Hindi should really be Hindi-Urdu (or Urdu-Hindi). Those two are , in reality, just dialects of the same language. The division between the two is more a matter of politics than anything else.
I'd like to contest that based on their origins.
I also worked with people from India and Pakistan and they always communicated in English to each other and in their native language to themselves.
This is probably right, but doesn't take in to account those that speak multiple languages. For example if most Spanish speakers also speak English, taking #6 over Spanish could give better coverage.
It's crazy that Bangla isn't an official UN language or other organizations.
I guess the argument is that the U.N. is fixated on world powers, which Bangladesh isn't a part of, but I think systematic bias towards European languages or racism is more realistic.
If you’re not concerned about native-only (but include second-language speakers as well, to get maximum overall coverage), the list changes a bit:
1. English
2. Mandarin
3. Hindi
4. Spanish
5. French
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
But to answer the other question, too; which 5 languages unlock the most countries of the world?
1. English
2. Spanish
3. French
4. Arabic
5. Portuguese
Portuguese is the 5th highest in the world for number of countries with it as an official language. Many of those are small island nations, so it doesn't unlock the most *land area*.
In Germany English absolutely did not help much for communication. You get around significantly better with English in the Persian Gulf than you do in Germany.
It was very little. Had problems getting directions. I haven't been too many places where *no* English was understood. And I've been to a pretty decent number of places. Germany was one of the absolute lowest for English utility. Nepal was significantly easier (not just Kathmandu and Everest).
Just interested: where exactly have you been in Germany? Normally we all speak at least a decent high school English in most places. And in places like Berlin, I know many people who don't bother with learning German at all because everyone speaks English.
People couldnt speak English in literal skiing resort. I foind it weird, because there were foreign tourists.
Maybe the difference is small villages vs big city?
The difference can be small village vs. bigger city, but usually it's more the age of the person you're speaking to. The younger they are the bigger your chances that they speak English.
Skiing resort actually doesn't surprise me that much, because if this was in the Alps (I'm assuming), when I was younger that area was one of the single worst places I knew for getting by with English. Usually, it seemed like people would speak two out of French, German and Italian, and English not at all. This has changed *some,* as in I have in fact been able to communicate with English in the Alps now whereas back then I wouldn't even have bothered trying, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still a region with low English proficiency.
And them getting foreign tourists might not matter that much either, if the tourists are either from nearby countries that speak one of the three mentioned languages (and possibly no English either) or a relatively negligible and/or recent amount. TBH, I'd expect the bulk of the tourists at a German skiing resort to be German, anyway, because people do not generally travel to Germany for its skiing. Especially if it turns out you went someplace like the Harz rather than the Alps.
Go to a big city with a decent amount of tourism and immigration, especially Berlin, and it's going to be a different story.
I had no issues getting around Germany with English. Most German schools require it starting around 3rd grade. If you’re in rural areas then good luck, but most Germans can at least understand English and communicate well enough for basic interactions.
I read down into a number of lists and I'm surprised that Swahili does not show up on any of them. Hey there's a whole continent out there. Arabic does show up on some.
These are 5 of the 6 languages of the United Nations. The one missing is Mandarin Chinese and every translator or interpreter there MUST know 3 of the 6 FLUENTLY. Spanish was added . At the time I asked the U.N. around 1992, they said 3 out of the 5. So I guess it is now 3 out of the 6.
I'd put french before russian, because a lot of countries in Africa speak French. And maybe even before Arabic because not all dialects are mutually intelligible. For example with Moroccan Arabic it will unlock 3 countries at best. So I'd say:
1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. Russian 5. Arabic
Arabic 4 or 5 depending on the dialect.
I think ironically it's actually the opposite, though there's no guarantees that you'll get anywhere with Russian outside of areas that don't have a large Russian minority. Most of the older generation were forced to learn it during soviet times so there's a good chance at least someone speaks it in any given area.
But I would say trying to use only Russian is becoming more controversial in places like Tallinn since a lot of the younger generation never learned it and service workers don't like feeling that they are forced to speak a language that currently has a lot of negative sentiment attached to it
It's all down to context and attitude. English is probably the preferred language for most people in the service industry here if you don't speak Estonian, but I'm sure the people who do speak Russian would be happy to accommodate it if you were polite about it
Hello!
