# What are the most used human languages (currently)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 7, 2001, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020 "2001-11-07T17:07:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Skip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@Skip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skip)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/21 "2001-11-08T10:43:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Daowajan \* > _ **French?!?!?!** _ Yup don’t forget that most of Central Africa was at one time a French or Belgian colony. Nigeria alone has more than 100 million people. Cameroon, Tunisia, Algeria all have large French speaking populations (usually as a 2nd language). In fact if you’re travelling through Africa it’s probably better to speak French in some countries than English. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/22 "2001-11-08T10:55:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > \*\*In my experience, linguists politely note the convention by which the separate Chinese languages are referred to as dialects, and then skip right on over that foolishness and call a language a language. > > Hell, according to O’Grady and Dobrovolsky 1996, not only are Mandarin and Cantonese separate _languages_, they’re far enough apart to be in separate language _subfamilies_ of the Sinitic branch. \*\* For Chinese, I think it’s fair to say that they lump anyone together that uses a written form of Chinese as speaking “Chinese”, regardless of how it’s pronounced. Certainly newspaper Chinese in China, HK, Taiwan and Singapore not to mention the overseas Chinese communities should probably all be considered various dialects of written Chinese. Yep, fair point by JellyDonut, people from Muswell Hills in London (the Kinks) certainly speak a dialect of English that a Californian finds almost unintelligible. But seriously, my entire Chinese language life I was taught that Beijingese is the bees knees. Almost 20 years after first studying Chinese, about 15 years of living in HK, Taiwan and Southwest China, I finally made my first trip to Beijing about 2 years ago. It was like learning BBC english and rapping with Muswell Hill homeboys. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/23 "2001-11-08T11:06:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Skip \* > **Nigeria alone has more than 100 million people.** But was not a French colony. ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/24 "2001-11-08T11:08:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Skip \* > \*\*Nigeria alone has more than 100 million people. > \*\* Bad example. The official language in Nigeria is English. (It was an English colony until 1960) (according to [CIA](http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ni.html)) It’s true that French can be usefull in northern Africa, but in the south/central parts it is rapidly losing ground to English. You will still find people talking it, but nowhere near as many as there will be people talking English. I believe this is related to the way the French ran their colonies. The English tried at an early point to install ‘local’ governements (ruled from London, but with a local contingency of English speaking ‘indigenous’ administration). When the English left there was already an English speaking administration in place. The French, however, came with large armies and ruled everything. When they left there was nothing left to build from, so people started local governements speaking ‘local’ languages. (Note, all this is of course very simplified, but this was the view held by a book I cannot remember the name of) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/25 "2001-11-08T12:16:14Z")
In general, the easiest fairly accurate source for facts on the world’s languages on the Internet is Ethnologue ([www.sil.org/ethnologue](http://www.sil.org/ethnologue)). They used to have a webpage with a list of the top 107 languages (all those with more than 7 million speakers). Unfortunately, when I did a web search for this page just now, I found that they have taken this particular page down. There was a cached version of the page though on Google. Given that they don’t have it up on Ethnologue anymore, the numbers are probably several years out of date. They don’t combine Hindi and Urdu, which they probably should have done, since they’re mutually comprehensible. They also don’t combine the Chinese “dialects,” which makes sense since they’re not