Since the winter issue of the ACTFL Newsletter editor, Geoffrey Kingscott. The article appeared under appeared reporting in a brief paragraph a ranking of the rubric "Geolinguistics." We decided to reprint the the world's "ten most influential languages," we have article in its entirety, despite its length, because its den- repeatedly seen the same paragraph appear in state sity and its complexity make it difficult to summarize or and local foreign language newsletters. While the para- extract other than in the very brief form we have all graph cites some criteria used in the ranking, it has seen, as previously indicated. We hope you will find it left us curious about the original article. After much interesting as well as be warned away from any sense searching we were able to find the British publication of security or smugness about the second place of Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec. 1997) and the specific French after English. article reprinted here, with the kind permission of the TOP LANGUAGES
the ne hardly risks controversy with the statement ments make sense only if one looks at the world-wide that today English was a more influential lan- picture, not just parochial bits of it. Word's Oguage world-wide than Yanomami. To a child's What does 'influential' mean in this context? Each 10 Most question why that should be language carries considerable cul- so, the well-informed paren- tural, social, historical and psycho- Influential tal brush-off would be that number of logical baggage. As anyone who has English had hundreds of mil- primary speakers ever had to learn a foreign language Languages (native or home speakers) lions of speakers while 1 knows, doing so in many ways al- Yanomami could with diffi- ters one's attitudes and world view. socio- number of culty scratch together literary 6 2 secondary To what extent, in what form and how by 16,000. Really difficult and prestige speakers deeply such changes actually mani- well-informed off-spring could fest themselves in the individual George Weber economic number and then point out that in this power of learner depends on many factors, population countries case, Chinese would be the of countries the circumstances that have led to using the using the most important language of language 5 3 the decision to learn the foreign lan- the world. At this point, the language guage, the learner's character, intel- experienced parent would 4 ligence, education and background. send the brat off to annoy number of major fields Theories on this subject need not someone else. (science, diplomacy, etc) detain us here. The very discovery using the language Every language, including internationally that one can actually express the Yanomami, is the most im- same thing in different words or look portant language of the world FIG. 1. Factors that make a language influential at something in totally different ways - to its speakers. Rather than alone widens many a mental hori- 'important' we shall here, there- zon. But not all. There are polyglot fanatics and it would fore, use the world 'influential' be naive to claim that knowing a foreign language nec- number of 1. English 37 points in its stead. Chinese is a very essarily reduces aggression and the risk of war. It helps points 2. French 23 points 40 3. Spanish 20 points influential language, no doubt if other conditions are right, but more than linguistic skill 4. Russian 16 points about it, but is it more so than is needed to bring that about. Leaders in what used to 5. Arabic 14 points English? Clearly not. The num- be Yugoslavia spouting murderous sentiments in near- 35 6. Chinese 13 points 7. German 12 points ber of speakers is relevant but perfect English provide sufficient warning of exagger- 30 8. Japanese 10 points quite insufficient for a meaning- ated hopes in this respect. 9. Portuguese 10 points ful ranking of languages in or- No people are more acutely conscious of the long- 10. Hindi/Urdu 9 points 25 der of current world-wide influ- term influence that knowledge of another language can ence, the stress being on the have on its learners than the French. No other lan- 20 word 'world-wide'. There are guage is promoted so aggressively all over the world. many other factors to be taken The French clearly understand that their language is 15 into account and this is what we the main carrier of la civilisation française. Speakers of 10 shall attempt to do in the fol- most other major languages think along similar lines. lowing. However, two major civilisations, the Chinese and to a 5 Ranking the world's current lesser extent the Japanese, actually take the opposite top languages is not just an idle attitude. They consider their civilisations so manifestly pastime. The world is growing superior that pressing their language on foreigners was HJW closer and this historical devel- really doing them too much honour. They also tend to Arabic French English opment is matched by large- think their languages far too complex to be mastered Spanish Russian German Chinese Japanese Hindi/Urdu scale linguistic adjustments, the by clumsy strangers, although they are far too polite to Portuguese most dramatic of which being say so openly. FIG. 2. The real the explosive growth of the English language. It does Languages expand and shrink on the back of the matter how major languages stand and evolve in rela- social, cultural, military, scientific, technological, strength of the top tion to each other. Like the weather, many develop- organisational and other strengths and weaknesses of ten languages