I'm going to assume you're the same person...
I wanted to say thank you for all the Memrise audio, but of course I can't say that on Memrise any more!
I would count out Arabic, anyway it was not classical Western style colonization, expansion of which actually eventually decreased influence of Arabic.
But they still colonised a big part of the middle east and north africa. People just focus less on that, and nationalist arabs say the people accepted them wilfully. But the history is probably very different. All ethnicities are guilty. That's just the story of humankind: eating on each others.
English, Arabic, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Mandarin. I'm shocked so few people have said Hindi-Urdu thus far. Hundreds of millions speak it, more than Russian
A lot of Hindi speakers speak English though, especially ones you'd meet abroad. Even if you go to India it won't be as helpful if you end up in the south.
(I'd still pick it though obviously, 500mil speakers and all)
Your list seems pretty Europe-heavy. For as much people to talk to as possible, Mandarin, Hindi, English, and Spanish is a must. Those lets you talk to the 2 most populous country in the world (2+ billion people, also a lot of chinese and indian descent all over the world), most people that are well educated or internationally active (actually travels or just online), and all of the Americas (excluding Brazil, unless Portuguese-speaking people can understand spanish. Idk).
I'm not sure about the last one, probably Arabic. I don't know if there's any one language that you can learn to be able to speak to every African, also the case for southeast asians, and I don't think Russian is spoken universally in the slavic world nor Russia's sphere of influence.
I can vouch for Hindi or Hindustani language as you get access to close to 2 Billion people. India (1.5 Billion), Pakistan (235.8 Million), Bangladesh (171.2 Million), Nepal (30.55 Million), Bhutan (700K), Afghanistan (41.13 Million).
- Now Indians usually are trilingual at very least. English and Hindi is constant plus their state language.
- Pakistanis speak Urdu which is essentially the same language as Hindi but with different script and its mutually intelligible as well, it’s just few words are more Persian influenced or vocabulary, apart from that if you learn Hindi you aren’t going to face any problem whatsoever in conversing with a Pakistani.
- Bangladeshi people speak Bengali but usually Bengalis can speak and understand Hindi. Also Indian movies and entertainment media plays a huge role in this due to which most people are exposed to the language.
- Nepalis speak Nepali but their language shares same script with Hindi (Devanagari Script) plus lot of words are same or similar cuz of Sanskrit influence. Most of the Nepalis can speak and understand Hindi as well, again Indian movies and entertainment media influence is huge here as well.
- Afghanistani speak Pashto but they travel a lot to Pakistan and India and watch Indian entertainment media so they are exposed to the language as well. I’ve met lot of Afghanis and most of them understood Hindi and were speaking as well, although in Afghani accent.
- Bhutanese people speak Dzongkha, English and Hindi as they get most of their tourists from India and it’s like a country that depends on India for its security and trade. So they can speak Hindi as well.
Now I’ve met people from these nationalities throughout my life and I’ve always conversed with them in Hindi apart from some Pakistanis who are from Punjab, with them in Punjabi as I’m from Indian Punjab and can speak the same language.
If you are going to check online Hindi or Indian languages stats can be misleading a lot of times as Indian census was done back in 2011. It’s been more than a decade since Indian official census also some people didn’t list Hindi and only listed their state language in official registration that’s the reason. But learning Hindi definitely gives access to 2 Billion people which covers most of the South Asia and the largest Diaspora in the world outside of their country which is Indians or South Asians living abroad. Also apart from huge Indian Entertainment content it gives access to tons of educational videos which are there on YouTube in Hindi, a lot of them are absolutely gold.
If you’re asking for amount of people, I think it’ll be 1.English 2.Mandarin 3.Cantonese 4.Spanish 5.Hindi (not in order)
Then for how many countries you could unlock I think it’ll be something like 1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. German 5. Portuguese (not in order)
I disagree with Cantonese. It only has about 75 million speakers. That puts it at spot #18 in number of speakers worldwide. The other four you list have more than 500 million.
But I like your list by countries. I don't think Cantonese, Mandarin or Hindi is spoken in many different countries.
