What are the most important languages? We'll start with the following assumptions:
1. The language student wishes to have the maximum possible flexibility throughout the world.
2. Basic communication, and not fluency, is the standard of success.
There are lots of ways of calculating this answer. Number of native speakers, number of first and second speakers, number of countries where a language is spoken, relative economic influence of those speakers. I'm going to take this question to another level. We'll be considering the effect of sprachbund ( language family), relative isolation, difficulty of learning, and availability of alternate communication among native speakers. We'll assign positive and negative points for all of these factors. We'll also take into account emergent, as opposed to historical, trends in globalism.
For simplicity sake, we'll be comparing just eleven languages, including English.
These are (alphabetically):
1. Arabic
2. Chinese (Mandarin)
3. English
4. French
5. German
6. Hindi
7. Japanese
8. Korean
9. Portuguese
10. Russian
11. Spanish
Here are the variables:
N. Number of native speakers (as a first language). 4 + 0.1 awarded for every 25 million speakers, rounded to the nearest 25). Note that the relative difference is small except for in the case of Hindi and Chinese. Wikipedia
1. Chinese (Mandarin) (1.1 billion) = 8.4
2. Hindi/Urdu (350 million) = 5.4
3. Spanish (330 million) = 5.3
4. English (300 million) = 5.2
5. Arabic (200 million) = 4.8
6. Portuguese (160 million) = 4.6
7. Russian (160 million) = 4.6
8. Japanese (125 million) = 4.5
9. German (100 million) = 4.4
10. French (75 million) = 4.3
11. Korean (72 million) = 4.3
E. Economic rank. 1 + percentage of world GDP (per language) / 10. unicode.org/notes/tn13/
1. English (28.2%) = 3.8
2. Chinese (22.8%) = 3.3
3. Japanese (5.6%) = 1.6
4. Spanish (5.2%) = 1.5
5. German (4.9%) = 1.5
6. French (4.2%) = 1.4
7. Portuguese (3.4%) = 1.3
8. Russian (2.1%) = 1.2
9. Hindi (2.1%) = 1.2
10. Arabic (2.0%) = 1.2
11. Korean (1.4%) = 1.1
S. Number of speakers as a second language. This is also a measure of the language's versatility, hence it's relatively heavy weight: 2 + 0.1 for every 10 million speakers, rounded to the nearest 10. Wikipedia
1. French (190 million) = 3.9
2. English (150 million) = 3.5
3. Russian (125 million) = 3.3
4. Portuguese (28 million) = 2.3
5. Arabic (21 million) = 2.2
6. Chinese (20 million) = 2.2
7. Spanish (20 million) = 2.2
8. German (9 million) = 2.1
9. Japanese (8 million) = 2.1
10. Hindi (?) = 2
11. Korean (?) = 2
C. Number of countries where spoken. Number of countries / 10 + 0.1 for every 50 million people. You'll notice that English gets a huge - and admittedly unfair - advantage on this one. Many of those 115 countries are small islands in the Caribbean, for instance. Before you accuse me of Anglo-chauvinism, remember that we're starting from the assumption that *you* read and speak English. Therefore, English isn't even included in the question. www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
1. English (115) = 11.5 + 0.6 = 12.1
2. French (35) = 3.5 + 0.2 = 3.7
3. Arabic (24) = 2.4 + 0.4 = 2.8
4. Spanish (20) = 2.0 + 0.7 = 2.7
5. Russian (16) = 1.6 + 0.3 = 1.9
6. German (9) = 0.9 + 0.2 = 1.1
7. Chinese (Mandarin) (5) = 0.5 + 2.2 = 2.7
8. Portuguese (5) = 0.5 + 0.3 = 0.8
9. Hindi/Urdu (2) = 0.2 + 0.7 = 0.9
10. Korean (2) = 0.2 + 0.1 = 0.3
11. Japanese (1) = 0.1 + 0.3 = 0.4
L. "Learnability" (for an English speaker). Reverse scale from 2 to 0. 2 is highly learnable, 0 is very difficult. Increments of 0.1. (Ref: arbitrary judgement which includes the relative difficulty of learning to read the language).
1. Arabic = 0.3
2. Chinese (Mandarin) = 0.1
3. English = 2.0
4. French = 1.4
5. German = 1.6
6. Hindi = 0.4
7. Japanese = 0.4
8. Korean = 0.5
9. Portuguese = 1.4
10. Russian = 1.0
11. Spanish = 1.6
B. Sprachbund rank - is the language part of a larger family of languages in which more alternatives exist? Among the languages on the list, does it stand alone? Scale between 0 and 1 in increments of 0.1.