mutually comprehensible. I have no idea whether it makes sense to split up the various varieties of Arabic. Are they mutually incomprehensible? Here’s the list, in any case: 1 CHINESE, MANDARIN [CHN] China 885,000,000 2 SPANISH [SPN] Spain 332,000,000 3 ENGLISH [ENG] United Kingdom 322,000,000 4 BENGALI [BNG] Bangladesh 189,000,000 5 HINDI [HND] India 182,000,000 6 PORTUGUESE [POR] Portugal 170,000,000 7 RUSSIAN [RUS] Russia 170,000,000 8 JAPANESE [JPN] Japan 125,000,000 9 GERMAN, STANDARD [GER] Germany 98,000,000 10 CHINESE, WU [WUU] China 77,175,000 11 JAVANESE [JAN] Indonesia, Java, Bali 75,500,800 12 KOREAN [KKN] Korea, South 75,000,000 13 FRENCH [FRN] France 72,000,000 14 VIETNAMESE [VIE] Viet Nam 67,662,000 15 TELUGU [TCW] India 66,350,000 16 CHINESE, YUE [YUH] China 66,000,000 17 MARATHI [MRT] India 64,783,000 18 TAMIL [TCV] India 63,075,000 19 TURKISH [TRK] Turkey 59,000,000 20 URDU [URD] Pakistan 58,000,000 21 CHINESE, MIN NAN [CFR] China 49,000,000 22 CHINESE, JINYU [CJY] China 45,000,000 23 GUJARATI [GJR] India 44,000,000 24 POLISH [PQL] Poland 44,000,000 25 ARABIC, EGYPTIAN SPOKEN [ARZ] Egypt 42,500,000 26 UKRAINIAN [UKR] Ukraine 41,000,000 27 ITALIAN [ITN] Italy 37,000,000 28 CHINESE, XIANG [HSN] China 36,015,000 29 MALAYALAM [MJS] India 34,022,000 30 CHINESE, HAKKA [HAK] China 34,000,000 31 KANNADA [KJV] India 33,663,000 32 ORIYA [ORY] India 31,000,000 33 PANJABI, WESTERN [PNB] Pakistan 30,000,000 34 SUNDA [SUO] Indonesia 27,000,000 35 PANJABI, EASTERN [PNJ] India 26,013,000 36 ROMANIAN [RUM] Romania 26,000,000 37 BHOJPURI [BHJ] India 25,000,000 38 AZERBAIJANI, SOUTH [AZB] Iran 24,364,000 39 FARSI, WESTERN [PES] Iran 24,280,000 40 MAITHILI [MKP] India 24,260,000 41 HAUSA [HUA] Nigeria 24,200,000 42 ARABIC, ALGERIAN SPOKEN [ARQ] Algeria 22,400,000 43 BURMESE [BMS] Myanmar 22,000,000 44 SERBO-CROATIAN [SRC] Yugoslavia 21,000,000 45 CHINESE, GAN [KNN] China 20,580,000 46 AWADHI [AWD] India 20,540,000 47 THAI [THJ] Thailand 20,047,000 48 DUTCH [DUT] Netherlands 20,000,000 49 YORUBA [YOR] Nigeria 20,000,000 50 SINDHI [SND] Pakistan 19,720,000 51 ARABIC, MOROCCAN SPOKEN [ARY] Morocco 19,542,000 52 ARABIC, SAIDI SPOKEN [AEC] Egypt 18,900,000 53 UZBEK, NORTHERN [UZB] Uzbekistan 18,466,000 54 MALAY [MLI] Malaysia, Peninsular 17,600,000 55 AMHARIC [AMH] Ethiopia 17,413,000 56 INDONESIAN [INZ] Indonesia 17,050,000 57 IGBO [IGR] Nigeria 17,000,000 58 TAGALOG [TGL] Philippines 17,000,000 59 NEPALI [NEP] Nepal 16,056,000 60 ARABIC, SUDANESE SPOKEN [APD] Sudan 16,000,000 61 SARAIKI [SKR] Pakistan 15,015,000 62 CEBUANO [CEB] Philippines 15,000,000 63 ARABIC, NORTH LEVANTINE SPOKEN [APC] Syria 15,000,000 64 THAI, NORTHEASTERN [TTS] Thailand 15,000,000 65 ASSAMESE [ASM] India 14,634,000 66 HUNGARIAN [HNG] Hungary 14,500,000 67 CHITTAGONIAN [CIT] Bangladesh 14,000,000 68 ARABIC, MESOPOTAMIAN SPOKEN [ACM] Iraq 13,900,000 69 MADURA [MHJ] Indonesia, Java, Bali 13,694,000 70 SINHALA [SNH] Sri Lanka 13,220,000 71 HARYANVI [BGC] India 13,000,000 72 MARWARI [MKD] India 12,104,000 73 CZECH [CZC] Czech Republic 12,000,000 74 GREEK [GRK] Greece 12,000,000 75 MAGAHI [MQM] India 12,000,000 76 CHHATTISGARHI [HNE] India 10,985,000 77 DECCAN [DCC] India 10,709,800 78 CHINESE, MIN BEI [MNP] China 10,537,000 79 BELARUSAN [RUW] Belarus 10,200,000 80 ZHUANG, NORTHERN [CCX] China 10,000,000 81 ARABIC, NAJDI SPOKEN [ARS] Saudi Arabia 9,800,000 82 PASHTO, NORTHERN [PBU] Pakistan 9,685,000 83 SOMALI [SOM] Somalia 9,472,000 84 MALAGASY [MEX] Madagascar 9,398,700 85 ARABIC, TUNISIAN SPOKEN [AEB] Tunisia 9,308,000 86 RWANDA [RUA] Rwanda 9,306,800 87 ZULU [ZUU] South Africa 9,142,000 88 BULGARIAN [BLG] Bulgaria 9,000,000 89 SWEDISH [SWD] Sweden 9,000,000 90 LOMBARD [LMO] Italy 8,974,000 91 OROMO, WEST-CENTRAL [GAZ] Ethiopia 8,920,000 92 PASHTO, SOUTHERN [PBT] Afghanistan 8,206,000 93 KAZAKH [KAZ] Kazakhstan 8,000,000 94 ILOCANO [ILO] Philippines 8,000,000 95 TATAR [TTR] Russia 8,000,000 96 FULFULDE, NIGERIAN [FUV] Nigeria 7,611,000 97 ARABIC, SANAANI SPOKEN [AYN] Yemen 7,600,000 98 UYGHUR [UIG] China 7,595,512 99 HAITIAN CREOLE FRENCH [HAT] Haiti 7,372,000 100 AZERBAIJANI, NORTH [AZE] Azerbaijan 7,059,000 101 NAPOLETANO-CALABRESE [NPL] Italy 7,047,400 102 KHMER, CENTRAL [KMR] Cambodia 7,039,200 103 FARSI, EASTERN [PRS] Afghanistan 7,000,000 104 AKAN [TWS] Ghana 7,000,000 105 HILIGAYNON [HIL] Philippines 7,000,000 106 KURMANJI [KUR] Turkey 7,000,000 107 SHONA [SHD] Zimbabwe 7,000,000 ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/26 "2001-11-08T13:15:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wendell Wagner \* > **27 ITALIAN [ITN] Italy 37,000,000 > 90 LOMBARD [LMO] Italy 8,974,000 > 101 NAPOLETANO-CALABRESE [NPL] Italy 7,047,400** I submit that the 16 million people listed here as speakers of Lombard and Napoletano-Calabrese would describe themselves as Italian speakers. So where did these numbers come from? ---