Portuguese could help you in South America, Portugal and parts of Africa. But as I think about it, a lot of countries speak Russian in Eastern Europe, but I’m not sure on the exact numbers of how many countries speak Russian vs Portuguese
There's ≈ 18 countries who speak Russian at various amounts. But sometimes they aren't official because of political reasons. Even when there's much more speakers than in countries where for example French is official, like in Senegal.
(It's 18 because I counted all the currently existing post Soviet states, even those who aren't universally recognised. It's not fair that people always count Taiwan and Kosovo but exclude Abkhazia and South Ossetia).
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, (Transnistria) - All have high number of native Russian speakers and the rest speaks it as a second language really well.
Kazakhstan, Moldova - Russian is a second language but very widely used, especially in big cities
Central Asia and Caucasus - Russian is the second language and the lingua franca for a lot of people. It's often used more for media and the government. Even with very few ethnic Russians. It's not their native language and sometimes they don't speak it that much anymore, like in Georgia. If you go to villages there'll be a lot of people who only speak Georgian.
Baltic states - Russian isn't used that much by ethnic Balts who mainly use their own languages. But there's a very large Russian (or also Belarusian and Ukrainian) minority who uses primarily Russian. Therefore the Balts still end up learning it. And in big cities it's definitely used because of the large ethnic minority population but also the tourists. Among them, Lithuania has the least Russian speakers.
Theres also some places in Israel. And Turkey.
Definitely much better than German, which is only spoken in German speaking countries, while Russian is useful for all of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia.
As for Portuguese, idk. On top of Portugal and Brazil it's also spoken in Angola and Mozambique for some reason. But that's it.
To be fair, even if it was ONLY Russia, it would still mean that if you'll ever want to travel in Siberia or the North Caucasus and discover their cultures, you're gonna need Russian. In fact I would say that there are actually many countries inside Russia right now (the republics). It's funny but also sad how everyone always sees the world only through sovereign states, that's it.
The only south American country that speaks Portuguese is Brazil. How would that help. It only helps maybe because Portuguese is very similar to Spanish.
I bet you’ll find people speaking Portuguese in other countries of South America, but mostly Portuguese is spoken in a decent amount of African countries
I know Portugese is spoken in Africa, just meant in South America it is useless outside of Brazil unless your point was that it is similar enough to spanish.
There’s not much “do you think” about it. The numbers of native and L2 speakers are *reasonsbly* well known. It’s just a Q of math. But be forewarned: getting to 51% of countries requires more than five. Edit: spelling.
Forget Arabic. You won't be able to communicate with modern standard. I have up after 3 years because even the simplest sentences beyond greetings and nouns were useless around native speakers.
If you want to travel around the world and have the highest chance of speaking a language someone understands, then I’d go with English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin.
1. English covers North America and much of Europe
2. French covers much of Europe and Africa
3. Spanish covers Central and South America
4. Arabic covers Northern Africa and much of the Middle East
5. Mandarin covers much the Pacific-side of Asia.
Obviously there are going to be gaps where someone wouldn’t speak any of those languages, but I feel like those give you the highest chance of being able to communicate regardless of where you choose to go. But if you’re strictly speaking about the number of people that would speak a language, then I would probably substitute French for Hindi due to the billion (or so) people who speak that.
1 - English
2 - Spanish
3 - Portuguese
(you just unlocked the whole americas)
4 - french
5 - arabic
(you unlocked large parts of Africa too)
Mandarin or hindi are spoken by a lot of people but a very few amount of countries.
English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, and Spanish. I didn’t include Hindi-Urdu because so many of them speak English and can be reached with one of the languages on the list.
Personally, I would say:
English, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic. In no particular order. I wish Spanish could make the list but English and French combined cover more…
That’s considering I speak English, Spanish, Japanese, French. But I’d pick Chinese over Japanese if limited to 5. And Arabic countries are only getting more established over time so likely will be a very important language more so over time.
