Clemens' notebook: Languages
About 10,000 years ago there were perhaps 5 to 10 million humans on Earth. They may have spoken as many as 12,000 languages.
Today there are more than 6 billion people on Earth speaking about 6,800 distinct languages, though by the time I post this and you read it, one or two of them may have disappeared. The median number speaking each language is 6000 individuals. Two thirds of these languages have never been written down.
Of these languages Mandarin Chinese has by far the greatest number of native speakers, while English is by far the widest spread with the largest number of non-native speakers.
None of which explains why Anglophone Americans have become so fearful about their English.
posted by Clemens @ 10:47 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I thought that Spanish had the greatest number of native speakers worldwide. Wasn't it a funny joke about statistics once that teh "average" person in the world would be a Spanish-speaking Chinese Christian?
A variation on the joke is that the most common first name in the world is Mohammed while the most common last name is Wong, therefore, the most common name should be Mohammed Wong.
The reason why people are concerned is not because we think English is disappearing it is because immigrants are becoming less likely to learn English because there the need is diminishing.
Having an American version of the Quebec situation is not exactly desirable.
--Joey
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