22 AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) their speakers. What is today called, over-simplistically lish quickly but the majority take years before even and geographically incorrectly. 'The West' dominates the preliminary figures come out and by the time they do, world in countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways. While they are long out of date. In this is often denied for reasons of self-respect, even very large and populous stand-offish China has for half a century embraced an countries such as India and 450 ideology of Western origin. With the introduction of China, the sheer size and Western technologies Western ideas slip in quietly, along variety to be counted is stag- in million 400 with Western attitudes and languages. That these ef- gering. The Indian Census people 350 fects can be absorbed without abandoning one's cul- is indeed one of the statisti- 1200 tural identity has been shown with huge success by the cal marvels of this world. 1150 300 Japanese and Koreans. Not all cultures and languages Even the best censuses
AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) 23 sion to the nearest 100 speakers is magically pro- Foreign students are a tiny minority but influen- jected by UNESCO: it claims tial out of all proportion to their numbers. They tend that there are 285,077,900 to belong to the most highly educated social strata in million Indo-European (worldwide) primary speakers of Russian of their own countries. As political, business, social people Bengali, English, French, German, Hindi/Urdu, Italian, Marathi, Panjabi, and 1,077,548,100 of Chi- and cultural leaders to come they are a major factor Persian, Portuguese, Russian, the nese. Figure 3 shows the in spreading the acceptability and social prestige of 2000 Scandinavian langauges, Spanish, etc Sino-Tibetan (East Asia) extent to which world-wide a foreign language. 1800 Burmese, Chinese, Thai, Tibetan, etc estimates can in fact differ if Immigrants are people who have moved to an- Niger-Congo (Africa) Ful, Yoruba, etc. the streamlining is removed other country to live there. They often learn the host 1600 Afro-Asiatic (Africa, Middle East) that is routinely carried out by country's language in a haphazard way, usually while Amharic, Arabic, Hebrew, Somali, etc 1400 Austronesian (Pacific, Madagascar) international agencies. En- trying to hold down a job and make ends meet. Their Indonesian/Malay, Javanese, glish has an uncertainty of status in the host country is, at least initially, quite 1200 Malagasy, Tagalog, Polynesian/ Melanesian/Micronesian well over 150,000,000. The low. Only the second generation learns to speak languages, etc much over-quoted Churchill the local language with any fluency. The various 1000 Dravidian (southern India) Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, quote regarding statistics nationalities and linguistic groups tend to differ enor- 800 Telugu, etc comes to mind but I shall re- mously in the way they adapt to their new home- Altaic (central Asia) Azerbaijani, MongoLian, Turkish, sist the temptation. land. Some groups rapidly dissolve into the host 600 Uzbek, etc What prevents the pub- population, leaving barely a trace after a few gen- Austro-Asiatic (Indochina) 400 Khmer, Vietnamese, etc lished figures from being to- erations while others cling to the ancestral way and tally useless (and turning this language for many generations, using the host lan- 200 article into a complete waste guage only for dealings with the outside world. Im- 100 of valuable paper) is the fact migrant language in some countries can loom large that all major languages carry in statistics but their influence on the host language HJW very roughly similar margins is usually small. For example, there are sizeable of uncertainty. In other Chinese, Korean, Pakistani and Indian immigrant words, they can still be com- communities in Canada and the USA. They speak Altaic family Altaic pared and ranked with a fair their own languages at home but use English for their Korean (isolate) Dravidian family Afro-Asiatic family
Japanese (isolate) degree of confidence. The outward contacts. The existence of such communi- Sino-Tibetan family Sino-Tibetan Niger-Congo family Austronesian family Austro-Asiatic family
