3 ms·

English is easily the lingua franca of the new age due to SECOND language. Some refer to English as an international language (EIL) First language speakers ran

by baldfat 12y ago

English is easily the lingua franca of the new age due to SECOND language. Some refer to English as an international language (EIL) First language speakers rankings: 1) it is zho (Chinesse) 1.19 billion, 2) Spanish 441 million, 3) English 335 million, 4) Hindi 260 million and 5) Arabic 235 million http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size Secondary Language Speakers: Only 1 out of 4 English speakers are first person speakers. That makes English the most known language in the world. http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content

adambard 12y ago
The other relevant metric is the distribution of speakers. Most of the speakers of Chinese live in China, but English is a significantly common language in 67 countries by Wikipedia's admittedly questionable estimation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_languages_(by_number_of_countries%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_lang... I don't think the data is entirely trustworthy -- it seems unlikely that "Turkic" is spoken substantially in Lithuania -- but I did some analysis based on this data anyhow: http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/ http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/
realusername 12y ago
I would more refer English as "the language to communicate internationally" rather than "the international language". The distinction is quite important actually and people speaking English as a secondary language are generally dealing in some way or an other with international business (this is also the case of computing). The proportion of secondary language is really unequally distributed. When you go out of these domains, the number of speakers drop really significantly. The truth is most people will never speak English in any ways because they don't need it on a day to day basis, the real world is not exactly reflecting a business lecture where everything is international.

by baldfat 12y ago

adambard 12y ago

The other relevant metric is the distribution of speakers. Most of the speakers of Chinese live in China, but English is a significantly common language in 67 countries by Wikipedia's admittedly questionable estimation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_languages_(by_number_of_countries%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_lang... I don't think the data is entirely trustworthy -- it seems unlikely that "Turkic" is spoken substantially in Lithuania -- but I did some analysis based on this data anyhow: http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/ http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/

realusername 12y ago

I would more refer English as "the language to communicate internationally" rather than "the international language". The distinction is quite important actually and people speaking English as a secondary language are generally dealing in some way or an other with international business (this is also the case of computing). The proportion of secondary language is really unequally distributed. When you go out of these domains, the number of speakers drop really significantly. The truth is most people will never speak English in any ways because they don't need it on a day to day basis, the real world is not exactly reflecting a business lecture where everything is international.