Many years ago, a linguistic scholar counted all of the languages then spoken of which he had evidence. The total was approximately 2800, but that is probably only a vague estimate: he undoubtedly missed some; some have sprung up since his time ( modern Hebrew, for instance ); and some have vanished.
Many years ago, a linguistic scholar counted all 2800 spoken languages of which he had evidence. But that's probably only a vague estimate. Some were missed, have sprung up since then (such as modern Hebrew), or have vanished.