Why is there no global language that at least nearly half the world speaks (3.5 billion, I'm talkin', including non-native speakers) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Hextubewontallowme@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives...

English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English%20(1%2C452%20million%20speakers)&text=According%20to%20Ethnologue%2C%20English%20is,native%20and%20non%2Dnative%20speakers.

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[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

So why are you advocating for the displacement of the majority of the world's language families based on european languages popularity it gained through colonial displacement?

The majority of the world don't speak european languages.

[-] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

So why are you advocating for the displacement of the majority of the world’s language families based on european languages popularity it gained through colonial displacement?

Same reason you are advocating wife-beating (i.e. I never said anything like that)

The majority of the world don’t speak european languages.

Correct. That's was our starting point: there's no language that the majority of the world do speak.

Indo-European is spoken by a 46% minority.

About 19% of the world's population speak the Indo-Iranian branch alone. It's by far the largest of the 8 branches by number of speakers. By number of languages (which includes tiny languages) it comprises about ⅔ of the family –

For example there are 884 million speakers of Hindi/Urdu + Bengali + Marathi + Gujarati + Odia + Punjabi in India, and Pakistan is almost all Indo-European (Indo-Aryan and Iranic).

Agus in theannta sin, tá Gaeilge (teanga Ind-Eorpach/Ceiltís) ag 0.0002125% den daonra domhanda!

this post was submitted on 14 May 2024

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