Most Important Natural Languages?

[dhok]

Here's a question for you: if you wanted to learn the ten most important natural languages, what should that list look like?

Sounds like a simple question, but it's not, and I'm trying to figure out the right answer- it's an interesting question, at least.. According to Wikipedia, if you were to learn the ten biggest languages by number of speakers, here's what you'd get:

Mandarin
Spanish
English
Hindi/Urdu
Arabic
Bengali
Portuguese
Russian
Japanese
Punjabi

Obviously this is unsatisfactory: Bengali and Punjabi but not French or German? An esoteric choice, to say the least, for most polyglots.

The best list I've been able to come up with, as a nice round list, is this:

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

...based more or less on historical and cultural prominence, but even that completely excludes the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa. And sheer historical importance doesn't do much either; here's a potential list by that count:

English
French
German
Latin
Italian
Ancient Greek
Classical Chinese
Sanskrit
Koranic Arabic
Russian

...which completely excludes Iberia, and the modern Far East.


So it seems a difficult question? By a measure of your choice, what are the ten most important languages?

[Bob Johnson]

define important

[dhok]

define important

Well, that's one of the things up for debate...

[Ambrisio]

Or, for the linguistic freaks out there:

1. Ubykh
2. !Xoo
3. Piraha
4. Ticuna
5. Hixkaryana
6. Bella Coola
7. Sindhi
8. Iwaidja
9. Archi
10. Leetspeak

[Kezdő]

Aramaic was surely important; it was the official language of the Persian Empire at a time when it contained 44% of Earth's population. It may have also been Jesus' language, but I'm not sure how relevant that really is. It's not like Muhammad and Arabic. Also Proto-World if it ever existed, which I highly doubt.

[Vuvuzela]

In no particular order
English (the most widely-used lingua franca)
Spanish (Lingua Franca of Latin America)
Arabic (Al-Fosha, lingua franca of most of the Middle East, North Africa, and a few other Muslim countries)
Swahili (an important lingua franca in a specific bit of sub-Saharan Africa)
Lingala (like Swahili, but for a different bit of Africa)
Afrikaans (like the above, but for a more southish bit)
Mandarin (most natively-spoken language in the world; lingua franca of China)
Russian (lingua franca for a large portion of the ex-soviet union)
Latin (in case you ever want to learn another Romance language but don't know which)
Hindi/Urdu/Nepali (lingua franca of a large part of India, plus some assorted other countries. If you can speak one, you can understand the othesr easily enough to pick any of them up within a week, so I wouldn't recommend learning both if you're just learning them because they're "important")
As you can see, this list is mostly based around things that are lingua francas of some bit of the world. You could arguably include French over some of the ones I put, but learning Latin makes learning French, Spanish, Italian, etc. much easier.

[Radius Solis]

Let me get this straight. You're asking us to debate what an "important language" is, in a vacuum - i.e. without having answered "important for what?" - and therefore only a matter of individual prejudices about what's important to find important.

How is this very different from asking which languages are the most complex? Or which are the oldest?

[Vuvuzela]

Let me get this straight. You're asking us to debate what an "important language" is, in a vacuum - i.e. without having answered "important for what?" - and therefore only a matter of individual prejudices about what's important to find important.

How is this very different from asking which languages are the most complex? Or which are the oldest?

Which language is the most language-like?

[Kezdő]

Let me get this straight. You're asking us to debate what an "important language" is, in a vacuum - i.e. without having answered "important for what?" - and therefore only a matter of individual prejudices about what's important to find important.

How is this very different from asking which languages are the most complex? Or which are the oldest?

Which language is the most language-like?

Gibberish?

[installer_swan]

... the ten most important natural languages, what should that list look like? ...
The best list I've been able to come up with, as a nice round list, is this:

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

...based more or less on historical and cultural prominence

Eurocentric much?

[Gulliver]

... the ten most important natural languages, what should that list look like? ...
The best list I've been able to come up with, as a nice round list, is this:

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

...based more or less on historical and cultural prominence

Eurocentric much?

Well, the world was fairly eurocentric for a long time. Empires and colonisation have that effect. Likewise, Mandarin and Japanese are empire-languages. I'm not sure whether there was ever an Arabic empire because I don't know my history that well, but religion comes with culture comes with hegemony comes with language spreading. But you knew all that already.

If I wanted to travel round the world and talk to as many people as possible, I'd probably go for English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, French, an Arabic language (North African or Gulf?) and Russian. Obviously that wouldn't get me through every country, but I think they would open up the most.

[Miekko]

... the ten most important natural languages, what should that list look like? ...
The best list I've been able to come up with, as a nice round list, is this:

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

...based more or less on historical and cultural prominence

Eurocentric much?

