Member Since: 5/18/2012
Posts: 20,576
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Not all continents are equally diverse in the number of spoken languages. Whereas Asia leads the statistics with 2,301 languages, Africa follows closely with 2,138.
There are about 1,300 languages in the Pacific, and 1,064 in South and North America. Europe, despite its many nation-states, is at the bottom of the pack with just 286.
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Chinese has more native speakers than any other language, followed by Hindi and Urdu, which have the same linguistic origins in northern India. English comes next with 527 million native speakers. Arabic is used by nearly 100 million more native speakers than Spanish.
The numbers are fascinating because they reflect the fact that two-thirds of the world's population share only 12 native languages. Those numbers were recently published by the University of Düsseldorf's Ulrich Ammon, who conducted a 15-year-long study.
His numbers are surprising, compared with the ones featured in the CIA's Factbook. According to the CIA, Spanish is spoken by 4.85 percent of the world's population and its use is even more widespread than English, which is spoken by 4.83 percent. However, the CIA numbers include only first native languages. Many people are bilingual, and whereas Spanish might be their first native language, English could be their second one. Ammon counts both first and second native language speakers.
The number for Portuguese is smaller than other sources suggest because not all Brazilians are native speakers. Some might also be surprised that Korean or Punjabi do not show up on the list: Indeed, both are nearly as widely spoken as Italian.
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The reason why English, French and Spanish are among the world's most widespread languages has its roots in the imperial past of the nations where they originate.
Whereas English lags behind in the number of native speakers, it is by far the world's most commonly studied language. Overall, more people learn English than French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German and Chinese combined.
Some languages have only recently gained attention: The number of U.S. colleges that teach Chinese has risen by 110 percent between 1990 and 2013, making the language more accessible. During the same time, the number of offered Russian college courses decreased by 30 percent.
Some language skills could be more rewarding than others. If you are able to speak German, Americans could earn $128,000 extra throughout their career, according to MIT scientist Albert Saiz. At least financially, German is worth twice as much as French and nearly three times as much as Spanish, for instance.
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More info and an interactive graph
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