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This continent contains the United States, Canada and Mexico. The three most widely spoken languages now are those brought by the European settlers - French, English and Spanish.

Before the European conquerors came there were a tremendous number of different languages spoken in North America. Most of these died out (for some it may be more appropriate to say they were killed!).

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Many of these languages however are still spoken; for example Cree in both Canada and the USA, Mohawk and Cherokee in the USA and Bella Coola in Canada. Inuktitut and other Eskimo languages are also spoken in the far North. Some of the languages have very few speakers left and under threat of extinction, just like some animals.

Many native languages are also spoken in Mexico, for instance Mixtec and Nahuatl. There is even a small language called Kickapoo.

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In both Canada and the US there also groups of people who speak a variety of German often called Pennsylvania German. Most of these people can be distinguished by the way they live and dress, like the Amish.

Because of the close contact between the native North American languages and English, some of the words have been borrowed into English; like wigwam, skunk and chipmunk.

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One of the biggest language families in Europe is the romance language family. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian all belong to the romance family. These languages are descended from Latin.

Another important family is Germanic, with members like English, Dutch, German and Swedish. Gothic was also a member of this family, but this language died out.

Further East we have the Slavic language family with Russian, Polish and Czech for instance.

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A smaller family is Celtic, the family which Irish, Scots, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton belong to.

These families are in fact all members of a bigger, older language family called Indo-European. These go back further to a common law spoken in central Asia.

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Another family is Finno-Ugric with languages is like Finnish and Hungarian. The language of the Sami people of Finland also belongs here.

Basque is the odd one out in that it doesn't seem to have any relatives at all! It is spoken in Northern Spain and Southern France in what we call the Basque country.

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This continent is the home of several of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Japanese.

There are also many other languages spoken here, some small and some big such as Russian, Mongolian, Kurdish, Armenian and Yupik.

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Sanskrit was also born in Asia, it is one of the oldest languages in the world and belongs to the Indo-European family.

We can tell that it is (distantly) related to English, because some of the words in Sanskrit and in European languages are very similar. Look at our English word "brother" and Sanskrit "bhratar", or our word "three" and Sanskrit "tri".

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Many people believe that the human language first developed in Africa.

There are many languages spoken in Africa, some by millions of people (like Swahili, Hausa and Yoruba) and some by so few that the languages are in danger of dying out.

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Some African languages use 'clicks'; this means that the sound you make if you blow a kiss or the one you use to make a horse move are ordinary sounds of the language!

In many African countries the language of those who colonised the country is still an official language; for example Portuguese in Mozambique and French in the Ivory Coast.

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English is a very popular language in Africa. Many people think they will be more successful if they speak English; because of this many local languages may eventually be lost.