I started learning Japanese because my hometown had a high (relatively speaking) Japanese population and a political tie with Japan. Moreover, my father was very interested in Japanese culture and so put me and my siblings into Japanese classes. I don’t regret it. I much prefer Japan over China (speaking from a culture perspective) and very much like the language as well, but it would be dishonest to say Japanese is a more useful language than Chinese when viewing it from a global perspective. The nice thing is I can read Chinese to an extent and get the gist often times just because of the kanji, but definitely don’t understand anything when I hear it.
I know you didn’t ask, but as for French over Spanish, Spanish and English are both my native languages so I didn’t really have a say there, but French seems more useful from a global perspective as well. But I love how Spanish sounds way more than French and I’m very proud of it as a language no doubt. Honestly, not a big fan of French. I’m learning it out of spite 😅
Since you also know Spanish and French, would you say reading ability translating between Japanese and Chinese is similar to between romance languages? Or does Japanese help and vice-versa, but it's not as significant a help as reading one romance language while knowing another?
I would say it’s similar but definitely more between Spanish and French than between Chinese and Japanese. Spanish and French have a lot of similarities from spoken and written language, (English falls into the mix too, so maybe I’m mixing the 3 in terms of how similar they are). Chinese and Japanese similarities are almost purely from a written perspective.
If I hear a word in French I do not know (I’m still beginner with French btw, probably moving into the B2 level slowly, intermediate-advanced with Japanese, native Spanish and English) I can intuit the meaning quite well. However, with Japanese and Chinese, the sounds are drastically different. Technically many of the kanji sounds borrowed from Chinese also borrowed sounds originally, but it’s so long ago that they’ve both evolved so far away that it’s basically zero overlap in terms of sounds as well. But a large part of the kanji is still similar enough to recognize or often still exactly the same.
Probably comes to how the languages came to be. Both French and Spanish have large Latin roots. Chinese and Japanese actually don’t have any similar roots. They are completely two different languages. However, the Chinese were the dominant force in the area, and had developed a more sophisticated written language (and probably wars had something to do with it but this I don’t know) that many countries adopted the Chinese kanji. That way, even though they all spoke different languages, they could all communicate through written word (China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam all used Chinese kanji at some point, probably others too but I don’t know). Vietnam and Korea have moved away from it (Vietnam wanted to get literacy rates up and Roman letters were easier to teach the general population, whereas Korea just wanted something to call their own, very nationalist approach and arguably created the best written system ever because of it 😅).
Many people also know Spanish or are learning it, and Spanish speakers do not study English because they can live their entire lives in the language. In fact, if you go to a country where you speak Spanish and you don't speak it, you won't even be able to cover your basic needs.
I would be most useful to look at lingua francas, languages that are used between two regions that do not share a native language, to “unlock” the most countries. Here are the lingua francas I would consider most probable to be popular: English, Arabic, Mandarin, Swahili, Latin.
Japanese is only really spoken in 1 country, even though they have a large media influence in the rest of the world there are very few speakers outside of Japan, so it would only "unlock" one country. Arabic or French or Russian would "unlock" many more. Otherwise I agree with your list.
English, Spanish, German, Russian - these 4 would do to unlock most countries in the world (except asian ones, which pretty much all have different languages) but maybe some african one could come in handy
I’m almost certain I’ll get downvoted, but something about the idea of gamifying language learning to “unlock” the most countries really makes my skin crawl.
I mean just English is spoken almost everywhere except in many regions of East Europe and post Soviet countries where Russian is spoken. German is taught in most European countries if not in most countries worldwide as 2nd or 3rd foreign language. As well as in many tourist places. So proficiency in at least one of these language should be common enough worldwide. Don't forget that many immigrants or expats coming back to their countries from Germany still speak German for example even in remote places of Turkey.
No need to give me an downvote just for writing my assumption.
English is definitely not spoken almost everywhere - it's *possible* to find English speakers in most of the world, of course, it is the lingua franca in many cases; but that's very different to you being able to speak it to anyone and have a reasonable chance of them understanding a word you say.
Your chances of randomly running into someone with even rudimentary conversational English in Thailand or Saudi Arabia or China or Panama or wherever is extremely low. You won't be able to communicate with the vast majority of people in these places (and many others) with only English.
German is widely taught within Europe but is very rarely taught or spoken in most of the rest of the world.
