[AGL]World's most widely spoken languages

Sun May 7 02:02:23 EDT 2006

Thanks, Jon,
  That is a very interesting site. We (my Catholic high school) played Jesuit, Dallas, in football one year. They beat us 52 to 6 or something that dismal.
  When I traveled in Germany, Amsterdam and France I found the one place I landed where an English speaking person could not be found was Brussels. 
  I traveled in the mid-eighties and four airports in Europe had just had bombings which I heard about on the radio while in the NYC airport waiting to board the plane to Europe. The Brussels airport had teenage looking soldiers in camaflage carrying uzies. I very nearly got back on the next plane out. The plane was only half full on the way to Europe and packed to the gills two weeks later on the flight back to USA.
  Frances

Jon Ford <jonmfordster at hotmail.com> wrote:
  Frances-- It all depends on who you talk to and what their determiners of 
"widely spoken" are.
Check out the conflicting date below from a Jesuit school website

Jon

What are the world's most widely spoken languages?

This question is a very interesting one that has a rather complicated 
answer. Estimates of how many people speak a language are quite general and 
can vary considerably. For example, English estimates vary from 275 to 450 
million, Spanish from 150 to over 300 million, Hindi from 150 to 350 
million, and Russian from 150 to 180 million.

To further complicate matters, the definition of “speaker” can be vague. 
Some surveys of languages give information on native speakers only. Others 
count both native speakers and secondary speakers (those who use the 
language regularly or primarily even though it is not their native 
language).

Lastly, it is important to consider not only the population (number) of 
language speakers, but also the geographic distribution of these languages. 
Some languages have relatively large populations of native speakers but are 
used almost exclusively in a few countries. On the other hand, other 
languages have relatively small populations of native speakers but are used 
in many different countries as an official or national language.

The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) lists 
the following as the top languages by population:
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

1. Chinese* (937,132,000)
2. Spanish (332,000,000)
3. English (322,000,000)
4. Bengali (189,000,000)
5. Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
6. Arabic* (174,950,000)
7. Portuguese (170,000,000)
8. Russian (170,000,000)
9. Japanese (125,000,000)
10. German (98,000,000)
11. French* (79,572,000)

* The totals given for Chinese, Arabic, and French include more than one SIL 
variety. See chart for full details.

The following list is from Dr. Bernard Comrie’s article for the Encarta 
Encyclopedia (1998):
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

1. Mandarin Chinese (836 million)
2. Hindi (333 million)
3. Spanish (332 million)
4. English (322 million)
5. Bengali (189 million)
6. Arabic (186 million)
7. Russian (170 million)
8. Portuguese (170 million)
9. Japanese (125 million)
10. German (98 million)
11. French (72 million)

The following list is from George Weber’s article “Top Languages: The 
World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec 1997):
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

1. Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
2. English (330 million)
3. Spanish (300 million)
4. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
5. Arabic (200 million)
6. Bengali (185 million)
7. Portuguese (160 million)
8. Russian (160 million)
9. Japanese (125 million)
10. German (100 million)
11. Punjabi (90 million)
12. Javanese (80 million)
13. French (75 million)

However, in terms of secondary speakers, Weber submits the following list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

1. French (190 million)
2. English (150 million)
3. Russian (125 million)
4. Portuguese (28 million)
5. Arabic (21 million)
6. Spanish (20 million)
7. Chinese (20 million)
8. German (9 million)
9. Japanese (8 million)

Thus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker 
populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (265 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Arabic (221 million)
8. Portuguese (188 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. German (109 million)

The following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of 
countries where each is spoken. The number that follows is the total number 
of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):

1. English (115)
2. French (35)
3. Arabic (24)
4. Spanish (20)
5. Russian (16)
6. German (9)
7. Mandarin (5)
8. Portuguese (5)
9. Hindi/Urdu (2)
10. Bengali (1)
11. Japanese (1)

The number of countries includes core countries (where the language has full 
legal or official status), outer core countries (where the language has some 
legal or official status and is an influential minority language, such as 
English in India or French in Algeria), and fringe countries (where the 
language has no legal status, but is an influential minority language in 
trade, tourism, and the preferred foreign language of the young, such as 
English in Japan or French in Romania). For a complete breakdown of each 
and an accompanying chart, click here.

After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary 
speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major 
fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using 
the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following 
list of the world's ten most influential languages:
(number of points given in parentheses)

1. English (37)
2. French (23)
3. Spanish (20)
4. Russian (16)
5. Arabic (14)
6. Chinese (13)
7. German (12)
8. Japanese (10)
9. Portuguese (10)
10. Hindi/Urdu (9)

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