Well, the world was fairly eurocentric for a long time. Empires and colonisation have that effect. Likewise, Mandarin and Japanese are empire-languages. I'm not sure whether there was ever an Arabic empire because I don't know my history that well, but religion comes with culture comes with hegemony comes with language spreading. But you knew all that already.

If I wanted to travel round the world and talk to as many people as possible, I'd probably go for English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, French, an Arabic language (North African or Gulf?) and Russian. Obviously that wouldn't get me through every country, but I think they would open up the most.

If Empires are the thing, why no Greek? Why no Turkish? Why no Persian? Why no Arabic?

[Gulliver]

If Empires are the thing, why no Greek? Why no Turkish? Why no Persian? Why no Arabic?

The sands of time, my friend, the sands of time.

Greek and Persian were lingua francas for a large period of history. Ottoman Turkish was used as a book-language over a wide area (similar to, say, Classical Arabic or Latin). History marches on.

[installer_swan]

If Empires are the thing, why no Greek? Why no Turkish? Why no Persian? Why no Arabic?

The sands of time, my friend, the sands of time.

Greek and Persian were lingua francas for a large period of history. Ottoman Turkish was used as a book-language over a wide area (similar to, say, Classical Arabic or Latin). History marches on.

French, Portuguese, Italian and German are hardly widespread lingua francas today. The whole idea of some objective criterion for importance of languages is silly. However, if you want to be able to communicate with locals in as much of the world as possible, then I don't see the point of learning languages as closely related as the three romance languages above, when you already have Spanish.

If you just want communication range, I would pick something like :
1. English
2. Mandarin
3. Arabic
4. Spanish
5. Hindi-Urdu
6. Bahasa Indonesia/Malay
7. Swahili
8. Burmese
9. Tamil
10.Quechua or maybe a Germanic language

[Miekko]

Obviously this is unsatisfactory: Bengali and Punjabi but not French or German?

BEGGING THE QUESTION much?

[Mr. Z]

If Empires are the thing, why no Greek? Why no Turkish? Why no Persian? Why no Arabic?

The sands of time, my friend, the sands of time.

Greek and Persian were lingua francas for a large period of history. Ottoman Turkish was used as a book-language over a wide area (similar to, say, Classical Arabic or Latin). History marches on.

French, Portuguese, Italian and German are hardly widespread lingua francas today. The whole idea of some objective criterion for importance of languages is silly. However, if you want to be able to communicate with locals in as much of the world as possible, then I don't see the point of learning languages as closely related as the three romance languages above, when you already have Spanish.

If you just want communication range, I would pick something like :
1. English
2. Mandarin
3. Arabic
4. Spanish
5. Hindi-Urdu
6. Bahasa Indonesia/Malay
7. Swahili
8. Burmese
9. Tamil
10.Quechua or maybe a Germanic language

Probably the best list yet based on this criterion... However, French still has many speakers, and many people from former French colonial possessions in Africa speak it. And while I don't know too much, I don't think knowledge of Spanish would help you with spoken French as much as it would with, for example, Italian. So I think you could replace Quechua or Tamil with French.

[Bob Johnson]

define important

Well, that's one of the things up for debate...

apparently not, since half the people are just spamming lists

[Rui]

French, Portuguese, Italian and German are hardly widespread lingua francas today. The whole idea of some objective criterion for importance of languages is silly.

This is exactly how I feel about this thread.

A) I don't know what dhok's insistence on including Italian and German was. French and Portuguese I can maybe see because Brazil and West/Central Africa, but neither Italian or German have much of a significance at all except in very specialized fields (classical European music for Italian, Western philosophy for German, possibly a few other fields as well...?)

B) That second sentence I quoted hits the nail right on the head in terms of "important languages"...

[linguoboy]

A) I don't know what dhok's insistence on including Italian and German was. French and Portuguese I can maybe see because Brazil and West/Central Africa, but neither Italian or German have much of a significance at all except in very specialized fields (classical European music for Italian, Western philosophy for German, possibly a few other fields as well...?)

Most of us, I'm willing to wager, don't do much globetrotting. But we all read, some of us very extensively. Here's a breakdown of records in WorldCat (with 1.8 billion records from 72,000 contributing libraries, the largest bibliographic database in the world today) by language:

• English: 63.3%
  French: 6.7%
  German: 6.4%
  Spanish: 5.0%
  Chinese: 2.4%
  Russian: 2.3%
  Japanese: 2.0%
  Other: 11.9%

Granted, US libraries are heavily overrepresented in this database but (a) most of the ZBB is based in the USA and (b) the USA still publishes more new titles annually than any other country. (Moreover, many "new" publications outside the US are translations of works originally published there.)

