World language

A world language is a language spoken internationally, which is learned by many people as a second language. A world language is not only characterized by the number of its speakers (native or second language speakers), but also by its geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic relations. In this respect, major world languages are dominated by languages of European origin. The historical reason for this is the period of European colonialism. World languages originating with historical colonial empires include English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The international prominence of Arabic has its historical reason in the medieval Islamic conquests.

Other major languages are not widely used across several continents, but have an international significance as the lingua franca of a historical empire. These include Mandarin Chinese in the Chinese empire, Russian in the Russian empire, German in the German empire, and Hindi following the British Raj which united India.

The major languages of the Indian subcontinent, Hindustani (including all Hindi dialects and Urdu) and Bengali, have numbers of speakers comparable to those of major world languages primarily due to the extreme population growth in the region in recent decades rather than a super-regional use of these languages. Similarly, Japanese has more speakers than French, but while French is spoken intercontinentally and has a significant portion of second language speakers, the vast majority of Japanese speakers are native Japanese.

History[]

The Romance languages bear testimony to the role of Latin as the lingua franca of the Roman Empire. Koine Greek was the "world language" of the Hellenistic period, but its distribution is not reflected in the distribution of Modern Greek due to the linguistic impact of the Slavic, Muslim and Turkic expansions. The distribution of the Turkic languages, in turn, are a legacy of the Turkic Khaganate.

Just as all the de facto world languages owe their status to historical imperialism, the suggestion of a given language as a world language or "universal language" has strong political implications. Thus, Russian was declared the "world language of internationalism in Soviet literature, which at the same time denounced French as the "language of fancy courtiers" and English as the "jargon of traders".^[1] A number of international auxiliary languages have been introduced as prospective world languages, the most successful of them being Esperanto, but none of them can claim the status of a de facto world language. Many natural languages have been proffered as candidates for a global lingua franca, including Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, German and Malay.^[2]

De facto world languages[]

A de facto world language has the following properties^[3]

a large number of speakers
a substantive fraction of non-native speakers (function as lingua franca)
a standard register which is widely taught as a foreign language
the linguistic community is not defined along ethnic lines (multiethnic, pluricentric language)
official status in several countries
use in international trade relations
use in international organizations
use in the academic community
significant body of literature
association with linguistic prestige

World languages in this sense are the six official languages of the UN (Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic) as well as German, Hindi and Portuguese:

language	native speakers	total speakers	distribution	standard register	regulator
Mandarin Chinese	1,000 M	1,051 M	Greater China	Standard Mandarin, Vernacular Chinese	National Languages Committee
English	350 M	1,000 M^[4]	Anglosphere, worldwide	Standard English	officially none
Hindustani (Hindi+Urdu)	460 M	650 M^[5]	Indian subcontinent (Hindi belt, Pakistan)	Khariboli (Standard Hindi, Urdu)	Central Hindi Directorate, National Language Authority of Pakistan
Spanish	400 M	500 M	Hispanophone (Hispanidad)	Standard Spanish	Real Academia Española, Association of Spanish Language Academies
Arabic	200 M	300 M	Arab world; Near East, North Africa	Standard Arabic	Academy of the Arabic Language
Russian	165 M	280 M	Russia, Eastern Europe, Russian Far East, former Soviet Union		Russian Academy of Sciences
Portuguese	190 M	230 M	Lusosphere (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, etc.)		International Portuguese Language Institute, Community of Portuguese Language Countries
German	100 M	150 M	German-speaking Europe	Standard German	Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung
French	65 M^[6] to 109 M^[7]	115 M to 265 M^[8]^[9]^[10]^[11]	Francophonie	Standard French	Académie française, Office québécois de la langue française, Council for the Development of French in Louisiana

All the languages listed have more than 100 million speakers (as of the 2000s, estimates based on SIL Ethnologue). There are two other languages with a number of speakers in excess of 100 million, viz. Bengali and Japanese.^[12] Both of these are not considered world languages, because their communities are strongly tied to ethnicity, and are regionally limited sphere of influence;^[13]). Of the nine de facto world languages listed, six have a significantly intercontinental sphere of influence, with Chinese, German and Hindi restricted to a more regional Sprachraum, Greater China, Europe and South Asia, respectively, with scattered diaspora communities (Chinese diaspora, German diaspora, Indian diaspora).

