One Additional Language

[docrowan]

Hank's thread and poll made me wonder what one additional language besides English would allow one to speak to the broadest group of people on the planet?

I initially thought Chinese, but as I understand it there are at least two different main languages (Mandarin and Cantonese) and there are a number of dialects. I think India has a large number of languages as well.

In the western hemisphere (North and South America, and the Caribbean) if you knew English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French I think you could speak to about 98% of the population. I guess if you were fluent in English and Spanish you could probably speak with 75% of the population.

What do you guys think?

[LCHIEN]

Hank's thread and poll made me wonder what one additional language besides English would allow one to speak to the broadest group of people on the planet?

I initially thought Chinese, but as I understand it there are at least two different main languages (Mandarin and Cantonese) and there are a number of dialects. I think India has a large number of languages as well.

In the western hemisphere (North and South America, and the Caribbean) if you knew English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French I think you could speak to about 98% of the population. I guess if you were fluent in English and Spanish you could probably speak with 75% of the population.

What do you guys think?

the written chinese language is common, but the spoken language consists of a number of dialects. The official dialect is Mandarin so if the PRC government is being followed everyone is speaking this. China is very big on education and the population is being urbanized so I imagine a large percentage now speak Madarin.
There are what, 1.3+ billion chinese, so the chinese written language is probably the most widely read and the Mandarin is likely to be 1st also among spoken languages.

If you could speak to 98% of North and South Americans you would be addressing less than 15% of the world's people. (900 million out of 6.6 billion.)
2.5 billion of the worlds 6.6 billion people are indian or chinese... that's 38%.
If you spoke any of the major western languages - English, French, SPanish, Italian, german, portugese, Dutch - , you could not communicate, liguistically speaking, with this 38 percent of the world's people, and probably a lot more in other asian and eastern European countries.
You're in a distinct minority, I'm afraid.

[cabinetman]

If I had to pick one additional language for fluency, it would have to be Spanish. It sure would make ordering materials, and talking to delivery drivers much easier. But now that I think about it, sometimes the English spoken around here is foreign to me.
.

[leehljp]

Most Japanese can "understand/communicate" with Chinese through the writing system. When in China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, the most basic information is understandable to me in their language. Even their books and newspaper - while I can't figure a lot of it out, I can usually pick out the subject of the article and sometimes the intent. I have no clue as to the pronunciation.

As to world wide communication - English by far. Most countries have a considerable number of bi-lingual citizens. International business transactions are done primarily in English. Most Tourist areas world wide focus on English as the primary communication form - for even those tourist whose English is their second or third language.

Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) followed by Hindi are probably the worlds largest indigenous languages, but English is the most known/spoken world wide by virtue of it being the largest "second" language.

Putting this in a different light, knowing Chinese or Hindi has the effect of increasing one's ability to communicate with a larger segment of people ONLY if you are in China or India. But English will let you "get by" in far more corners of the earth.

Best or most communication format (Either written or spoken) on a world wide basis: English and Chinese.
English, in addition to English speaking countries - will give you access to India
Chinese - at least written - will give you "access" to China, Taiwan, SE Asia, Korea, Japan

[LCHIEN]

I think your appraisal of English as a widely spoken language is probably exaggerated by the fact that when you are traveling abroad the people you come in contact with speak English. E.g. tourist areas, business areas, foreign trade areas. as you get into more remote areas they will speak less English. For example in France I have travaelled and spent many days in Paris, a tourist and trade area, Nantes, a mainly industrial town, and in areas around Pau, more in the country. I could get by in Paris and Nantes, but in the countryside around Pau, I got blank stares when trying to communicate in English. Fortunately I can order magret de canard in French.

The US, UK Canada, and Australia have a combined pop of around 413 million.
even if there were generously two non-native english speakers for every native English speaker, that would still only be 1.25 billion english speakers, about 1 out of every 6 people on earth.