**Author:** ![Shampoop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b487fb/32.png) [@Shampoop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shampoop)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/27 "2001-11-08T13:18:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wendell Wagner \* > \*\*Here’s the list, in any case: > > 1 CHINESE, MANDARIN [CHN] China 885,000,000 > 2 SPANISH [SPN] Spain 332,000,000 > 3 ENGLISH [ENG] United Kingdom 322,000,000 > \*\* chinese may be the most spoken, but 90% of the world’s telephone calls are made in english ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/28 "2001-11-08T13:24:39Z")
This is riddled with errors, or at least highly debatable classifications of “languages” or whatever you want to call them: - 885mn Mandarin speakers? - 189 mn Bengali speakers? - 170mn Portuguese speakers (Brazil + Portugual + what??) - Arabic Egyptian. That’s dumb - most Egyptians can converse with Saudis, Syrians, etc up to a point. It’s not a separate language - Italian 37mn - where do the other 20mn people in Italy appear? - Arabic Algerian - any different from the maghrebi Arabic in Morocco? Not really ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/29 "2001-11-08T13:36:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hemlock \* > \*\*- 170mn Portuguese speakers (Brazil + Portugual + what??) > \*\* Portuguese is the official language of 7 countries and one territory: Portugal Brazil Angola Mozambique Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Sao Tome and Principe - Macao (with Chinese) I’m not sure about the status of Portuguese in East Timor. Some sources claim 200 million Portuguese speakers in the world. ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/30 "2001-11-08T14:49:24Z")
…and I thought my OP was a fairly straightforward question! Sheesh, I didn’t realize all the fine points of classification. ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/31 "2001-11-08T16:06:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by hibernicus \* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Hemlock \* > > > > - 170mn Portuguese speakers (Brazil + Portugual + what??) > > Portuguese is the official language of 7 countries and one territory: > Portugal > Brazil > Angola > Mozambique > Cape Verde > Guinea-Bissau > Sao Tome and Principe > > - Macao (with Chinese) > I’m not sure about the status of Portuguese in East Timor. > > Some sources claim 200 million Portuguese speakers in the world. Indeed, here are the CIA population numbers. ```auto 10,048,232 Portugal 172,860,370 Brazil 10,145,267 Angola 19,104,696 Mozambique 401,343 Cape Verde 1,285,715 Guinea-Bissau 159,883 Sao Tome and Principe 445,594 Macao (with Chinese) 214,451,100 Total ``` All are listed as having Portugese as the primary and official language. Given that Portuguese is virutally the only language in Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe and that it is the primary language of the others 185 million to 190 million native speakers seems likely. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/32 "2001-11-08T16:07:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by muttrox \* > \*\*…and I thought my OP was a fairly straightforward question! Sheesh, I didn’t realize all the fine points of classification. \*\* It’s a very big muddle. As somebody already noted Hindi and Urdu aren’t combined. They are phonetically the same, but are written with different scripts (Arabic vs. Devenagari), which creates some justification for keeping them separate, in addition to the political reasons. The last time I looked at one of those almanac lists, one of the footnotes said that Yiddish was a dialect of German, in spite of having it’s own literary and cultural traditions, and was counted with German. I believe that is another debateable point, although Yiddish is generally intelligible to German speakers. Intelligibility is not a very clean division. ---
