Spanish is the most spoken language in the world?

Tionghoa   Fri Jul 17, 2009 10:44 am GMT
Oh, I see, sw=south-west, ne=north-east, is it all right? Frankly, I'm afraid I can understand sw and ne mandarin very well, and I can even understand a little Minnanese. In fact, Mandarin is just mandarin, it's absolutely not Cantonese or Minnanese. Actions Speak Louder Than Words.
Usuaire   Fri Jul 17, 2009 11:31 am GMT
<< Spanish is spoken by 420 million (m.t.) and 500 million total speakers
>>

Liar! There are just 330 million native speakers of Spanish and 20 million secondary speakers (most of these are Quechua, Ayamara, Guarani, Nahuatl, Quiche, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Aragonese, Asturian, and Leonese speakers.

The data in Wikipedia are invented by hispanic fanatics in this forum.
blanc   Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:41 pm GMT
Most Widely Spoken Languagesin the World

Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most popular world languages, with over a billion speakers. English trails in second place, with just over 500 million speakers. This data includes all speakers of the languages, not only native speakers.

Language Approx. numberof speakers

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,075,000,000

2. English 514,000,000

3. Hindustani1 496,000,000

4. Spanish 425,000,000

5. Russian 275,000,000

6. Arabic 256,000,000

7. Bengali 215,000,000

8. Portuguese 194,000,000

9. Malay-Indonesian 176,000,000

10. French 129,000,000


Source: Ethnologue, 13th Edition, and other sources.
Harman   Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:56 pm GMT
The truth:

Excuse me but not all people in catalonia vasc country and galiza have catala euskera and galego as mother lenguage. So it's not true 9.9 millions mother tongue catala, 4 millions mother lenguage galego etc...

In fact most of people in that territories speak spanish and their own territorie lenguage catala, euskera, etc...plus others foreign lenguages as english, french, arabic, romanian etc.. they are 100% billingual o trilingual or 4-lingual or more.

I have already written in this forum about an american spanish-brazilian portuguese join evolution and some intransigent people insulted me for this, they don't accept new ideas, concepts and evolutions so they will get extingued as dinosaurs did in our global world.
I'm happy some people agree with me, american spanish and american portuguese are so closed lenguages (not dialects) that it worths.
As i wrote i can understand and i can read portuguese without a single lesson, I'm spaniard. And yes yes i can't speak or writte portuguese without classes it is true.
Let's vote.

French, romanian, italian are not so closed to spanish (i don't understand them he he he but i can read something) they are quite different lenguages despite they are latin lenguages.

And that's my thinking and experience with lenguages. You can accept or not but you should respect it as i respect your ideas.
Joao   Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:16 pm GMT
Harman,

I like Spain, it's a nice country. I like Spanish people as well (when they do not keep trying to swell).

But Spanish is Spanish and Portuguese is Portuguese. Similar but not the same.
Usuaire   Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:43 pm GMT
3. Hindustani 496 million.

Hindustani is really Hindi-Urdu, two languages for a lot of linguists and experts.

If we consider Urdu as a separate language, it is more spoken than French. It is spoken by some 180 million in Pakistan and India.

I prefer to consider Urdu a separate language because French is out of the top ten languages. It is a good idea. ha, ha, ha!
/*-   Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:44 pm GMT
Harman, I agree with you.

Joao, of course, Spanish and Portuguese are not the same. Nobody can say they are the same, but as you say they are similar.

I don't speak French, but when I read French I can understand a lot of things, more than Italian and Romanian. I think Latin-Languages evolutionated diferently but all of them are coming (mailnly)from the same language: Latin.
Joao   Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:05 pm GMT
Time and use will say if Portuguese gets extinguished. I think 100 other languages in the world will get extinguished before our language.

So, as always time will say. To extinguish a language spoken by 200 million is not that easy (lol)
Usuario   Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:09 pm GMT
9. Malay-Indonesian 176,000,000

Malay-Indonesian is really Bahasa, two languages for a lot of linguists and experts.