[Alex Franke]

Yeah, I'd say Mandarin on a global level... Hindi would be fun to try to learn, too, but I think you'd reach a *lot* more if you knew Mandarin.

In the West only, though, I'd pick Spanish.

[Alex Franke]

Cool -- check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ative_speakers

... and this one, which suggests 1.14M English speakers worldwide when you consider second languages as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ing_population

[shoottx]

I have had the opportunity to travel internationally a lot. The only english did not work as a means of communication was in London!

[leehljp]

I think your appraisal of English as a widely spoken language is probably exaggerated by the fact that when you are traveling abroad the people you come in contact with speak English. E.g. tourist areas, business areas, foreign trade areas. as you get into more remote areas they will speak less English. For example in France I have travaelled and spent many days in Paris, a tourist and trade area, Nantes, a mainly industrial town, and in areas around Pau, more in the country. I could get by in Paris and Nantes, but in the countryside around Pau, I got blank stares when trying to communicate in English. Fortunately I can order magret de canard in French.

The US, UK Canada, and Australia have a combined pop of around 413 million.
even if there were generously two non-native english speakers for every native English speaker, that would still only be 1.25 billion english speakers, about 1 out of every 6 people on earth.

I think we are talking two different values here. Original question was basically what two languages would you use to speak to the broadest group of people on the planet.
1. Largest indigenous language (Chinese)
2. Most broadly used language - both indigenous AND for communication outside of a single indigenous language. (English)

Remember that while Hindi is the second largest indigenous language behind Chinese, and with English as an official 2nd language of India, and the English usage and ability there increases its numbers considerably. Other countries that use English as their second language in business, engineering, scientific, commercial and tourist areas also add to this. (Wikipedia acknowledges that measuring English as a second language is imprecise. I concur in my underestimating it before the encounters with nationals of other countries that I have had.)

Of the 6 billion people on earth, they are not all one language of course - multiple multiple languages, therefore the most used single language outside of Chinese is still English - with Hindi being an argumentative case. Take the 6 billion, subtract the 1.25 you allow for English and you have 4.75 billion people non English speakers. Subtract the 1.3 billion for China and 1.1 billion for India and you have 2.35 billion in multiple languages.

By the time you divide the 2.35 billion into all of the other languages and then add in all of the other English as a 2nd language speakers in the world that may be left out , you will have English as number two.

While Chinese and Hindi are the two largest indigenous languages, they are primarily localized to those countries, i.e. 99% of those language usages are confined to those specific areas. English is not confined in such a manner.


As to your reference to France, If anyone were to ask me where in the romanized language speaking world, who would acknowledge the English language the least, I would say France. I have had many experiences with that from different perspectives and interactions. Germans are proud of their heritage but will attempt to communicate. Italians are proud too but will attempt to communicate; Spanish the same, but with French, the attitude has more often than not - been - "If you want to speak to me, speak my language even if I know English."

On the assumption of my going to tourist areas - rarely. Good guess though. I generally avoid tourist areas like the plague. I also prefer to go to the heart of a country's indigenous culture. To stay in indigenous work, LOML and I both avoid people seeking out English speakers. As to the line of work that I am in, I know that I cannot introduce my line of work very well from a foreign perspective, therefore I have to get to the heart of the culture and present my work from that aspect. And it ain't English or even Anglo.


I realize that I do manage to meet more of the educated and traveling crowd, which influences my perceptions:

Japanese travel quite a bit. When I ask people how they communicated when they were in Nairobi or Ethiopia, Paris or Germany, India, Malaysia, most of them say "by my limited English". Japanese love to speak of their travels. Even though they won't use English with me most of the time, they can and will when traveling. This has been one of two language surprises for me, as I never expected English to be so widely used as a second language in other countries.

The other surprise in language is from the scientific, engineering and business community of people from other countries that I have met here in Japan - as well as Japanese corporate people. They all tell me how much English is used as the standard for communication between countries among the business, scientific and engineering communities - in which neither country has English as it's indigenous language. I will add that the vast majority of the time, the conversations start off with them and me in Japanese. I always go into conversations here with the assumption that if they are working here in Japan, then they must speak Japanese rather fluently. And Japanese almost always assume that I can speak Japanese.