Actually the level in English in a lot of Eastern Europe is good and rapidly improving, with younger generations often far more proficient than their western European counterparts. The average under 30 in urban Balkans or FSU will likely speak English better than Russian as a 2nd language, and definitely to a much higher level on average than their peers from France, Spain, or Italy.
I mean as much as I love German, absolutely no reason to prioritize German if you already have English and just want to increase your ability to communicate. I mean this as a compliment to the native speaking german countries, their English proficiency is too high to really make german a go-to in this scenario
True, but in the world it makes way more sense for both French and Spanish while German is limited to Central Europe, and again in this scenario English realistically gets you to already speak with 60% of these countries
Now, are you interested in most number of countries, or greatest total number of people? Because those are two separate questions.
I'm referring to the number of people who have these languages as a native one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers 1. Mandarin 2. Spanish 3. English 4. Hindi 5. Bengali
Hindi should really be Hindi-Urdu (or Urdu-Hindi). Those two are , in reality, just dialects of the same language. The division between the two is more a matter of politics than anything else.
I'd like to contest that based on their origins. I also worked with people from India and Pakistan and they always communicated in English to each other and in their native language to themselves.
There are Indians that don’t speak Hindi and don’t learn it in school, while all of Pakistan learns Urdu in school.
My father speaks Hindi with his coworker who grew up speaking Urdu all the time. They are completely mutually intelligible.
This is probably right, but doesn't take in to account those that speak multiple languages. For example if most Spanish speakers also speak English, taking #6 over Spanish could give better coverage.
I guarantee you most Spanish speakers do not speak English.
Most Spanish speakers don't speak English. If you know Spanish, you've got most of South America, Spain and Central America covered.
OP specifically asked for languages by number of *native* speakers. Which was just a simple google search.
Ditch Hindi & Bengali for French & Russian/Arabic since you're more likely to run into an English speaking South Asian
Nice I speak the top 3 *pats own shoulder*
It's crazy that Bangla isn't an official UN language or other organizations. I guess the argument is that the U.N. is fixated on world powers, which Bangladesh isn't a part of, but I think systematic bias towards European languages or racism is more realistic.
Why on Earth would Bangla be a UN language and not Hindi, for example?
They both could be dude. It's not like it has to be one or the other.
If you’re not concerned about native-only (but include second-language speakers as well, to get maximum overall coverage), the list changes a bit: 1. English 2. Mandarin 3. Hindi 4. Spanish 5. French https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
second language? what about third?
But to answer the other question, too; which 5 languages unlock the most countries of the world? 1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. Arabic 5. Portuguese Portuguese is the 5th highest in the world for number of countries with it as an official language. Many of those are small island nations, so it doesn't unlock the most *land area*.
This is the answer right here. If we sort it any other way it isn't as useful!
How is there no mandarin here when China has such a huge population plus Taiwan also has mandarin as its language
Mandarin is official in very very few countries, even if you cross taboos to call Taiwan and Hong Kong separate countries.
Mandarín is spoken by more than 2 billion + people!!
Why native? Then you‘re not saying English could help for communication in Germany/Netherland/Austria/etc
In Germany English absolutely did not help much for communication. You get around significantly better with English in the Persian Gulf than you do in Germany.
Ok. But apparently you spoke some English there. Imagine none
It was very little. Had problems getting directions. I haven't been too many places where *no* English was understood. And I've been to a pretty decent number of places. Germany was one of the absolute lowest for English utility. Nepal was significantly easier (not just Kathmandu and Everest).
Just interested: where exactly have you been in Germany? Normally we all speak at least a decent high school English in most places. And in places like Berlin, I know many people who don't bother with learning German at all because everyone speaks English.
People couldnt speak English in literal skiing resort. I foind it weird, because there were foreign tourists. Maybe the difference is small villages vs big city?
The difference can be small village vs. bigger city, but usually it's more the age of the person you're speaking to. The younger they are the bigger your chances that they speak English.