Indo-European family figures on which this article ties does not make their languages international. The is based are drawn from ref- Spanish of Latin American immigrants is a different FIG. 5. Number of erence works a few years old case. It is spoken more and more widely in the USA primary speakers by now and collected a few years earlier still. In view and the controversies around its use in US schools of all that has been said here so far, the reader show just how influential it has become. Whether it language family will understand that this matters little. The abso- will successfully establish itself as second language lute figures will have increased since then but that besides English in the USA only time will tell. The FIG. 6A. Number of will not affect the ranking of the ten most influen- chances of this happening appear good. secondary speakers tial languages. National minorities are yet another group of "for- If the number of primary eign" language speakers, although foreign here is a 200 1.French 190 million speakers of any language is misnomer. Members of linguistic minorities who do 2.English 150 million 175 3.Russian 125 million highly uncertain, the number of not speak the majority language often find their ca- 4.Portuguese 28 million secondary speakers is pure reer, business, social and general prospects curtailed 150 5.Arabic 21 million guesswork. I have included Fig. if not crippled altogether. The influence of minority 6.Spanish 20 million 125 7.Chinese 20 million 6 (the numbers of which are languages of this type on the majority language is 8.German 9 million drawn from a different source to usually small but it can add up over the centuries. 9.Japanese 8 million 100 those of the others, see the It is no coincidence that of the world's top ten acknowledgements at the end) languages only two do not function as lingua fran- 75 more for the sake of complete- cas. The two exceptions are Chinese and Japanese; 50 ness. What is fairly certain is that their difficult and custom-tailored systems of writing in relation to its number of pri- and the fact that both are used by essentially 25 mary speakers, French has the monoglot societies in sharply limited if large geo- ? most and Chinese the fewest graphical areas has prevented them from becoming HJW secondary speakers. the common language of a wider area. Hindi and Despite the dearth of even Urdu suffer from the same limitations but their home
Arabic
French semi-reliable data on the num- base, the Indian subcontinent, is highly polyglot. The
English
Spanish
Russian
Chinese German
Japanese
Hindi/Urdu Portuguese ber of secondary speakers, their same can be said of the former Soviet Union where ? number is such an important fac- Russian, though often with a marked lack of enthu- 50% tor in establishing the degree of siasm, is willy-nilly used as lingua franca. Looking 100% influence exercised by a major at the languages shown in Fig. 2 it can be seen that
150% language that we have to discuss the higher a language has climbed up the ranking briefly at least three groups of pole, the more important it is as lingua franca in its 200% them. Each brings a different area. weight onto the scale and the All major languages today are growing, in influ- FIG. 6B. Percentage of three would have to be treated differently in any ence as well as in numbers of speakers. The higher proper statistical analysis - if the figures were reli- up a language is on the ranking pole the faster its secondary in relation able enough for one. growth. Apart from the natural population increase to primary speakers
24 AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) everywhere, this growth takes place at the expense Key to Figs. 7-10 of the smaller, local lan- fringe countries guages. Hundreds if not thou- countries in which the language has no legal sands, of smaller languages status whatever and is understood or spoken are being pushed slowly out number of only by a (usually tiny but often influential) of the way. The speakers of countries 120 fringe outer core core total minority as the language of trade and tourism as some languages have seen 1. English 82 24 9 115 110 the influence of their own 2. French 12 18 5 35 well as the preferred foreign language, especially 100 checked by one of the ten top 3. Arabic 4 2 18 24 of the young. 90 4. Spanish 1 - 19 20 Examples: English in Japan, French in Romania languages and they profess 80 5. Russian 11 4 1 16 70 6. German 5 1 3 9 outer core countries their fear of the threatening domination - while at the same 60 7. Portuguese - 2 3 5 countries in which the language has some form 50 8. Chinese - 2 3 5 time their language is in turn 40 9. Hindi/Urdu - - 2 2 of legal or official status (variously described as driving smaller local lan- 30 10. Japanese - - 1 1 auxiliary, associated, or recognised language, guages towards extinction. 