Languages of the World
What languages are most spoken in the world?
Including alternate (second language) as well as primary (mother-tongue) speakers, two languages reached approximately one billion (1,000,000,000) speakers by the end of the 20th century. These are Putonghua or "Mandarin" Chinese, official language of the most populous nation on earth, and English, now the most widely used and studied language of the world.
The title of "the most spoken language on earth" presently alternates between Chinese and English within each twenty-four hour cycle. When the sun is over the western Pacific, the most spoken language is Chinese. When the sun is over the Atlantic and China sleeps, the most spoken language is English.
It should be noted that the linguistic use of the term "Chinese" is potentially ambiguous. The so-called "dialects" of Wider Chinese, including "Mandarin" (originally North Chinese), Min, Hakka and Yue (Cantonese) are in fact related but separate languages, not readily interintelligible except in their written form. "Mandarin" - or rather Putonghua (= "commonly understood language") - is the official language of China, spoken and/or studied throughout the entire country. To avoid ambiguity therefore, the unqualified use of the linguistic term "Chinese" is best restricted to Putonghua, in contrast to "Wider Chinese" as a cover-term for the net of closely related languages in China.
The next category of language, in terms of demographic importance, includes two "pairs" of languages with combined totals of more than half a billion (500,000,000) speakers. The first of these comprises Hindi+ Urdu, which are inter-intelligible when spoken in spite of their different scripts. If allowance is made for the comprehension of spoken Hindi and Urdu by speakers of the closely related Panjabi language, and of other languages in the Indic set, as well as for the widespread passive understanding of Hindi among speakers of Dravidian languages, then Hindi+ Urdu has its place in the same category as Chinese and English, as a language with around one billion "hearers".
The second pair of languages with over half a billion speakers is composed of Spanish+ Portuguese. These two languages are largely inter-interintelligible when written, and when Spanish is spoken in a Portuguese-speaking environment, although Portuguese is less easily understood by speakers of Spanish. Spanish is also accesible with relative ease to speakers of the other Romance languages of Europe.
Three more languages rise above the total of two hundred million (200,000,000) speakers each, these being Russian, Bengali and Arabic. Russian is largely or partially interintelligible to speakers of several other Slavic languages, especially Belorussian and Ukrainian. Bengali and Arabic, on the other hand, are less unified within themselves, and there are sometimes difficulties of comprehension among different spoken varieties of each of these two languages..
In the category of megalanguages, with one hundred million or more (100,000,000) speakers each, are four further languages or pairs of languages: Japanese and Malay+Indonesian in Asia and the Pacific, German in Europe, and French throughout the world. French is notable for several reasons. It is the only language apart from English with important representation in all the continents of the world. It is the official language of more nation-states than any other language, apart from English, and has unique prestige as the world's second "global" language, in spite of its relatively modest number of primary or "native" speakers (around 60,000,000, concentrated largely in western Europe and Quebec).
The above 12 megalanguages form part of a wider category of over 80 macrolanguages, comprising all those languages spoken by an estimated total of over 10 million primary and alternate speakers each. These languages are set out below in the Linguasphere Table of the World's Major Languages, which also presents the important category of 26 arterial languages, being all those languages accessible to at least 1% of the world's total population in the year 1999/2000.
This table, of which an updated version is included in the Linguasphere Register, reveals the striking fact that almost half (12 out of 26) of these arterial languages are classified within only three closely related groups of Asian or European languages.
The Linguasphere Table of the World's Major Languages
This table is based on the methodology of the
Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities.
The Linguasphere Table of the World's Major Languages
What languages are in danger?
It can be argued that all the languages on planet Earth are endangered, even English and Chinese, since they are spoken only on a tiny speck of dust in a seemingly unending universe.
On the other hand, tiny populations in different parts of the world are often remarkably robust in fighting for the survival of an ancestral language perceived to be endangered.
Among the extraneous factors involved in the question of linguistic survival is the way in which the language of a tiny self-sufficient community may simply be destroyed with all its speakers by invaders in the search of living-space or other economic advantage. The fate of many small peoples and languages was thus sealed by the European conquest of North and South America during the last half millennium, just as the demise of many speech communities in Australia was among the numerous brutal episodes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The viability of any form of spoken or written language is less a question of its numbers of speakers, provided these continue to include children, as of its overall environment geographic and social, linguistic and educational, medical and nutritional, cultural and political, religious and military, economic and technological.
The majority of languages which have become extinct in recent centuries, or which are in danger of becoming extinct early in the next, are languages spoken or formerly spoken by peoples whose original way of life has been destroyed or drastically undermined, primarily semi-nomadic and/or hunting, gathering and fishing communities. During the 20th century, Australia has the greatest hecatomb of such overwhelmed communities and their languages, followed by Amazonia and North America, the Arctic and parts of Africa.
The adoption by hunting and gathering communities, or by their scattered descendants, of a form of the language of the "conquerors" of their traditional environment is illustrated by the Pygmy or "Twa" populations of Africa or by the "Agta" groups in the Philippines (submerged since pre-colonial times by largely Bantu-speaking or Austronesian-speaking agriculturalists). In the era of colonial expansion, the linguistic and cultural destruction or absorption of many hunting and gathering communities in the Americas, the Eurasian Arctic and Australasia has led to their descendants now speaking varieties of European languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Russian, but especially forms of English and creolised English. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the strongest warnings about languages in peril should have come from scholars working in Alaska, Amazonia and Australia.
Languages still spoken by hunting and gathering or proto-agricultural groups today are typically spoken by a few hundred people, and presumably always have been. The most important area of their survival today is the island of New Guinea, the unique linguistic complexity of which may be all that remains of a lost world - the Paleolinguasphere - which was far more linguistically and culturally diverse than even to-day. The linguistic survival of any one such fragile community depends quite simply on its social and economic survival. It may be broken up or destroyed, either by the traditional dangers of war or famine or disease or environmental disaster, or by the more recent dangers of encroaching "development". Short of confining their speakers to an anthropological "reserve", however, and denying their children access to the benefits other children enjoy, there seems little that can be done to arrest the process of change, apart from opposing the more rapine aspects of development and from recording as much of their present speech and heritage as possible.
Alongside the primary social protection and economic support of members of endangered or dying communities, a major cultural priority is to organise the extensive video-taping of speakers of languages in immediate peril, and the sub-titling of such video-recordings in an appropriate international language. A worldwide archive of this endangered heritage, perhaps under the aegis of a re-organised UNESCO, would be a valuable addition to the permanent record of humankind. It would also provide a practical base for reviving a subsequently extinct language, if the descendants of its last speakers one day had the desire and economic security to do so.
LEXICON OF TERMS
alternate
(as in alternate language or "voice") see primary versus alternate
arterial languages
all those outer languages which are each understood by at least 1% of the world's total population and which therefore play a major role in the circulation of speech within the linguasphere
macro-language
a language spoken by an estimated total of over 10 million primary and alternate speakers each
mega-language
a language with an estimated total of primary (mother-tongue) and moderately competent alternate (second-language) speakers in excess of 100 million.
paleo-linguasphere
the linguasphere, from the beginnings of human speech until the invention of writing (accounting for over 90% of the development of language through time)
primary (versus alternate)
first-language or mother-tongue, as opposed to second language
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