World languages

There is an interesting discussion in Wikipedia about the World languages.

English, Spanish and French are considered by everybody as World languages. But what about the others?

If we consider that Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi and German as supra-regional languages because they are very strong in their area of influence but not out of this one.

Portuguese is spoken in several Continents, but it is not official in the World organizations. Besides it is not studied as foreing language.


There are several points of view:

Fischer Verlag
World: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Supra-regional: Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Malay, German, Japanese

Baker & Jones
World: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Arabic, Russian, Chinese (all types)
Supra-regional: ignores this concept.

Ali Mazrui
World: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Supra-regional: Arabic, Chinese (?), Russian

Ulrich Ammon
World: English, French, Spanish, Russian
Supra-regional: ignores this concept.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_language


What do you think about?

Readers of this forum beware of that of this part in the Wikipedia article because it was written by these fake "German guest.

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I changed the lower number of french native speakers, from 65 M to 80 M and deleted the reference since it stated a number of 51 M inhabitants in France, although it is now more than 10 years that the popuation of France outreached 60 M. You must add the 2 M French living abroad, a part of Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada at least, whose french language can not be denied. The total number must count a variable part of the population of the french speaking countries of Africa, where French may not be the first language of all the population.

A reference with numbers dating from the ealy 80's is not a reference in demographics matters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.13.218.83 (talk) 21:25, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The Ethnologue number may be outdated, but the 80 million number is original research without a source. Kman543210 (talk) 21:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC).

Some French fanatic wrote 500 million of French speakers. According to the same Francophonie, the French speakers are some 200 million. Spanish, according to the Instituto Cervantes, are some 500 million speakers.

500 million French speakers! Is this the sort of delusion one suffers just before expiring in the Sahara? Provocateur (talk) 22:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is a source which shows that (2005) not more than 50m people spoke french as second language. [1].--94.218.7.63 (talk) 15:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe it was a typo. I think it's supposed to say there are 5000 million French speakers. =p —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.176.124.146 (talk) 19:20, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

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It's obvious that it was written by the same Hispanic fanatic like Guest who keep on insisting that Spanish is spoken by 500 million when he originally he said 400 million.

IT'S OBVIOUS THAT Guest IS THE ONE WHO CHANGES, MANIPULATE AND MONOPOLIZES THE ARTICLES IN WIKIPEDIA IN FAVOR OF SPANISH.

I REPEAT, Guest IS THE ONE WHO VANDALIZES THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES BECAUSE HE WORSHIPS THE SPANISH LANGUAGE.