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Agreed, it shouldn't be unreasonable to expect everyone to learn Mandarin Chinese, or perhaps Spanish? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_n
by terom 4y ago
Agreed, it shouldn't be unreasonable to expect everyone to learn Mandarin Chinese, or perhaps Spanish?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...
- Zababa 4y agoI think it would be a better idea to focus on the total number of speakers, or even second language speakers [1]. For example, English has 372 millions first language speakers and 1 billion second language speakers. Mandarin Chinese has 929 millions first language speakers and 198 millions second language speakers. This means that way more people have learned English as a second language. This, I would assume, would mean that it's generally easier to learn, there are more infrastructures/people in place to do it, people are more used to second language speakers, and it's in general a better language to communicate across cultures. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...
- potatoz2 4y agoEnglish is somewhat better than Chinese because it’s easier to learn and has more total speakers, but 1.4 billion people is still pretty far from 7+ billion people. Choosing to only offer something in English _and_ make it difficult or impossible to translate it in other languages is telling 5.6 billion people they don’t matter until they learn the language you happen to speak.