20 etc) and where it is the language of a more or Few even notice the irony of 10 less sizeable but always influential minority. this and loud are the com- HJW Examples: English in India, French in Algeria plaints about linguistic and Arabic French English Spanish Russian German core countries cultural expansionism. Ex- Chinese Japanese Hindi/Urdu countries in which the language enjoys full legal pansionism is what others do Portuguese and official status (at least de facto) and where it to you that you cannot do to is the normal language of communication, its them but would if you could. FIG. 7. Number of speakers a majority or at least substantial In relative terms the picture among the top ten countries using the minority. languages is not static but one of slow, steady trends. language Examples: Japanese in Japan, Spanish in Spain, Fig 13 shows in very broad terms the dynamics of English and French in Canada life at the top over the last 500 years. Let us now look at the top ten languages, one by • Included in the count have been independent coun- one. tries with a population of more than one million. English is the most in million Hong Kong, Puerto Rico and Gaza with the West obvious example of a people Bank, though not independent, have also been language on the way up. 5000 included. It has survived the fall of 4800 • Countries with more than one language to be counted 4600 the British Empire with- 4400 fringe outer core core total have been included in full under each language. For out even slowing down, 4200 1. English 3114 1408 366 4888 example, Canada has been counted with its full it has now gone beyond 4000 2. Chinese - 8 1178 1186 population and GNP under both the English and the 3800 3. Hindi/Urdu - - 957 957 being the language of 4. French 286 150 107 543 French headings. 3600 the world's only remain- 5. Spanish 250 - 293 543 • South Africa is treated as one country, the pseudo- 3400 6. Arabic 186 6 231 423 independent Bantustans being disregarded. ing superpower (which 3200 7. Russian 81 68 148 297 • The successor states to ex-Yugoslavia have been in the long run would be 3000 8. Portuguese - 25 165 190 a liability), becoming the 2800 9. Japanese - - 123 123 entirely diregarded; the situation there is far too 2600 10. German 9 10 93 112 complex and unpredictable for inclusion. first truly world-wide lin- 2400 • Mainland China/Taiwan, Czechia/Slovakia, Ethopia/ gua franca. Interna- 2200 Eritrea, North Korea/South Korea have each been tional English has be- 2000 counted as separate countries. come independent of 1800 1600 any one English-speak- The core countries: 1400 ing country, even the 1200 English (9): Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, USA. A Korean manu- 1000 Jamaica, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and facturer in an Athens 800 Tobago, USA hotel meeting the Brazil- 600 French (5): Belgium, Canada, France, Haiti, Switzer- ian buyer of a Swiss- 400 200 land based conglomerate will Arabic (17): Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, not only negotiate but Libya, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman,
order dinner from his Arabic French English
Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Spanish Russian German Chinese
room service in English. Japanese Emirates, Yemen Hindi/Urdu Portuguese Spanish (19): Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, There may not be a Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, single native English Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, speaker in the hotel, but all non-locals staying there FIG. 8. Population of Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, communicate with each other in English - as a mat- countries using the Venezuela ter of course. From a certain level upwards, in busi- language Russian (1): Russia ness, sport, politics, and many other fields, a knowl- German (3): Austria, Germany, Switzerland edge of English has become not a matter of pres- Portuguese (2): Brazil, Portugal tige but of necessity. The level at which this occurs Chinese (3): China, Hong Kong, Taiwan Hindi/Urdu (2): India, Pakistan is moving ever downwards. Japanese (1): Japan In science and technology the grip of English is complete. With growing computer sophistication it
AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) 25 is becoming easier to put even the most awkward lan- logical forces at work. English is seen more and more guages and script on screen but that does not alter widely as the language of world trade, of economic the big picture. The Chinese trader, scientist, manu- progress, of science and technology, the main window to facturer who wants to talk to his the world and not just because of the Internet which of 40% foreign contacts is not helped course it dominates. much by even the most care- French was, until a century ago, in a similar position 30% fully presented Chinese char- to that of English. Nobody could pass for educated with- 20% acters on his screen. He has out the ability to speak French. However, French domi- 10% to tell his non-Chinese contacts nance was never so complete as its rival's is now for the in English. simple reason that 100 years ago large parts of the world HJW It is an open question were not yet connected to the rest as they are all today. Arabic
French whether there is room for more In Mongolia it was sufficient to speak Mongolian, in Mada- English Spanish Russian German Chinese Japanese
