Someone asked me during a recent get-together in a Russian pub – did I know where Russian itself as a language fits into the worldly scheme of things. I sipped my Baltika and replied that it changes all the time, and then took a guess, since I knew that Russian is one of the six official UN languages and that there are over 150 million people in the country. My guess was that it ranked 10th on the amount of people who speak it, mainly because I know how hard it is to learn.
It turned out to be 8th, which still meant that I owed Sergei a beer. However, most interesting where some other results of the research we both did later that evening… Ok, fine, the truth is we did the research the next day.
Russian is spoken by about 150 to 200 million people, but when one goes up the list, until the second most spoken language, one gets to around 350 million, depending on where you check. After that, the number one language is Mandarin, with almost 3 times that: estimated at anywhere between 850 million and 1 billion!
Another strange thing, is that with all the attention given to French, it is way down on the list by any interpretation, and yet still quite widely spoken. German, too, is not much of a contender for the top 5 by a long shot. Yet Portuguese, with mainly Brazil helping it along, is quoted in some places as having over 200 million speakers.
Why do these statistics and numbers mean anything? Well, for one, why are we not teaching any of these top languages in our schools? Other than English, I haven’t heard of any young people getting Spanish or Arabic, Hindi or Mandarin lessons. Are we setting ourselves up for Europe with our German, French and Italian classes?
What one also has to remember, is that to actually get to these numbers, there is a lot of speculation, and also many assumptions are made. Suffice to say though, that if you speak even three of the top five languages, you have doors opening up to you almost anywhere. Are languages the main ingredient to living a global life?
Another intersting read, I really like the point about teaching relevant languages, personally I think we should move to one universal language (even if its manderin as the fair choice based on popularity).
I think social deconstruction is important, languages and religion need to go, as well as cultural identity over the concept of our identity as humans and equals.
But for now I would settle for the death of useless dialects like Afrikaans, and other under used languages.
Pretty Much it should be English and Manderin all the way.
@Craig – yes, but let’s keep Spanish in the mix for ease of learning, closeness to other languages and that’s it’s getting widely spread now. Thanks for the kudos!
Incredibly interesting! I have never travelled, apart from CPT > JHB and CPT > Botswana, so reading about other countries, where they fit in and the local things is really interesting, that’s why these posts get such a great response!
Tell me, what’s a Baltika? :D
A Baltika is a Russian beer, kind of like an Amstel in terms of taste and popularity.
The Russians here by the way seem to agree that it’s time to reduce the lagnuages in the world…
Ah alright, thought it must have been a beer. Shouldn’t you be drinking Vodka though? ;)