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World Languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Mad Max Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 4863 days ago 79 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Russian Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 57 of 58 03 January 2012 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
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O.K. I see that it is necessary to add Portuguese to my first list.
So, we need, at least, two requirements to be an Intercontinental language: 1. To give 1 point to the language spoken by over 50 million people in each continent 2. To add 0.25 points to the language that doesn't meet this requirement but it is at least official in one country of this continent. Intercontinental languages: 1. English 4.25 NA, EU, AF, AS (SA) 2. Spanish 3.25 NA, EU, SA (AF) 3. French 2.50 EU, AF (NA, AS) 4. Arabic 2 ;AF, AS 5. Russian 2 EU, AS 6. Portuguese 1.75 SA (AF, EU, AS) I know that is arbitrary too, and it is difficult to reach a consensus on this matter, but I think that it is a better list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5227 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 58 of 58 03 January 2012 at 5:47am | IP Logged |
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^ After years of similar attempt to assign "points" to a whole variety of factors (MUCH more extensive than the two you just chose), I've realized that the ranking of all the "big" languages can be ordered in ANY possible manner, depending on the arbitrary factors considered and their corresponding weighting.
My first round of attempt to "deduce" the world's most influential languages (other than English) by manner of point allocation repeatedly yielded Mandarin on top, with French, Japanese, and perhaps Spanish all tied for second, and all the rest fluctuating order with every single independent combination of factors and weighting. What's notable here is that French always, without exception, scored higher than German. My third round of attempt involved extensive data calculation with a different methodological approach to scoring points (I used automated Excel features), and not only did French lose its ground relative to second place, it consistently scored below German, without exception. Likewise, in many of the independent methodological tests, German consistently tied with Portuguese, suggesting that an influential but stagnant German sphere and a relatively minor but rapidly growing Lusophone sphere had, at this point in history (taking into account both present contexts and future-oriented trends), converged into an equivalent amount of influence. Then, later, with my Excel calculations, German repeatedly outscored Portuguese and in fact regularly landed in second place after Mandarin. The insight to be gained from all this? The same numbers can communicate different things, because there is no intrinsic "weighting" of any particular aspect of any particular language. Going back to the above approach, why does a continent comprising just over 2% of world GDP (Africa) receive equal consideration to a continent comprising 36% of world GDP (Asia)? This is of course a rhetorical question, as we all know it shouldn't. Likewise, 100 million German speakers are more influential than 400 million Hindi speakers, and likewise Korean (pop. 70 million) is more influential abroad than Bengali (pop. 230 million). The above paragraph illustrates that trying to deduce the influences of languages relative to each other using only those two factors is ill-fated. And trust me, incorporating more factors isn't going to make things any clearer. I think part of the reason this sort of discussion is so convoluted is because the "ranking" of languages in accordance to how much of a "world language" they are is just an artificial semantic meandering relying on the false assumption of quantifiable relativity outside of these languages' native communities. I've said this before, but aside from English, it's all regional. Spanish is just as useful as Hungarian in a business or commercial exchange between Japan and South Korea. A speaker of Mandarin may as well speak Vietnamese if trying to broker an economic exchange between Argentina and Poland. The same goes for any of the "world language" contenders being discussed here. It's all regional. I'd have typed the preceding sentence in CAPS, but I don't want to come across as shouting. But seriously, I feel like shouting, because it's such a fundamental aspect to this discussion that is passively ignored for the convenience of hypothetical speculation. Anyone's free to speculate, but don't do so with the mindset that this hypothetical speculation corresponds to reality. It's a fun exercise in applying data and trend analysis, but it's science fiction. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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