Most Spoken Languages

Since I was an English teacher for many years and truly like the English language for all its great and terrible aspects, you get language mail today. Go ahead and use a four letter word in any language if you want, but I am going to write about English and other languages anyway. Every speaker of a language thinks his or her language is the "best one", so that shows it is ridiculous to say one language has a quality higher than another. All languages foster good communication. Ergo, they are all equal as to quality.

Usage is another thing. More of the world speaks Chinese than any other language, over 1.2 billion people in fact (most of them in China itself). English is the second most spoken with 480 million speakers spread all throughout the world. The top two represent languages that are the good examples of why so many people speak a certain language. Chinese being spoken because the population of the countries in which it is native is so large. In the case of English, it is because English has been spread worldwide through military, social, cultural and economic imperialism.

There will always be many Chinese speakers, given the huge Chinese population. But English may one day suffer the ignominy of French, once the dominant language of the west and the language of the courts but now almost a footnote. The decline of the nation of France in nearly ever way since the 1800's has pushed it down to the 14th most spoken language in the world (only 72 million people world-wide use it as their dominant language). It may be trendy for parents in a number of countries to want their kids to speak French because it they think of it as the "best language", but it is virtually useless because France itself is a nation with an atavistic culture and a dying language that one day may wind up with the same number of speakers as those who speak dead language Latin.

The third most spoken language is Spanish, with 332 million people who use it as a primary language.. This is the result of the Spanish colonialism that took place from the 1500's until late in the 18th century, and because Spanish speaking people also have a very high birthrate. In fourth place is Arabic with 235 million speakers. There is no truth to the rumor that at least half of them want to blow up the non Arab speakers with explosive devices.

Two Indian languages, Bengali (189 million speakers) and Hindu (182 million) rank fifth and sixth. Russian is in 7th place with 180 million speakersOne language that may never grow but that is widely spoken is Japanese. It is the ninth most spoken with 125 million but is almost entirely spoken within Japan. The Japanese don't like to share their language and none wants to capture it. And the least spoken language...is something called Ter Sami. Only 2 million people who live along the Ural mountains in Russia use that one.

I doubt if we need to learn that one.