Quote: Mosquito665 - 2009.09.14. 21:06:45 Could be a stupid question. I typed "most popular languages" to google. The very first site said this (http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/10languages.htm):
Aug 23 2007
Here's a listing of the ten most popular languages spoken worldwide, along with the approximate number of primary or first language speakers for that language.
1. Mandarin Chinese - 882 million
2. Spanish - 325 million
3. English - 312-380 million
4. Arabic - 206-422 million
5. Hindi - 181 million
6. Portuguese - 178 million
7. Bengali - 173 million
8. Russian - 146 million
9. Japanese - 128 million
10. German - 96 million
The 2nd site (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html):
Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most popular world languages, with over a billion speakers. English trails in third place, with just over 320 million speakers. This data includes all speakers of the languages, not only native speakers.
Both seem to be an american site. Time to blame them
This seams odd to me. Having 300 mil. people in USA and 50 mil. people in England and knowing that English is usually the main foreign language taught on schools all over Europe at least (well, it's at least the main second language almost all over the world and main language on internet...) I don't think the number is correct. The other thing is if it is enough to overcome the mandarine language, but still...