**Author:** ![Palve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a698b9/32.png) [@Palve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palve)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/33 "2001-11-08T17:41:18Z")
Speaking in the strictest linguistic sense, the different “dialects” of Chinese are really different languages, and cases may be made for Brazilian Portuguese, Sardinian, and the “dialects” of Arabic. But sociopolitical circumstances factor in to how a language is described in relation to other languages. That’s why some people (who in my mind are off their rockers) try to separate Serbian and Croatian, which are pronounced exactly alike with different scripts. Chinese deserves to be grouped together in a way closer than a family but further than a language, because all the languages/dialects/whatevers use the same orthography, and thus you could read a Beijing newspaper in Shanghai, a Shanghai newspaper in Hong Kong, and a Hong Kong newspaper in Wuhan, etc. etc. etc. I read somewhere that if Confucius were to come alive again, nobody would be able to understand a word he said, but if he jotted something down on a piece of paper, he would be well understood. But, lacking a good descriptive term for these dialects/languages/whatevers, linguists just use the term “dialect” and understand that when speaking of Chinese, “dialect” doesn’t mean “dialect” in the same sense as other languages. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/34 "2001-11-08T18:23:19Z")
Jelly, if all English speakers and all French speakers decided to use an ideographic writing system (in which, say, the same sign was pronounced _bread_ in English and _pain_ in French) would that mean that English and French should be grouped more closely together than they are? ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/35 "2001-11-08T18:32:37Z")
> [@](#): > > America should take a heads up from this, and begin second language teaching in elementary school My first grader is taking Spanish offered through his school, one hour a week right after school. It was an extra $200, but that’s not too bad. I think there are only eight students (out of about 400-500 total in the school). This _may_ have been the first year it was offered, however. > [@](#): > > I agree with you in general (I wish I’d learned a second language in elementary school.), but your logic doesn’t make much sense. If everyone else is learning English, what language should English-speakers learn? Why? I agreed with you twenty years ago. Now, it seems clear there is a significant number of Spanish speakers in the US, and I expect the percentage to grow. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/36 "2001-11-08T18:47:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bartman \* > > Indeed, here are the CIA population numbers. > > ```auto > > 10,048,232 Portugal > 172,860,370 Brazil > 10,145,267 Angola > 19,104,696 Mozambique > 401,343 Cape Verde > 1,285,715 Guinea-Bissau > 159,883 Sao Tome and Principe > 445,594 Macao (with Chinese) > 214,451,100 Total > > ``` > > All are listed as having Portugese as the primary and official language. Given that Portuguese is virutally the only language in Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe and that it is the primary language of the others 185 million to 190 million native speakers seems likely. Well, no. Cabo Verde the actual living language is a Portuguese creole, Crioullu if I’m spelling is right. I believe this is the case with Sao Tome. Having been to West Africa I can attest the number of Portuguese speakers, mother tongue, is quite low. Situation in Angola and Mozambique may be different, but I doubt it. Perhaps one gains a few thousand. So, maybe 160/170 k speakers. Now, as for Arabic dialects I don’t know how one wants to count that. Egyptian is widely understood, yes. It does share a lot of morphological similarities with Shami dialects, but Northern Egyptian certainly is not just the same as Khaliji. Loss of the Qaf, use of different forms of hatha/hathihi, different future tense marker. Etc. As for Maghribi vs Jazairi: I certainly notice a difference. More so with Tunisian but they’re not ‘just the same.’ On the other hand, the variation probably falls close enough say they are dialects of a language (Maghrebi Arabic) since as far as I have noticed they use more or less the same grammatical structure, same articles, same or variants of the same future tense marker, etc. Of course, I’m not a trained linguist. ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2001, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/37 "2001-11-09T01:19:17Z")
