The question raised elsewhere about numbers and changing patterns of Spanish use prompted me to share some stats I came across recently, as they may be of wider interest (or not ).

According to some figures quoted in Describing Language (ibid), here’s how usage of some of the world’s most used languages can be compared. The numbers are in terms of ‘native speakers’ derived from several different estimates (expressed in millions):

1. Chinese 700
2. English 320
3. Hindi 220
4. Spanish 200
5. Russian 150
6. Bengali 140
7. Portuguese 130
8. Japanese 115
9. Arabic 110
10. German 100
11. French 70
12. Italian 60
Source: Sunday Times (1993)
David Crystal acted as consultant for this – questions in the upcoming chat session?

1. Chinese 1035
2. English 350
3. Spanish 275
4. Hindi 225
5. Russian 220
6. Bengali 160
7. Arabic 150
8. Portuguese 135
9. Japanese 120
10. German 100
11. French 75
12. Italian 60
Source: Katzner (1986)


1. Chinese 541
2. English 300
3= Spanish 150
3= Russian 150
5. Japanese 100
6. German 95
7. Hindi 90
8= Bengali 76
8= Portuguese 76
10. Arabic 65
11. French 64
12. Italian 56
Source: Voeglin & Voeglin (1977)

Why the differences of estimate? Well, some census info is harder to come by (with the opposed poles of say Germany and China). There is change over time of the different sources, too – Hindi has certainly become spoken more extensively, and it will be fascinating to see the changes to the data wrought by the current census started today (can you imagine a census which requires 2 million census-takers?!) Then there is the difficulty of classifying language – for example, China has 8 languages and hundreds of dialects, so the first set of figures relates to Putonghua whilst the second includes all Chinese speakers. Then what does it mean to be a ‘speaker’ of a language – it isn’t always easy to discriminate between first- and second-language use, as the vast majority of the world’s population is multilingual. If you doubt this at first glance from your own experience, consider there are about 4,000 languages spoken in the world today, which with identifiable dialects Voeglin & Voeglin indexed at over 20,000 in total! David Crystal estimates that there are 450 million speakers of English as a second language, providing an aggregate figure of 770 million; however, he also argues that recognition of a category of ‘English users’ based on readership of English language papers and magazines would render a total of English speakers in the world of between 1000 – 2000 million (1985).

What effect will the web have on these torrents of language use? Will English gain even wider currency – and if so, will it spawn even greater diversity of language varieties amongst the family of Englishes, or greater uniformity based on commercially-dominant American? Or will the web become more multilingual, as some e-commerce gurus are predicting?

http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,355,FF.html