If we consider Bahasa as a single langguage, it has more secondary than Spanish. It is spoken by 100 million in Indonesia and Singapore as a secondary language.

I prefer to consider Malay-Indonesian a single language because Spanish is out of the top ten languages in terms of secondary speakers. It is a very good idea that renders Spanish inutile. ha, ha, ha!
Usuaire   Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:29 pm GMT
Why do hispanic fanatics insist that Portuguese and Spanish languages are in the same continuum when the Lussophones very much disagrees.

In my own opinion, the Lussophones would be very much happier being their language being likened to Italian or even to French.

A lot of Lussophones claimed that Italian is much easier to understand than Spanish.
Ciao   Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:44 pm GMT
They're just lying, it is obvious that Portuguese is a bastardized version of Spanish, you just need to look at both languages, they're identical but Portuguese words are like lazily-pronounced Spanish words.
BRAZIL   Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:41 pm GMT
No one is insisting anything. Please, fellow Brazilians, close your mouth for an instant and read the opening topic again. This is not a matter of anyone insulting Portuguese, or Spanish trying to 'claim' Portuguese.
What we are doing is comparing SPANISH/PORTUGUESE and MANDARIN DIALECTS. Because the Mandarin dialects are so different that if they are one language then SPanish and Portuguese (and maybe even Catalan) should be one language.
I don't agree with that of course, so I would rather keep Spanish and Portuguese separate and split CHinese into different languages, rather than have Spa/Por be one language. But as it is now the system is not consistent. That is all.

Currently it is like measuring every language using a different scale. Chinese is measured using feet, Indo-European - using metres, Arabic - using yards, etc. Need to use one measuring system for all!
Guest   Sun Jul 19, 2009 12:44 am GMT
1. Spain does not give a damn about Portugal.
2. Brazil does not give a damn about Portugal.
3. Spanish is an international language and it would be, even excluding Spain.
4. Continental Portuguese is not an international language
5. Brazilian Portuguese is separate language from Continental Portuguese (therefore all Portuguese products in Brazil, from movies to soap operas need to be dubbed in Brazilian in order to be shown there)

passar bem


OBS
aqui no Brasil a gente ama a Espanha
15% de brasileiros têm origem espanhola
amo a Galícia e Astúrias

-------------------------------------------------

Congratulations, you have just shown us how much of an idiot you are.
K. T.   Sun Jul 19, 2009 1:05 am GMT
Look,

Some of BP, at least, is nearly identical in verb forms to Spanish. The conditional tenses are but one example. Yes, I know that there are accent issues, but surely any Spanish speaker would recognize this:

eu (yo) mandaria, comeria, abriria even without the accents. If you really want to get into the "nitty gritty" of how Spanish and Portuguese are different and learn Portuguese if you already know Spanish. I recommend the thin book "From Spanish To Portuguese" from FSI. Heck, it may be available with audio for free on the FSI site.

Portuguese sounds different with the nasal sounds especially noticeable. It's easier for Portuguese speakers to understand Spanish than the other way around. There is some funny grammar (okay, not funny, just different) too. I think Portuguese may use the future subjunctive where Spanish uses the present subjunctive. Portuguese also has contractions that we don't see in Spanish that take some time to remember.

I think of Portuguese and Spanish as first cousins. First cousins share some genes, but they aren't twins or siblings.

As far as Mandarin, Shanghaiese, etc. the situation is similar, but different. Shanghai dialect sounds very different from Cantonese, as one example. Everyone can read the language, not everyone can understand another Chinese language (or dialect). I heard a new Chinese dialect the other day. It isn't new, just new to me. I was able to get the conversation going by asking about certain phrases in Mandarin, then the girl would tell me in her dialect. Even the initial consonant sounds were different. It seemed unbelievable.
Besançon   Sun Jul 19, 2009 1:42 am GMT