A pedant’s delight, this subject… I’m obviously out of touch with S American population growth rates. Where the f\*\*k did all those Brazilians come from??? Still, how many people in Mozambique/Angola/etc actually speak Portuguese these days? Virtually none, I bet. I go to Macau regularly, and it’s as good as dead there. **jellydonut** - the reason you can read a Beijing newspaper in HK (assuming you can remember the wretched simplified characters) is because it is written in Mandarin. All respectable Chinese writing is Mandarin, just as everyone wrote in Latin throughout medieval France, Spain, etc. The trashy stuff in HK (like porno comics, advertising) is written in the vernacular (just like, uh, the medieval porno comics were) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![fandango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b5ac83/32.png) [@fandango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fandango)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2001, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/38 "2001-11-09T02:01:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > \*\*Jelly, if all English speakers and all French speakers decided to use an ideographic writing system (in which, say, the same sign was pronounced _bread_ in English and _pain_ in French) would that mean that English and French should be grouped more closely together than they are? \*\* Just want to point out that Chinese is not considered ideographic. I think they call it logographic, because for the most part the characters have little relation to what they represent (which if often just morphemes). As for ETHNOLOGUE–others have pointed out, and I completely concur, that ETHNOLOGUE seems to too readily break different dialects (or even just names of a tongue) into different languages. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2001, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/39 "2001-11-09T03:37:41Z")
Now I’m getting really pissed off at SIL. They’ve broken Arabic into microfragments. What does it matter that Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf all speak distinct dialects? They all share a high level of mutual intelligibility. For that matter, separating Moroccan and Algerian dialects into different “languages” is not only daft, it’s dishonest. A lie. There is more mutual comprehension between these Arabic dialects than between some dialects of English. Take someone from the backwoods of Alabama and put him in a room with someone from Northumberland and see how well they understand each other. For that matter, SIL completely ignores the existence of Modern Standard Arabic, which is understood by educated Arabs in every country, and by plenty of uneducated ones as well. There’s only one major dialectal divide involving loss of mutual comprehensibility: between the Maghribi dialect group (Mauretania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and the rest of the dialects. Libya is a transitional zone. Worse, much worse: they’ve listed Malay and Indonesian separately. Malay and Indonesian are the _same damn language_. Combined, they would rank in 29th place instead of 54th and 56th. The same with treating “Eastern Farsi” (Persian of Iran) and “Western Farsi” (Dari of Afghanistan) as two languages. Again, they’re the same language; the dialectal difference between them is like the difference between British and American English. SIL is a front organization for Protestant Christian missionaries. They started all this language stuff in order to get the Bible translated into as many languages as possible and to prepare missionaries for using more and more languages. They have an agenda which is not purely linguistic science. By treating major European languages as unified wholes, putting them near the top of the list, while breaking up languages of brown peoples like Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, and Malay into fragments, diluting their perceived strength and significance, SIL is not only dishonest—they are perpetuating **racism.** ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2001, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020/40 "2001-11-09T03:45:06Z")
I don’t get the figures for English. USA = 275 Million Great Britian 60 Million Canada = 17 Million Aussie = 15 million NZ = 3 millon That is 375 million alone. I realize not everyone speaks English in the USA but those estimates must be low. Those figures above were from an old World Book. Even if 1% of India spoke English you would have 10,000,000 more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-used-human-languages-currently/92020.md?page=3)