On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:28:11 +0100, Thomas R. Koll <tomk32(a)gmx.de> wrote:
This site has some good data. These bits seem to be the most useful to us:
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)
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)
--
Michael Becker