(i) The twentieth century witnessed a dramatic transformation of the linguistic map of the world as local dialects spoken by the masses as well as classical languages like Sanskrit and Latin, which had been the privileged media of learning amongst scholars for centuries, gave way to select national languages adopted by regions to express their emerging national identities.

(ii) It has been estimated that nearly 6500 languages are still spoken in the world today. Nearly half of these are spoken by tiny communities and are in the process of becoming extinct already.

(iii) Ten major languages are mother tongues of more than half of world's population already. 

(iv) The changing language pattern of the globe in recent times has been the growth of bilingual ism or familiarity with at least two languages amongst a growing number of educated people across the globe.

(v) The English language has particularly emerged as the second adopted language with the growth of globalisation and the emergence of the internet. While the Chinese remain the biggest linguistic group in the world still, the number of people knowing English (about 10% of global population) is second and the number knowing English as second language is the highest.

(vi) Another major development amongst languages in the twentieth century under the impact of growing education and mass media has been the growing mixture between them. While English itself has adopted a number of new words from other languages including French and Hindi, the evolution of Hinglish or the spoken mixture of Hindi, Urdu and English amongst educated Indians is also noteworthy in this context.