net/
Convent of Pater Noster The Lord's Prayer in more than one thousand languages and dialects. http://198.62.75.1/www1/pater/
The List of Language Lists List-servers for a wide variety of language studies, from Nostratic to Spanish and Tolkien. http://www.evertype.com/langlist.html
Languages of the World A description of major world languages and language families, with links. http://membres.lycos.fr/dupac/languages.html
LMBM: Table of Contents The personal website of Robert Beard, devoted to the study of morphology, especially Beard's theory of 'Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology'. It is linked to an index of on-line dictionaries and grammars, and several pages of linguistic fun. http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/
Liberation Philology low-cost, no-nonsense, user-friendly computer programs to help beginning and intermediate students master the vocabulary and/or basic grammar of a variety of ancient, medieval, and modern languages. http://members.aol.com/libphil/
Language of the Week A different world language is examined each week. Includes archives of past weeks. http://thor.prohosting.com/~linguist/language.html
Language Families Introduction to the major language families, including Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic. http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html
Yamada Language Center Extensive information and web links on languages. http://babel.uoregon.edu/
The World's Top Twenty Spoken Languages Estimates for the world's top 20 languages (given in millions) on the basis of the number of mother-tongue (first-language) speakers and population estimates for those countries where the language has official status. http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/COMMUNICATIONS/TopLanguages.html
Multilingual Data Bank Multilingual corpus server located at the Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki. Contains some samples from the rarer languages. http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/
Languages on the Web 30,000 selected links to as many as 400 different languages, plus the first internet library of multilingual parallel texts. http://www.languages-on-the-web.com/
Jennifer's Language Page How to say hello, please, thank you, and other basic social phrases, in hundreds of languages. Includes links to dictionaries, phrase guides, and other resources for many of the world's languages and countries. http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/
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