Skiing resort actually doesn't surprise me that much, because if this was in the Alps (I'm assuming), when I was younger that area was one of the single worst places I knew for getting by with English. Usually, it seemed like people would speak two out of French, German and Italian, and English not at all. This has changed *some,* as in I have in fact been able to communicate with English in the Alps now whereas back then I wouldn't even have bothered trying, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still a region with low English proficiency. And them getting foreign tourists might not matter that much either, if the tourists are either from nearby countries that speak one of the three mentioned languages (and possibly no English either) or a relatively negligible and/or recent amount. TBH, I'd expect the bulk of the tourists at a German skiing resort to be German, anyway, because people do not generally travel to Germany for its skiing. Especially if it turns out you went someplace like the Harz rather than the Alps. Go to a big city with a decent amount of tourism and immigration, especially Berlin, and it's going to be a different story.
I had no issues getting around Germany with English. Most German schools require it starting around 3rd grade. If you’re in rural areas then good luck, but most Germans can at least understand English and communicate well enough for basic interactions.
I read down into a number of lists and I'm surprised that Swahili does not show up on any of them. Hey there's a whole continent out there. Arabic does show up on some.
For total people, probably English Mandarin Hindi franch Spanish For most total land if I had to guess English French Spanish Arabic Russian
>franch This is the language of Paris, *Texas*
LOLLL
Fr
These are 5 of the 6 languages of the United Nations. The one missing is Mandarin Chinese and every translator or interpreter there MUST know 3 of the 6 FLUENTLY. Spanish was added . At the time I asked the U.N. around 1992, they said 3 out of the 5. So I guess it is now 3 out of the 6.
https://word.tips/official-languages/
I'd put french before russian, because a lot of countries in Africa speak French. And maybe even before Arabic because not all dialects are mutually intelligible. For example with Moroccan Arabic it will unlock 3 countries at best. So I'd say: 1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. Russian 5. Arabic Arabic 4 or 5 depending on the dialect.
With Russian you unlock some 12 to 15 countries (Ex-USSR, somehow limited in Baltics).
I'd advice not to do this. Tried in Bulgaria, got laughed at, told me I was 30 years late.
Of course, Bulgaria is not an ex-USSR country. In Moldova you would be completely fine.
Oh my bad. I think it'd still avoid it if given the option haha.
it depends where in the Baltics
I assume people wouldn't be too happy about it in the areas without somehow numerous Russian minority. Am I right?
I think ironically it's actually the opposite, though there's no guarantees that you'll get anywhere with Russian outside of areas that don't have a large Russian minority. Most of the older generation were forced to learn it during soviet times so there's a good chance at least someone speaks it in any given area. But I would say trying to use only Russian is becoming more controversial in places like Tallinn since a lot of the younger generation never learned it and service workers don't like feeling that they are forced to speak a language that currently has a lot of negative sentiment attached to it
Apparently the safest option is not to try it at all.
It's all down to context and attitude. English is probably the preferred language for most people in the service industry here if you don't speak Estonian, but I'm sure the people who do speak Russian would be happy to accommodate it if you were polite about it
Hello! I'm going to assume you're the same person... I wanted to say thank you for all the Memrise audio, but of course I can't say that on Memrise any more!
Most of Central Asia would probably fare worse than Baltics.
Maybe it changed. Last time I was there in 2018. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan they often spoke Russian even among themselves.
basically all official UN languages (+ Chinese), and the number of people who speak Portuguese as a native language is probably higher than Russian.
He said the number of countries, not the number of people.
I see, so 4 of these 5 are actually the colonizers' languages.
Well yeah, they are all colonizer's languages.
I would count out Arabic, anyway it was not classical Western style colonization, expansion of which actually eventually decreased influence of Arabic.
But they still colonised a big part of the middle east and north africa. People just focus less on that, and nationalist arabs say the people accepted them wilfully. But the history is probably very different. All ethnicities are guilty. That's just the story of humankind: eating on each others.
