|
 |
Languages to cover 50%, 90% of all humans | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| slowlanglearner Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 3972 days ago 6 posts - 15 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 24 19 May 2014 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
|
If I wanted to be able to talk with 50%, 75%, 90% or even 99% of all humans, what languages would I need?
I have the following list (which appears realistic, but I don't know how precise or up-to-date it is: 1 mandarin   &n bsp;  1151 2 english-1000 3 spanish-500 4 hindi-490 5 russian-277 6 arabic-255 7 portugue  240 8 bengali &n bs p; 215 9 french  & nb sp; 200 10 malay,  175 11 german  166 12 japanese 111 13 farsi  110 14 urdu 104 15 punjabi  103 16 wu &n bsp;&n bsp; 90 17 vietnam  &nb sp; 86 18 javanese  85 19 tamil   ; 78 20 korean  &nbs p;  78 21 turkish  &nb sp; 75 22 telugu  &nbs p;  74 23 marathi  &nb sp; 72 24 italian  &nb sp; 62 25 thai 60 26 burmese  &nb sp; 56 27 cantonese 55 28 kannada  &nb sp; 47 29 gujarati  &n bsp;46 30 polish  &nbs p;  46 However, I wonder whether some aspiring 'pan-glott' should skip languages like Bengali, Gujarati, and Punjabi (some of the ground could be covered by Hindi), or Wu and Cantonese (if they speak Mandarin). I wonder what languages of the above could be left aside? Edited by slowlanglearner on 19 May 2014 at 5:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5102 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 2 of 24 19 May 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
First you need more time because We are about 7 000 000 000 people on earth. Suppose you will live another 100 years - that make 36 525 days or 52 596 000 minutes or 3 155 760 000 seconds - less than an half second by individu. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4753 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 24 20 May 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
|
This list is no good, because of different methodology applied:
Malay has either 77 million speakers (L1) or 220 million speakers (L1+L2), Thai has either 20 million speakers (L1) or 60 million speakers (L1+L2). You should learn languages of countries/cultures you're interested in. There's no point in learning, let's say Mandarin, if you don't like China or Chinese culture. Learning languages is neither astronomy nor collecting hobby, but a key to exploring other cultures. Edited by Medulin on 20 May 2014 at 11:16am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4338 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 24 20 May 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Well I don't like any culture particularly, in my opinion every culture is silly but I still like learning languages. Cultures are interesting but I'll never understand why people study Japanese because they like the Japanese culture. Why I replied to you was to say that of course there is a point to learning a language even if you don't particularly love the culture. I learn languages because I want to communicate with people whether it be oral or reading a book, (which by the way IS communication ;) ) and people from different parts of the world have different views of it which makes it interesting. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Illusion Newbie United States Joined 4409 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean | Message 5 of 24 20 May 2014 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
|
You might want to read Ginsburgh/Weber's Economics of Linguistics. They were
calculating similar things, though I think it was for communicating within the EU. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5215 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 24 21 May 2014 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
Otherwise referred to as culture. R. == 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6910 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 7 of 24 21 May 2014 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
According to your list, learning the top 6 will get you to 50% of the world population. I think any percentage above that starts to get unwieldy for most people. It's hard enough to learn ONE L2 to fluency, let alone FIVE L2. That said, I think it's a bad idea to learn languages in order to "talk to the most # of people", because you won't talk to all those people. No one will. I speak English fluently, but I haven't spoken to even one million of the English speakers, let alone all one billion of them. I doubt even Icelanders, of which there is only about 325,000, have all spoken to each other. And if you learn Icelandic, you could probably spend your entire life trying to speak to them all. The point is, pick a language based on interest and/or need. If you learn languages just to collect them to brag to your friends, then you will fail. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4887 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 24 21 May 2014 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||
|
There's a chart on in-foreign-language-demand-and-proficiency/">this page that shows how L1 and L2
languages are distributed by world population. The first thing is the obvious greying out of half the world's population. Who speak none of the other 25 languages listed on the other side. As everyone's said above, you've got to pick languages you yourself have an interest/need for. You've already got a great range of knowledge. What's your single biggest priority? If you could afford it, where would you travel to in the world? I reiterate the culture aspect. I spent 5 short months in China. I LOVED it despite of its many failings. My sister came over for a week and hated it. Whereas I couldn't wait to escape from Paris... Guess how long my recent foray into French has lasted because I felt it was the 'sensible' companion to my German?..I think the culture a language sits in is as important as the language itself in making an interesting and therefore realistic choice. There *are* various ways that people try to select languages to get certain types of variety although these are far more for fun than practical. [I don't mean to shout at this point- I seem to have a formatting problem]
You could use these as a tool to discover some other languages you know nothing about. Maybe something will capture your imagination through chance as much as 'ticking off' exercise. (A. 2 weeks :( ) Edited by yantai_scot on 21 May 2014 at 4:02pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2025 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
