Yes, it was very interesting to see the results, however, not too surprising Of course, like G Weber said "every language is the most important language in the world - to its speakers", however I found an article which I think would be of intrest , --
The World's 10 most influential Languages --
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htmIt can be a help to know what are the most popular, most influential, spoken in the most countries, etc languages out there. Of course those of us, who happen to have 3 languages spoken in the family and live in a foreign country as well, have our work cut out for us
However this is an interesting read if you are just contemplating on which foreign language to consider, etc., if you lets say a unilingual houshold...
To summarise it, The list George Weber gives in his article “Top Languages: The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec 1997):
(number of
native speakers in parentheses)
Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
English (330 million)
Spanish (300 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million) Arabic (200 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Portuguese (160 million)
Russian (160 million)
Japanese (125 million)
German (100 million)
Punjabi (90 million)
Javanese (80 million)
French (75 million)
However, in terms of
secondary speakers, Weber submits the following list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)
French (190 million)
English (150 million)
Russian (125 million)
Portuguese (28 million) Arabic (21 million)
Spanish (20 million)
Chinese (20 million)
German (9 million)
Japanese (8 million)
Thus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:
(number of
speakers in parentheses)
Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million) French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million)
The following is a list of these languages in terms of the
number of countries where each is spoken. The number that follows is the total number of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):
English (115)
French (35)
Arabic (24)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16, however, remember Russia is just one of thsoe countries but it is huge! AND the same goes for USA for english, India for Hindi and China for Chinese
)
German (9)
Mandarin (5)
Portuguese (5)
Hindi/Urdu (2)
Bengali (1)
Japanese (1)
After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of
the world's ten most influential languages:
(number of points given in parentheses)
English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16) Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)
I think it is good to have an idea about these statistics in making decisions on which languages to consider as "priority" languages for curriculum, at the same time it is important to remember as I quoted earlier that ""every language is the most important language in the world - to its speakers"
Digg
