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World language

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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, German, 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 Greek in the Hellenistic world after the conquests of Alexander the Great, Latin in the Roman Empire, Russian in the Russian empire, Mandarin Chinese in the Chinese empire, German in the Holy Roman Empire, Tamil in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore 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 native 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, Arabic and Turkic expansions. The distribution of the Turkic languages, in turn, are a legacy of the Turkic Khaganate.

Just as all the living 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 living world language. Many natural languages have been proffered as candidates for a global lingua franca, including Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, German and Malay.[2][citation needed]

Living world languages

A living world language has the following properties[3]

World languages in this sense are the six official languages of the UN (Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic) as well as Hindi/Urdu and Portuguese[citation needed]:

Language Native speakers Total speakers Distribution Maps
Mandarin Chinese 600 M 1051 M Greater China (Sinosphere)
English 350 M 1000 M[4] Anglosphere & worldwide
Hindustani (Hindi+Urdu) 460 M 650 M[5] Indian subcontinent (Indosphere: Hindi belt, Pakistan)
French 79 M [6] to 109 M[7] 500 M Francophonie
Spanish 330 M 430 M Hispanosphere
Arabic 200 M 300 M Arab world; Near East, North Africa
Russian 165 M 275 M Russia, Eastern Europe, Russian Far East, former Soviet Union
Portuguese 215 M 235 M Lusosphere (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, etc.)

All the languages listed have more than 100 million speakers (as of the 2000s, estimates based on SIL Ethnologue). There are three other languages with a number of speakers in excess of 100 million, viz. Bengali, German, and Japanese.[8]These are not considered world languages- despite their respective history of empires, because their communities are strongly tied to ethnicity, and, at least now, are regionally limited sphere of influence;[9]). Of the eight living world languages listed, six have a significantly intercontinental sphere of influence, with Chinese and Hindi restricted to a more regional Sprachraum, Greater China and South Asia, respectively, with scattered diaspora communities (Chinese 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).

Other super-regional languages

Further information: Lingua franca

Other languages of supra-regional importance which fail some of the other criteria to be considered de facto world languages include

language native speakers total speakers distribution regulator
Persian 70 M 144 M Greater Iran 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 and Afrikaans 30 M 45 M Dutch-speaking world Dutch Language Union, Die Taalkommissie
Italian 69 M 74 M Italy and adjacent regions Accademia della Crusca

Notes

  1. ^ Pei, p. 105
  2. ^ Pei p. 105
  3. ^ c.f. De Mejía p. 47f.
  4. ^ depending on what constitutes a second language speaker, estimates vary between 0.5 and 1.8 billion.
  5. ^ figures are based on the 1991 census of India. They are highly unreliable due to the huge population growth in the area.
  6. ^ "The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages". SIL-Ethnolgue.
  7. ^ Francophonie
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ 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.

See also

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