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Most Studied Foreign Languages ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| neurosport Diglot Newbie United States diy-av.net Joined 5449 days ago 12 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Russian* Studies: French, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 32 30 January 2010 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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First i started studying Spanish because within my lifetime Latinos are projected to become the number 1 Ethnicity in USA ( where i live ) and especially in California i hear Spanish already as often as i do English.
Then i started studying German because i love industrial music like Rammstein and a lot of it is in German. Plus i love everything else German - like cars. Even my bathroom exhaust fan is made in Germany LOL, nuff said. Somewhere at that point i realized ( sorry for not capitalizing properly, i hate capital letters ) that i want to start studying more languages and i need a logical way to decide on which ? So my first 2 approaches were: 1 - To see which languages Wikipedia has most articles written in. 2 - To see various Wikipedia lists for number of first and second language speakers. But then i realized that those still weren't sufficiently good metrics. Because for example Chinese may be very useful but very hard to learn. Or Latin may not be spoken by anybody but is still incredibly useful to know. In other words these metrics couldn't tell me which languages i should actually undertake. Then i came across this table: Most Studied Languages in USA And i realized this was the information i was looking for all along. Problem is - this is only data for USA. And even though i live in USA and theoretically i could use this data directly ( in deciding what languages to study ) i am still very much interested in finding similar data for other parts of the globe, or for the world as a whole. So far i was unable to find such data. Also i would like to see what happens in the list past number 10. Does anybody have any info on this ? What are the most studied languages in Europe ? World ? Edited by neurosport on 30 January 2010 at 11:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5640 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes  Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 2 of 32 30 January 2010 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's a table with the languages spoken as second languages in the EU
(Non-European languages are, of course, excluded, couldn't find anything that included other languages) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GauchoBoaCepa Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5418 days ago 172 posts - 199 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 3 of 32 30 January 2010 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I love those tables with data related to languages...I've searched for it for a long time and suddenly you both have come up with that....thanks......interesting figures...I got disappointed at Spanish figures though.....and a bit surprised at Russian influence....ok, most countries belonged the former USRR and other East European countries but....
Mandarin and Arabic popularity has really grown in the US....nice... Edited by GauchoBoaCepa on 30 January 2010 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5432 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 4 of 32 30 January 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
It was interesting to see that English is not that predominant after all. French, German or Russian have about the same importance in many countries. Then, what about language learning in Brazil? Is English the most studied language as a second laguage? Is there any point in studying Spanish because of the neighbouring countries or is it considered too easy or too transparent? It would be interesting to compare language learning in Portugal and Brazil. The same mother tongue, but different adjacent countries and totally different number of people living there. Also, French seems to be important in Portugal; but can it really be popular in Brazil since there are very few French-speaking countries in South America and in the Caribbean? Edited by Impiegato on 30 January 2010 at 4:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ulmo Diglot Newbie Joined 6085 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 5 of 32 30 January 2010 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are no doubts concerning the most studied language in Brazil: it's, by far, English.
Even though it's the second most popular language, the study of Spanish is commonly left behind in here. People think they can already speak Spanish, what is seldomly really true. After English and Spanish, French, German and Italian come right behind. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| neurosport Diglot Newbie United States diy-av.net Joined 5449 days ago 12 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Russian* Studies: French, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 32 31 January 2010 at 2:32am | IP Logged | |||||
It is an important table, but not what i was asking for. I was asking for the most studied, as opposed to the most spoken languages. The two are very different, which was the point of my post. As another example in Ukraine most people know Ukrainian and Russian and few know English. Yet a lot (if not most) learn English, most (if not all) learn Ukrainian and few (if any) learn Russian. This is because Ukraine has relatively recently broken away from Russia (politically), has fallen into the sphere of influence of America, and is trying to mingle with Europe. So you see the two (spoken vs studied) are almost unrelated. When i lived in Kiev in the early 90's Russian was the only language spoken and if you spoke Ukrainian you were considered low-class villager. Now since Ukraine is independent everybody speaks Ukrainian and if you speak Russian you are a traitor. Meanwhile to prove that you're not a low-class villager today you have to know English. Edited by neurosport on 31 January 2010 at 2:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 32 31 January 2010 at 9:20am | IP Logged | |||||
There are two tables. From the second table you can pretty much infer which languages are studied in the different countries. If 30 % of the population of Sweden speak German it is because they have studied it. If 89 % speak English, it's because they have studied it. Edited by tractor on 31 January 2010 at 9:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6767 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 32 31 January 2010 at 9:33am | IP Logged | |||||
I hear that the Brazilian government has recently made moves to prioritize Spanish and is making it a required language for all students. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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