[thechat] Most spoken languages in the world

[Madhu Menon]

At 06:49 AM 7/4/2002, Paul Cowan wrote:
>Because:
> > The more people in India speaking English detracts from Hindi, the number
> > two language.
>
>There's the problem. The set of Indian people who speak Hindi and
>the set of Indian people who speak English are not (necessarily)
>disjoint sets -- or anything like it. So the above sentence is not
>always an either/or proposition.

Exactly. While English is the language of business and education here,
almost all Indians have a different first language. Since the Northern,
Hindi-speaking regions have the higher levels of population (and
illiteracy), Hindi is the most widely-spoken language, though it has
several dialects. And thanks to our film industry, lovingly called
"Bollywood" (which also happens to be the largest film industry in the
world), many people in the Southern, Eastern, and Western states can also
speak Hindi.

So... even if the number of English-speaking people *does* rise, it will
never be that they speak *only* English. Chances are that the majority will
probably speak Hindi too.

Regards,

Madhu

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Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net