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Latest Top 10 languages in the world
Apr 17, 2007 20:37
  • CAOJUAN157
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According to the survey made by the UN, the latest top ten languages in the world are 1 English, 2 Chinese, 3 German, 4 French, 5 Russian, 6 Spanish, 7 Japanese, 8 Arabian, 9 Korean, 10 Portuguese.
The UN also confirmed that the standard of Chinese characters system in UN would follow the simplified character of mainland China. All the official Chinese contexts will only be released in simplified Chinese character.
Apr 17, 2007 21:04
#1  
  • EVENING
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According to what of this rank?
number of users? number of learners? popularities or degree of attractiveness?
Apr 17, 2007 21:42
#2  
  • CHRISWAUGHBJ
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A bit of searching turned up this
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html
Most Widely Spoken Languages
in the World
Language Approx. number
of speakers
1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,075,000,000
2. English 514,000,000
3. Hindustani1 496,000,000
4. Spanish 425,000,000
5. Russian 275,000,000
6. Arabic 256,000,000
7. Bengali 215,000,000
8. Portuguese 194,000,000
9. Malay-Indonesian 176,000,000
10. French 129,000,000

Note that it says Chinese (Mandarin), although they don't link to the source (Ethnologue) and they don't provide a definition of Mandarin or Arabic, even though for 'Hindustani' the add a footnote "Encompasses multiple dialects, including Hindi and Urdu." which raises a few questions:
What does Arabic mean? Classical Arabic? All the Arabic dialects together? What does Mandarin mean? Putonghua/Modern Standard Mandarin as defined by the PRC government? Guoyu as defined by the RoC government on Taiwan? (don't read any politics into this question, let's stick with linguistics on this thread please) The collection of northern Chinese dialects often referred to as Mandarin?
And of course we have to ask how this is measured: Number of native speakers? Native speakers + second language learners? Those two questions alone throw serious doubt on the numbers for both English and Chinese.
Apr 18, 2007 02:42
#3  
  • BBQQ
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Yes, I'm also wondering the same question. According to ??
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