Linguistics statistics..........

[infamous]

Did you know that there are at least 6,912 living languages. And that figure doesn't take into consideration those languages which have since become extinct and, or have been forgotten about entirely................Infy

[infamous]

The five most common languages of the world, source: TIME Almanac 2001

#1........Mandarin Chinese: 885 million
#2........Spanish: 332 million
#3........English: 322 million
#4........Bengali: 189 million
#5........Hindi: 182 million

[Tormod]

Norwegian would not rank too well on that list...

[Boerseun]

Neither would Afrikaans, I guess...

But tell me, Infy, are those numbers for first-language speakers only? I'm sure many more people can understand English as a second language, and Hindi should have more people able to converse in it as well! Ron, how does the local languages in India stack up against each other?

Over here in SA, we have about 40 million people speaking plenty different languages (11 of them are official! - imagine the mess in government, where every single document must be available in all languages!) - but when they converse amongst each other, they normally talk in either English or Afrikaans, because a Zulu speaker simply can't understand a Venda or a Tswana speaker, for instance. How does this linguistic "tribalism" feature in India, the second most populous country in the world?

[Racoon]

Originally Posted by infamous

The five most common languages of the world, source: TIME Almanac 2001

#1........Mandarin Chinese: 885 million
#2........Spanish: 332 million
#3........English: 322 million
#4........Bengali: 189 million
#5........Hindi: 182 million

What about Arabic??

Spoken in: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Palestinian territories, Western Sahara (SADR), Yemen by a majority, and in many other countries, such as Israel and Iran, as a minority language; it is also the liturgical language of Islam.

Total speakers: Approximately 270 million (206 million according to Ethnologue, native speakers of all dialects 1998 est.); 323 million (population of Arab countries, CIA World Factbook 2006 est.), excluding Arab minorities in other countries and bilingual speakers

[infamous]

Originally Posted by Racoon

What about Arabic??

Actually Racoon, the figures I've posted were from TIME Almanac 2001, why Arabic is not listed within the top five languages, I have no answer. That question does beg for an answer my friend..................Infy

[infamous]

Here is a link to a more updated listing of popular world languages:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html

You'll noitice that Arabic is listed outside the top five languages here also............Infy

[Tarantism]

Originally Posted by infamous

Did you know that there are at least 6,912 living languages. And that figure doesn't take into consideration those languages which have since become extinct and, or have been forgotten about entirely................Infy

or the languages that i make up whenever i want

[Tarantism]

wow, i had absolutely no idea that spanish was more spoken than english! i suppose thats why there is such a push to get more spanish-speaking services in the united states. here in california, there is a spanish accompaniment to just about every english text there is, because i think that hispanic population is close to if not outwaying the white/european heritage here.

[edit: english is more spoken than spanish in the new poll, my mistake. still, my comments about california hold true. bye bye ]

[Tarantism]

there was probably so many mispellings there, im too lazy to fix it. sorry.