Hindi/Urdu than one global lingua franca. gascar Mala- Portuguese I doubt it and so does, it seems, gasy could the famous "market". There is get you any- global FIG. 9. Percentage of an overwhelming interest in learning English practi- where. English population in core cally everywhere in the world. Geography and his- Globalisation inter- French countries not tory has made Mongolia one of the most landlocked had not been continental speaking the and isolated countries in the world until recently, iso- heard of Spanish language lated especially from the West and from Western lan- then. Russian guages. Yet when the country opened itself up a few French Arabic years ago, the change was signalled at once by has suffered Portuguese continental signposting the capital's airport in English. Barely a decline in German noticed by English-speaking people, an enormous its world-wide regional Hindi/Urdu, Malay/Indonesian boom of learning English has developed all over the influence Swahili, Turkish world, a boom that is not matched by a similar run on above all Hausa, Ful other languages. There is not a small city in Brazil when mea- Quechua, Tok Pisin, Bislama that does not boast at least two schools of English. sured against etc. Even in countries with strong cultural links to France English. It local in Papu-Niugini there are lingua francas with just a few dozen speakers: the young want to learn English, not French. In Cam- has more or (when some neighbouring villages with bodia the French government suffered a painful ex- less held its totally different home languages perience when the young spurned the offers of the position need a common language to communicate) Alliance Française, preferring instead to sign up with against other ∇ anyone who major lan- HJW offered En- guages but FIG. 11. A hierarchy of lingua francas in 100 million glish against En- US Dollars courses, glish, the situ- 20000 fringe outer core core total 19000 however du- ation is glum. French still has a base in many parts of 1. English 11160 715 7310 19185 18000 bious. In Africa, although the position is crumbling as recent events 2. Spanish 5445 - 915 6360 17000 3. French 1610 60 2020 3690 German- in Rwanda and Zaire-Congo have shown. It also still 16000 4. Japanese - - 3140 3140 speaking enjoys considerable sympathy in Latin America where 15000 5. German 100 155 2790 3045 14000 6. Russian 280 325 855 1460 Switzerland common Latin roots and a certain distaste for English- 13000 7. Chinese - 100 565 665 school chil- speaking gringos can still be found. International En- 12000 8. Arabic 40 50 380 470 dren must glish is advancing there but it is still seen more as the 9. Portuguese - 5 455 460 11000 learn French language of the USA rather than as a politically neutral 10000 10. Hindi/Urdu - - 340 340 9000 and in means of international communication. In Asia French 8000 French- has lost virtually all its ground to English, even in Viet- 7000 speaking nam where it is the nostalgic language of an older gen- 6000 Switzerland eration. French has a narrow base on which to build its 5000 German. claim as a world language: it is a major language in France 4000 3000 They do so alone and a minority language in Canada, Belgium and 2000 for political Switzerland. The strength of French in international fields, 1000 reasons, the especially diplomacy, is also slowly eroding away. Any-
HJW mutual intelli- body who watches TV can see this erosion taking place gibility is before his or her very eyes: more and more international Arabic French English seen as im- conferences replace French with English country tags Spanish Russian German Chinese Japanese Hindi/Urdu
Portuguese portant in a on delegates' tables. In far away places, from Albania to multi-lingual Chechenia and Georgia - places where English is still country. The very much a foreign language - demonstrators can be FIG. 10. Gross kids do not agree with their elders; surveys have shown seen waving posters in English. They know what lan- national product that they would all very much prefer to learn English. guage to use to catch the international news media. (GNP) of countries The French are rightly pained by this situation. Be- Despite a clear downward trend relative to English, using the language sides a certain amount of fashionability behind the French remains the world's second most influential lan- English boom, there are solid economic and psycho- guage. Its prestige remains extremely high, not least
26 AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) thanks to the tireless efforts and the vast sums spent succeeds. To tell the Chinese that their language by the French government, but also by the pride taken was fiendishly difficult and practically impossible to in their language by practically all French people. In learn, cheers up their whole day. Everybody may Hong Kong I once talked to a taxi driver and congratu- feel proud to have mastered lated him on his excellent English. He said that he something that is too complex could not do without English on his job but that he now for most others. The Chinese western eastern Middle India Mediterranean East wanted to learn French even if he had little practical have elevated this feeling into a use for it. He wanted to learn it for its social prestige. national art form. A foreigner SUMERIAN 1000 PHOENICIAN SANSKRIT The number two position of French in the league who speaks or (worse still) writes BC GREEK AKKADIAN table of the ten most influential languages is not so excellent Chinese is regarded much endangered