Last year I struck up a conversation with a fellow in Japanese when I was back in Osaka for a couple of days. I found out that he was from Malaysia. Then I found out that he could speak English. He had never been to the States or Australia. As a research scientist, he was in Japan studying the rice breeding techniques. I asked about why he could speak English so well (with an accent). He told me the same thing another Japanese friend (and president of the audio-visual division of a major Japanese electronics firm) told me - English is the universal translator language throughout the business, commercial, engineering and scientific world that they travel. A business importer told me the same, and these are people that travel the world on a regular basis.

I have two Chinese friends here (from the mainland) who work in Japanese companies that makes sales to China. Both of them would rather speak English than Japanese although we started our friendship through Japanese. Neither have been to a country where English is the indigenous language.

Yes, when you get deep into a country, you will find that English is not used, but that is so in any non English speaking country. But, because it is so widely used as a _second_ language, English becomes the most used non-indigenous language around the planet. I will not guarantee that you or I could understand it as such, but with some mental "hearing" adjustments it will come.

[docrowan]

the written chinese language is common, but the spoken language consists of a number of dialects. The official dialect is Mandarin so if the PRC government is being followed everyone is speaking this. China is very big on education and the population is being urbanized so I imagine a large percentage now speak Madarin.
There are what, 1.3+ billion chinese, so the chinese written language is probably the most widely read and the Mandarin is likely to be 1st also among spoken languages.

If you could speak to 98% of North and South Americans you would be addressing less than 15% of the world's people. (900 million out of 6.6 billion.)
2.5 billion of the worlds 6.6 billion people are indian or chinese... that's 38%.
If you spoke any of the major western languages - English, French, SPanish, Italian, german, portugese, Dutch - , you could not communicate, liguistically speaking, with this 38 percent of the world's people, and probably a lot more in other asian and eastern European countries.
You're in a distinct minority, I'm afraid.

My question was what one language in addition to English would enable you to speak to the largest number of people. Since this is an English language website, I presumed we all know English, and I am eliminating written language. (I can't imagine mastering the thousands of characters in some of the Asian languages). I knew that Mandarin was the "official" language in China, so I was inclined to say Mandarin on my initial post but I knew that there were dialects that may or may not allow Mandarin speakers to understand one another. Reading some wikipedia articles tends to confirm this. However, I agree that this would probably give you the "biggest bang for your buck."

I made the comments regarding the western hemisphere because that is where most of the users of this site live. (Although not all, which is one of the very cool things about this site.)

For myself, I have many more opportunities to maintain fluency in Spanish than I do any other language. Growing up in Louisiana, I took French in high school and college, but I can count on both hands the number of times I've had opportunity to speak with a francophone in the past 20 years. Hard to maintain any competency with that kind of frequency.

I suppose if you really wanted to unlock the key to speaking globally you need four - Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and English. Including speaking with people who know any of these four as a second language, that should get you speaking to about half the population of the Earth. If you were fluent in these four it would probably help you more quickly learn enough to get around with in other languages. However, you would have to have regular contact with these languages or you would lose them. Since I don't have those opportunities in Mandarin and Hindi, I believe I'll focus on learning Spanish. Of course there is that Toyota plant they're building 20 miles from here . . . .

[LCHIEN]

OK, then you need the universal translator robot, R2D2.

[jspelbring]

Esperanto, what else?

I learned Esperanto a few years ago, and have used it to communicate with people from:
Brazil, Lithuania, Russia, China, Korea and Sweden.

http://www.esperanto-usa.org
http://lernu.net

It's easy, it's logical, and it even has a nice sound (to my ears anyway).

