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Thread: Latest Top 10 languages in the world

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[quote=CHRISWAUGHBJ,231175]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.[/quote]

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