by the top language (which cannot with grave suspicion. Foreign 500 GREEK BC ARAMAIC be overtaken again in the foreseeable course of events) visitors to China, diplomats as LATIN GREEK as by Spanish. Coming up quietly from behind it is well as businessmen, have been 0 spreading rapidly in the USA and may expand further known to pretend to a far worse 500 ARABIC afield yet. Latin America is no longer an economically knowledge of the language than ∇ AD depressing and often depressed area, no longer the they actually possessed. Not backyard of the USA. With growing self-confidence, unlike the Japanese, the Chi- despite setbacks, Latin America will boost the value of nese prefer to deal with foreigners in English. FIG. 12. Historical Spanish (and with it that of its closely related Portu- Despite its high number of native speakers, Chi- lingua francas guese in Brazil) on the world's linguistic marketplace. nese is not an internationally influential language. Russian has been held hostage by an ideology for Its use is concentrated in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, 70 years and throughout the empire the language was Singapore and widespread communities all over the imposed on subject people by brute force. The situa- world, especially large ones in Southeast Asia. With tion has changed dramatically since the early 1990s its continent-sized home base it seems sufficient but Russian will take some time to recover any popu- unto itself. Chinese has been the historical lan- larity outside Russia proper. For many years the newly guage of learning in much of the Far East and has independent parts of the former Soviet Union were been a major influence in the past on the Korean, busily shaking off Russian influence and trying to avoid Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and some other people. the use of the Russian language. It turned out rather Its cultural influence has declined sharply over the more difficult than they had imagined. For many Rus- past few hundred years but one gets the impres- sian was the only common language and they had no sion that the Chinese at home have choice but to use it. The situation is still confused and not noticed or do not care. will take decades if not generations to settle down. German has suffered the wild- last last last One hesitates to hazard a guess but the chances are est gyrations of all major languages 500 years 100 years 10 years that Russian will remain among the top ten languages. in the level of its influence. Enter- English An interesting development is the struggle for lin- ing the 20th century as the major guistic dominance within the former Soviet Union and language of science and technol- French eastern Europe between German and English. Here ogy, it suffered a setback when is a situation where linguistic characteristics and not Germany lost World War I only to Spanish historical or political forces may actually make a differ- recover most of its position in the ence. German is a difficult language to learn, its three 1920s. Until the 1930s, students Russian genders alone see to that, English is much easier ini- of chemistry in the USA had to have tially. The chances are fairly even but my money would a working knowledge of German. Arabic be on English as the eventual winner - but I would not At that time the language was also bet a large amount. exceptionally popular in Japan. It Chinese Arabic is the only language apart from English and never recovered its old prestige af- French that is used in an international 'field'. It is the ter the catastrophic decline suffered German language of Islam and as such used in countless in the wake of World War II, when Koranic schools between Morocco and Indonesia. It it also lost most of its secondary Japanese is also the only major international linguistic stream of speakers in Eastern Europe. It has influence that is quite independent of the West and as a chance today to restore a little of Portuguese such is little noticed or appreciated there. its lost prestige and influence there
Chinese is a language whose speakers are notice- and in the former Soviet Union. Hindi/Urdu ably disinterested in spreading its use outside their own German has to face stiff competi- people. Although Chinese is not really one but several tion from English and the result will languages held together by a common script, we shall remain open for some time yet. disregard such finer distinctions here and call all lan- Portuguese today means above all Brazil. The guages (usually and misleadingly called dialects) Chi- language could hitch its wagon to the advance of FIG. 13. The historical nese. It is a tenet of the language business that in Spanish in the wake of Latin American economic dimension order to penetrate a market you have to know its lan- progress. Despite some ups and downs, that wagon guage. This may apply to most markets but China is is well on the way and Portuguese should be able different. Like any other people, the Chinese appreci- to increase its world-wide influence. The Brazilians ate it if a foreigner makes the effort to learn their lan- seem so keen to learn English, however, that one guage, but they do not appreciate it if the foreigner may almost speak of a 'Chinese situation' develop-
AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999) 27 ing, i.e. with Brazilians preferring to negotiate with tributed in however small a measure to foreigners in English. Only the future will show the destruction of such delightful inno- how this situation develops. cence. May The sister lan- Urdu with its po- guages of Hindi and etic symposia in million 1. Latin 1,950 million 2. Chinese 1,100 million Urdu, like all lan- and literary number of 1. Latin 172 languages people 2. Cyrillic 37 languages 2000 3. Arabic 550 million languages guages in the top organisations 3. Arabic 22 languages 4. Devanagari 440 million 180 1900 5. Cyrillic 330 million ten group, have in- become ever 4. Devanagari 20 languages 6. Bengali 210 million 170 5. Bengali 7 languages 1800 creased in absolute more interna- 7. Japanese 123 million 6. Chinese 2 languages numbers of native tional. The world 160 7. Japanese 1 language 1700 8. Panjabi 90 million 9. Korean 70 million speakers and in the would be a bet- 150 8. Panjabi 1 language 1600 10. [others] 450 million 9. Korean 1 language spread of their influ- ter place if all ex- 140 10. [others] (19 scripts) 1500 [others] ence within India, pansion was sums up systems of writing with 130 [others] 1400 less than 70 million but more than Pakistan respec- through such sums up systems of writing 120 200,000 primary speakers each tively. The two lan- charming used for languages with less 1300 than 70 million but more than (the number of primary speakers 110 guages are local means. 200,000 primary speakers each 1200 in all languages using the system of writing is given in parentheses variants of the © George 100 (the number of languages, 1100 in million): same language. Weber, if more than one, is given in 90 parentheses): 1000 Amharic (44.5), Armenian (4.5), Hindi is written in Switzerland Amharic (7), Armenian, Burmese (37), Georgian (4), the Devanagari 1997 80 900 Greek (11), Gujarati (36), Hebrew (3.2), Burmese (4), Georgian, Greek, Kannada (32), Khmer (8), Laotian (9), script in India, Urdu 70 Gujarati (2), Hebrew (2), Kannada 800 Malayalam (30), Maldivian (0.2), with Arabic script in (2), Khmer, Laotian, Malayalam, 60 Maldivian, Mongolian, Oriya, 700 Mongolian (7), Oriya (30), Pakistan. Both Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai Sinhalese (130), Tamil (65), Telugu (65), 50 600 Thai (45) and Tibetan (6). have large numbers and Tibetan (3) 40 500 of native speakers living in immigrant 30 400 communities over- 20 300 seas. Neither can 10 200 boast of significant 100 worldwide influence HJW
outside their own Latin Arabic Cyrillic Korean Panjabi Bengali
HJW [others] communities. As lo- Chinese Japanese Latin Devanagari
Arabic cal lingua francas Cyrillic Korean Panjabi Bengali [others] Chinese
Japanese they have an un- Devanagari known but no doubt FIG. 14. Systems of large number of writing by languages secondary speak- SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FIG. 14. Systems of ers. Hindi is also the official union language, i.e. Most figures on languages are taken from writing by primary the official lingua franca of all India. Since the Eric V. Gunnemark's Countries, People and speakers Dravidian-speaking south does not take to Hindi and prefers English which is also the language Their Languages (a Geolinguistic Hand- of the educated elite in the north, the use of En- book), 1991, Gothenburg, Sweden. glish is widespread and the situation has been For cross-reference and back-up checks as accepted officially by making English an 'associ- well as for non-linguistic figures the follow- ate language'. As the language of the higher ing sources have been used: administration, of secondary and university edu- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, cation it is in fact at least equal to Hindi as the Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. Chicago, USA lingua franca of India. Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbooks 1985, The article on Urdu in the International 1993, 1994 Encyclopaedia of Linguistics contains the follow- Fischer Weltalmanach 1960-1993. Fischer ing quotation: Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt, Germany "The growing popularity of Urdu mushaira (po- The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Lan- etic symposia) and literary conferences in the guage, 1987, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, England Canada, and a number of Middle Eastern and Fig. 6 is based on a table given in the Fischer African countries has led to the emergence of a Weltalamanach 1986, p. 910. large number of literary organisations and publi- For economic figures the Fischer cations which reflect the spread of Urdu as an Weltalamanch 1993 and the World Bank international language." Atlas 1991 as well as UN and IMF publica- It would be regrettable if this article with its tions have been major sources. emphasis on economic power and numbers, con-
28 AATF National Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 3 (January 1999)