The world of languages

There is a Babylonian tangle of almost 7,000 languages on earth, of which experts say almost half will die out by the end of the century. The United Nations has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The programme deals with the geopolitical dimension of languages that can cause conflicts (e.g. Catalonia, Crimean conflict) or power factors in the age of soft power (e.g. competition between English, French and Chinese on the African continent). [arte]