Completely phonetic - every letter has one and only one sound
No irregular verbs

[jziegler]

My question was what one language in addition to English would enable you to speak to the largest number of people. Since this is an English language website, I presumed we all know English, and I am eliminating written language. (I can't imagine mastering the thousands of characters in some of the Asian languages). I knew that Mandarin was the "official" language in China, so I was inclined to say Mandarin on my initial post but I knew that there were dialects that may or may not allow Mandarin speakers to understand one another. Reading some wikipedia articles tends to confirm this. However, I agree that this would probably give you the "biggest bang for your buck."

I made the comments regarding the western hemisphere because that is where most of the users of this site live. (Although not all, which is one of the very cool things about this site.)

For myself, I have many more opportunities to maintain fluency in Spanish than I do any other language. Growing up in Louisiana, I took French in high school and college, but I can count on both hands the number of times I've had opportunity to speak with a francophone in the past 20 years. Hard to maintain any competency with that kind of frequency.

I suppose if you really wanted to unlock the key to speaking globally you need four - Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and English. Including speaking with people who know any of these four as a second language, that should get you speaking to about half the population of the Earth. If you were fluent in these four it would probably help you more quickly learn enough to get around with in other languages. However, you would have to have regular contact with these languages or you would lose them. Since I don't have those opportunities in Mandarin and Hindi, I believe I'll focus on learning Spanish. Of course there is that Toyota plant they're building 20 miles from here . . . .

Globally, French is more widely used than Spanish is, although the numbers on the wikipedia page mentioned are close. Spanish is more widely spoken in the Americas than French (excluding Canada, I would imagine), but French is widely used in parts of Africa. Including secondary speakers, French ranks as the fourth most common language. In Europe, French covers a larger area than Spanish. Now if you want to learn something that you can use locally, that becomes a different story, and for many Spanish will be best.

Jim

[LarryG]

Random thoughts that don't necessarily answer the original question, but speak to some of the various comments, especially those from Hank:

If I'm not mistaken, the worldwide air traffic control system uses English.

During the broadcast of a recent Formula 1 auto race, the driver of one of the cars was talking to his chief engineer over the radio. Both men were Italian. They spoke in English.

In the short-lived and much-missed television series Firefly, which was set 500 years in the future, an intriguing element of the back story was that sometime in future, the United States and China will merge, politically and economically and culturally. In the show, there was an omnipresent yet somewhat mysterious supercorporation called Blue Sun than controlled not only the trade but much of everything else. (Its logo depicted a blue sun but I always thought the word "sun" was chosen mainly for its Oriental flavor.) In many scenes, especially those that took place on the more highly-developed planets, signs and logos and advertising that were written using Chinese characters were prominently displayed in the background. And while the main characters all spoke English, they swore in Chinese. Fans of the show think that all this could have provided a possible preview of what might well come to pass at some point in future, and not necessarily the distant future. Unfortunately, the show was canceled before any of these thematic ideas could be more fully developed and explored.

[herb fellows]

While it is true that English is spoken less in rural areas, it is still the predominant second language virtually everywhere on earth. It is almost a requirement in primary schools in most countries, if it isn't actually one.
It is the language, for instance, that all airline pilots must commmunicate in, regardless of where they're from. At least at this point in time,it is a requirement for doing business globally. Probably not a bad idea to practice your Mandarin though!

I think your appraisal of English as a widely spoken language is probably exaggerated by the fact that when you are traveling abroad the people you come in contact with speak English. E.g. tourist areas, business areas, foreign trade areas. as you get into more remote areas they will speak less English. For example in France I have travaelled and spent many days in Paris, a tourist and trade area, Nantes, a mainly industrial town, and in areas around Pau, more in the country. I could get by in Paris and Nantes, but in the countryside around Pau, I got blank stares when trying to communicate in English. Fortunately I can order magret de canard in French.

The US, UK Canada, and Australia have a combined pop of around 413 million.
even if there were generously two non-native english speakers for every native English speaker, that would still only be 1.25 billion english speakers, about 1 out of every 6 people on earth.