[thechat] Most spoken languages in the world

[William Anderson]

---- Original Message ----
From: "rudy" <rudy937 at rogers.com>
To: "thechat" <thechat at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2002 1:11 AM
Subject: [thechat] Most spoken languages in the world

> i read the following three times, slowly, and i *still* don't get it
>
>   "While every expert would assert that India's population
>    will surpass China's, chances are that there will always be
>    more Mandarin-speaking people because English is widely
>    spoken in India, but not in China."

The assertions are:

There are 500 million people who speak English.
There are 600 million people who speak Hindi.
There are 1 billion people who speak Mandarin.
There will eventually be more people in India than in China.
There will be more Mandarin speaking people than English speaking people.
English is widely spoken in India.
English is not widely spoken in China.

Ergo:

While India's population will increase in size beyond that of China, the
increased number of people in India will likely speak primarily in English,
not in Hindi or Mandarin, thus propogating the number of English speakers
from 500m upwards, not 600m upwards from Hindi.  So even though there may be
more *Indians* in the world than *Chinese*, the bulk of Chinese will speak
Mandarin, while Indians are split between Hindi and English.

Christ, this is a tricky one to summarise :)

English is marked as the number 3 language on the globe.  The more people in
India speaking English detracts from Hindi, the number two language.  The
more people who speak English instead of Hindi means that English may
eventually rise to 2nd place, but *still* behind Mandarin at the top, since
there are more Mandarin speakers.

Clearer?  I'm off for a brain enema personally.

--
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