[Legion]

Granted, US libraries are heavily overrepresented in this database but (a) most of the ZBB is based in the USA and (b) the USA still publishes more new titles annually than any other country. (Moreover, many "new" publications outside the US are translations of works originally published there.)

This latter point is not in the US' favor though: dynamic languages translate a lot of stuff from other languages in their own. The Arabic golden age corresponded to a period of intense translation from Ancient Greek into Classical Arabic; whereas today, by contrast, Arabic countries are notoriously deficient in the area of translated foreign books. The Renaissance was partly triggered by a rediscovery of the Ancient Greek texts by the western world (often via the Middle Ages Arabic translations).

And today, while a great number of books are written in English, much less are translated in English.

[linguoboy]

Granted, US libraries are heavily overrepresented in this database but (a) most of the ZBB is based in the USA and (b) the USA still publishes more new titles annually than any other country. (Moreover, many "new" publications outside the US are translations of works originally published there.)

This latter point is not in the US' favor though: dynamic languages translate a lot of stuff from other languages in their own. The Arabic golden age corresponded to a period of intense translation from Ancient Greek into Classical Arabic; whereas today, by contrast, Arabic countries are notoriously deficient in the area of translated foreign books. The Renaissance was partly triggered by a rediscovery of the Ancient Greek texts by the western world (often via the Middle Ages Arabic translations).

And today, while a great number of books are written in English, much less are translated in English.

So what? More books are translated into English than are even published (let alone written) in most other languages.

Also, to the extant that translating from other languages can be said to represent "dynamism", there is clearly some tipping point at which it, in fact, demonstrates the opposite. I regularly hear complaints from speakers of minor European languages (e.g. Irish) that a large proportion of the titles published are translations rather than original compositions. This is a bugaboo both of people who are concerned about the nature of the language (since the translations are another source of influence from the dominant language) and about encouraging readers and learners (since bilinguals have little motivation to wait for a translation when they can easily read the original). Thousands of EU documents are translated every year into Irish. Does this make it a more "dynamic" language than Quechwa or Acehnese?

But that was just an aside anyway. The point is that dhoka's list makes more sense if you look at publishing figures. (Portuguese and Italian weren't broken out in the analysis I found of the WorldCat database, but Italy and Brazil are 11 and 12 respectively in the rankings of titles published annually, with Italy doing substantially better in the area of new titles.)

[Qwynegold]

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

Portuguese is so similar to Spanish, and who needs Italian anyway?

French
Spanish
Portuguese Hindi
Italian Turkish? Malay?
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic

[Travis B.]

I would agree with linguoboy that what actually should matter for most of us, since most of us do not go too much around the world but most of us do read and at least a good few read quite a lot, is not how much a given language is spoken but how much is written in a given language. One could extend this further to how much original content is written in a given language, as opposed to translations, but this is probably harder to measure. Of course one could say this biases things towards the "traditional western European languages" taught in schools here in the US, but that is simply how it is.

[linguoboy]

One could extend this further to how much original content is written in a given language, as opposed to translations, but this is probably harder to measure.

Or, alternatively, original content in any medium, since the Internet has made sharing video and audio files hardly more difficult than sharing written texts. That would definitely land Hindi-Urdu on the list on the strength of its film and music industries. In fact, I would think it would strengthen the position of Asian languages generally.

[installer_swan]

Most of us, I'm willing to wager, don't do much globetrotting. But we all read, some of us very extensively. Here's a breakdown of records in WorldCat (with 1.8 billion records from 72,000 contributing libraries, the largest bibliographic database in the world today) by language:
...
Granted, US libraries are heavily overrepresented in this database but (a) most of the ZBB is based in the USA and (b) the USA still publishes more new titles annually than any other country. (Moreover, many "new" publications outside the US are translations of works originally published there.)

Firstly, yes there is an overrepresentation. Secondly, I would suppose that any major new ideas or artistic/literary movements in French, German and other European languages would make it to English in translation or through influencing original works, but I doubt the same is true for most non-European languages except possibly Arabic and Chinese.

If reading new interesting thoughts is the aim, then again I feel picking languages with less "cultural overlap" is more rewarding. And of course, the reading arguments would also privilege imperial/high culture languages of the past such as Farsi, Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin, Tamil. I mean, it's perfectly okay for someone to be personally more interested in European languages due to their ancestral heritage, personal whim or whatever, but to think that this is because these languages are more important than all others is to buy into the silly Macaulay quote about how “I am quite ready to take oriental learning at the valuation of orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them, who could deny that that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”