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How many languages do you need to learn.. | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6205 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 9 of 60 23 January 2010 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got that if you learn the top 100 most widely-spoken native languages (according to the list on Wikipedia), you'll
know the native language of about 70% of the world's population. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6036 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 10 of 60 23 January 2010 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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The first 50-60% are easy, but to get up to 95% it would take many more languages... Edited by Sennin on 23 January 2010 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5830 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 11 of 60 23 January 2010 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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According to this
site, the top 30 languages would get you 60%, if you don't mind speaking in a shared second language rather than the person's native language. Sadly, they don't seem to have any information about less common languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6370 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 60 23 January 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just because I feel like starting up some trouble...
I'd argue against a lot of the statistics as far as being able to communicate with people goes. Like I showed before, 230+ languages would have to be learned to know the language of 90% of the world. But OuiJP said "if you want to communicate with:" Taking the link shared by Luai lashire, it seems that we should look at the situation a bit more closely. Mandarin is first, ok. Hindi is 2nd and Urdu 19th. Those two grouped together should be one. And from what I know of India, most people there speak English as a second/third/fourth language, so perhaps Hindi/Urdu wouldn't `have` to be learned. I'd probably add most of the speakers of Bengali (7th), Punjabi (11th), Telegu (15th), Marathi (16th), and Tamil (17th) to the number of people who can communicate in either Hindi/Urdu or English. Spanish is 3rd. Portuguese 6th. French 18th. Italian 20th. With just Spanish and French, all four of these languages should be mutually intelligible enough for communication purposes. This is still just going off of what my Indian friends have told me and from what I've read. Arabic is 5th, but many of the Arabic languages are not mutually intelligible, or intelligible at all. Then again, I don't know much about Arabic. Russian is 8th. There aren't any other Balto-Slavic languages on the top 20 list, but I'm sure that knowing Russian would make it easy to communicate with people who speak Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Polish, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, etc. Maybe not so much with the Baltic languages, but with the Slavic ones for sure. There's also most the people of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark who can speak English. Learn German, and Dutch/Afrikaans/the Nordic languages will be easier to understand or learn. Sure, you couldn't pass as a native in twenty languages if you just knew English, Spanish, French, Russian, and, say, Egyptian Arabic, but you could certainly communicate with A LOT of people - maybe 50% or more? And it would make learning other languages much easier due to more experience and more resources. Oh well, that's my long post for the day. Please feel free to correct me. I'd love to know if what I assume or think I know about the world isn't true. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 13 of 60 24 January 2010 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
When you narrow it down to these, the list starts to look like a lot of the postings in the thread "so, you want to learn 5...". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6370 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 60 24 January 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Ha, it does. But for different reasons. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zamenhof Diglot Newbie Israel zamenhof.co.il/engliRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5806 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* | Message 15 of 60 24 January 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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well.. i think your wont get such percentage
but you should obviously learn : English Spanish Chinese that's the best combination to reach out to as many people as possible.. That's while considering that most of the modern world including most of India and the middle east understands English on some level.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 16 of 60 24 January 2010 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
That makes sense by the numbers but (insert language here) just seems so interesting. ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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