1. Arabic = 1.0
2. Chinese (Mandarin) = 1.0
3. English = 0.5
4. French = 0.4
5. German = 0.4
6. Hindi = 1.0
7. Japanese = 0.9
8. Korean = 0.9
9. Portuguese = 0.3
10. Russian = 0.7
11. Spanish = 0.5
R. "Replaceability" - Do other language options exist in significant numbers? For instance, while Morocco is Arabic-speaking, many people speak French. In Morrocco, Arabic is "replaceable" with French. Scale of 0 to 1 in increments of 0.1. Low numbers means that it has a good chance of being replaceable by another language on the list. A low number reflects a high number of multi-linguals among a quorum of the population. In some cases, this tends to offset the advantage of "N" (# of countries spoken-in).
1. Arabic = 0.8
2. Chinese (Mandarin) = 0.7
3. English = 0.9
4. French = 0.2
5. German = 0.1
6. Hindi = 0.5
7. Japanese = 0.8
8. Korean = 0.7
9. Portuguese = 0.5
10. Russian = 0.7
11. Spanish = 0.6
X. Special factors such as emergent economic or diplomatic consideration. Takes into account secondary speakers throughout the world. Scale of 0 to 2 in increments of 0.1.
1. Arabic = 1.4
2. Chinese (Mandarin) = 1.4
3. English = 0.0
4. French = 1.1
5. German = 0.5
6. Hindi = 1.8
7. Japanese = 1.2
8. Korean = 1.6
9. Portuguese = 0.7
10. Russian = 1.5
11. Spanish = 2.0
F. "Friendliness." How likely are you to have a chance to put your skills to use? Scale of 0 to 1 in increments of 0.1. A purely arbitrary judgement based on impressions of receptivity to tourism.
1. Arabic = 0.3
2. Chinese (Mandarin) = 0.6
3. English = 0.9
4. French = 0.5
5. German = 0.6
6. Hindi = 0.6
7. Japanese = 0.4
8. Korean = 0.8
9. Portuguese = 0.4
10. Russian = 0.5
11. Spanish = 0.6
Here are the calculations:
English:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
5.2 3.8 3.5 12.1 2.0 0.5 0.9 0.0 0.9 28.9
Chinese (Mandarin):
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
8.4 3.3 2.2 0.5 0.1 1.0 0.7 1.4 0.6 18.2
Spanish:
N + C + S + E + L + B + R + X + F =
5.3 1.5 2.2 2.7 1.6 0.5 0.6 2.0 0.6 17.0
French:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.3 1.4 3.9 3.7 1.4 0.4 0.2 1.1 0.5 16.9
Russian:
N + C + S + E + L + B + R + X + F =
4.6 1.2 3.3 1.9 1.0 0.7 0.7 1.5 0.5 15.4
Arabic:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.8 1.2 2.2 2.4 0.3 1.0 0.8 1.4 0.3 14.4
Hindi:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
5.4 1.2 2.0 0.9 0.4 1.0 0.5 1.8 0.6 13.8
Japanese:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.5 1.6 2.1 0.4 0.5 0.9 0.8 1.2 0.4 12.4
German:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.4 1.5 2.1 1.1 1.6 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.6 12.3
Portuguese:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.6 1.3 2.3 0.8 1.4 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.4 12.3
Korean:
N + E + S + C + L + B + R + X + F =
4.3 1.1 2.0 0.3 0.5 0.9 0.7 1.6 0.8 12.2
0. English 28.9 (Widespread, ecomomically dominant)
1. Chinese 18.2 (Extremely populous, multi-emergent)
2. Spanish 17.0 (Locally important, widespread)
3. French 16.9 (Essential worldwide as a secondary language)
4. Russian 15.4 (Irreplaceable gateway language, populous / emergent)
5. Arabic 14.4 (Widespread, often irreplaceable. Local dialects dominate)
6. Hindi 13.8 (Highly populous, multi-emergent)
7. Japanese 12.4 (Economically significant, localized)
8. German 12.3 (Highly replaceable)
9. Portuguese 12.3 (Localized)
10. Korean 12.2 (Localized)
Japaneses through Korean represent powerful, albeit localized languages. All three are replaceable to a limited degree- either by English or Spanish (thanks to the versatility of the local population).
This is not a "perfect" calculus. It makes many arbitrary assumptions. In the case of the last four languages, the differences are practically insignificant. One could easily argue that the local importance of Spanish greatly outweighs the vast numbers faraway Chinese. However, recall that the original assumption is that the language student is traveling throughout the world and is looking for the greatest amount of versatility with the least number of languages.
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