Chinese, Arabic, German, Hindi are macrolanguages or pluricentric languages, consisting of dialects of limited mutual comprehensibility (Chinese dialects, Arabic dialects, Hindi dialects, German dialects).

The Nobel Prize in Literature reflects the international reception of a major langauge's literary production. Literary languages with five or more Nobel laureates are:

Language written	Laureates	%
English	27	25.47
French	13	12.26
German	12	11.32
Spanish	10	9.43
Italian	6	5.67
Swedish	6	5.67
Russian	5	4.72

The distribution, again, betrays an Eurocentric bias, stemming from the age of colonialism, and form the historical origin of the printing press, and consequently of increased literary activity, in Europe. The disproportionate number of prizes going to Swedish language authors (a language with some 10 million speakers) reflects the Nobel prize being a Scandinavian institution, Alfred Nobel having been Swedish.

Other super-regional languages[]

Template:See Other languages of super-regional importance which fail some of the other criteria to be considered de facto world languages include

language	native speakers	total speakers	distribution	regulator
Bengali	170 M	210 M	Bengal	Bangla Academy, Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi
Malay	30 M	200 M	Southeast Asia (the "Malay world")	Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka
Farsi	70 M	100 M	Greater Persia	Academy of Persian Language and Literature, Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan
Filipino	25 M	90 M	Philippines	Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino
Swahili	10 M	80 M	East Africa	Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa
Dutch+Afrikaans	30 M	45 M	Dutch-speaking world	Dutch Language Union
Italian	69 M	74 M	Italy and adjacent regions	Accademia della Crusca
Hausa	25 M	40 M	West Africa	none

Notes[]

↑ Pei, p. 105
↑ Pei p. 105
↑ c.f. De Mejía p. 47f.
↑ depending on what constitutes a second language speaker, estimates vary between 0.5 and 1.8 billion.
↑ figures are based on the 1991 census of India. They are highly unreliable due to the huge population growth in the area.
↑ Ethnologue report for language code:fra
↑ Francophonie
↑ Ethnologue report for language code:fra
↑ DGLF - La francophonie en chiffres
↑ Multilingualism on the Web. 2. Multilingualism
↑ Francophonie
↑ depending on classification on its disparate dialects, the Punjabi language may be counted as the 12th language with a total number of speakers just in excess of 100 million
↑ c.f. Pei p. 15

References[]

Christian Mair (ed.), The Politics of English As a World Language (2003), ISBN 9042008768.
Mario Pei, One Language for the World (1958), ISBN 0819602183.
Anne-Marie De Mejía, Power, Prestige, and Bilingualism: International Perspectives on Elite Bilingual Education (2002), ISBN 185359590X.
David Crystal, English as a Global Language (2003), ISBN 0521530326.
Clare Mar-Molinero, The Politics of Language in the Spanish-speaking World (2000), ISBN 0415156556.

External links[]

English 'world language' forecast (BBC, December 2004)
World Language Maps

af:Wêreldtaal de:Weltsprache eo:Mondlingvo nl:Wereldtaal no:Verdensspråk pt:Língua mundial ru:Международный язык sv:Världsspråk

[1] Pei, p. 105

[2] Pei p. 105

[3] .f. De Mejía p. 47f.

[4] what constitutes a second language speaker, estimates vary between 0.5 and 1.8 billion.

[5] ures are based on the 1991 census of India. They are highly unreliable due to the huge population growth in the area.

[6] Ethnologue report for language code:fra

[7] Francophonie

[8] Ethnologue report for language code:fra

[9] DGLF - La francophonie en chiffres

[10] Multilingualism on the Web. 2. Multilingualism

[11] Francophonie

[12] ↑ depending on classification on its disparate dialects, the Punjabi language may be counted as the 12th language with a total number of speakers just in excess of 100 million

[13] .f. Pei p. 15

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