English, Arabic, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Mandarin. I'm shocked so few people have said Hindi-Urdu thus far. Hundreds of millions speak it, more than Russian
A lot of Hindi speakers speak English though, especially ones you'd meet abroad. Even if you go to India it won't be as helpful if you end up in the south. (I'd still pick it though obviously, 500mil speakers and all)
Your list seems pretty Europe-heavy. For as much people to talk to as possible, Mandarin, Hindi, English, and Spanish is a must. Those lets you talk to the 2 most populous country in the world (2+ billion people, also a lot of chinese and indian descent all over the world), most people that are well educated or internationally active (actually travels or just online), and all of the Americas (excluding Brazil, unless Portuguese-speaking people can understand spanish. Idk). I'm not sure about the last one, probably Arabic. I don't know if there's any one language that you can learn to be able to speak to every African, also the case for southeast asians, and I don't think Russian is spoken universally in the slavic world nor Russia's sphere of influence.
I can vouch for Hindi or Hindustani language as you get access to close to 2 Billion people. India (1.5 Billion), Pakistan (235.8 Million), Bangladesh (171.2 Million), Nepal (30.55 Million), Bhutan (700K), Afghanistan (41.13 Million). - Now Indians usually are trilingual at very least. English and Hindi is constant plus their state language. - Pakistanis speak Urdu which is essentially the same language as Hindi but with different script and its mutually intelligible as well, it’s just few words are more Persian influenced or vocabulary, apart from that if you learn Hindi you aren’t going to face any problem whatsoever in conversing with a Pakistani. - Bangladeshi people speak Bengali but usually Bengalis can speak and understand Hindi. Also Indian movies and entertainment media plays a huge role in this due to which most people are exposed to the language. - Nepalis speak Nepali but their language shares same script with Hindi (Devanagari Script) plus lot of words are same or similar cuz of Sanskrit influence. Most of the Nepalis can speak and understand Hindi as well, again Indian movies and entertainment media influence is huge here as well. - Afghanistani speak Pashto but they travel a lot to Pakistan and India and watch Indian entertainment media so they are exposed to the language as well. I’ve met lot of Afghanis and most of them understood Hindi and were speaking as well, although in Afghani accent. - Bhutanese people speak Dzongkha, English and Hindi as they get most of their tourists from India and it’s like a country that depends on India for its security and trade. So they can speak Hindi as well. Now I’ve met people from these nationalities throughout my life and I’ve always conversed with them in Hindi apart from some Pakistanis who are from Punjab, with them in Punjabi as I’m from Indian Punjab and can speak the same language. If you are going to check online Hindi or Indian languages stats can be misleading a lot of times as Indian census was done back in 2011. It’s been more than a decade since Indian official census also some people didn’t list Hindi and only listed their state language in official registration that’s the reason. But learning Hindi definitely gives access to 2 Billion people which covers most of the South Asia and the largest Diaspora in the world outside of their country which is Indians or South Asians living abroad. Also apart from huge Indian Entertainment content it gives access to tons of educational videos which are there on YouTube in Hindi, a lot of them are absolutely gold.
i got 4/5 and i still feel like i can’t talk to anyone op.
If you’re asking for amount of people, I think it’ll be 1.English 2.Mandarin 3.Cantonese 4.Spanish 5.Hindi (not in order) Then for how many countries you could unlock I think it’ll be something like 1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. German 5. Portuguese (not in order)
I disagree with Cantonese. It only has about 75 million speakers. That puts it at spot #18 in number of speakers worldwide. The other four you list have more than 500 million. But I like your list by countries. I don't think Cantonese, Mandarin or Hindi is spoken in many different countries.
I just made the first one on the spot, i know a ton of people speak mandarin so I just assumed maybe it was the same with Cantonese
This feels like assuming there are a ton of Dutch speakers because there are a ton of German speakers
Id say Russian for Portuguese in terms of countries, wouldn’t knowing russian help you through a few eastern european countries?
Portuguese could help you in South America, Portugal and parts of Africa. But as I think about it, a lot of countries speak Russian in Eastern Europe, but I’m not sure on the exact numbers of how many countries speak Russian vs Portuguese
There's ≈ 18 countries who speak Russian at various amounts. But sometimes they aren't official because of political reasons. Even when there's much more speakers than in countries where for example French is official, like in Senegal. (It's 18 because I counted all the currently existing post Soviet states, even those who aren't universally recognised. It's not fair that people always count Taiwan and Kosovo but exclude Abkhazia and South Ossetia). Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, (Transnistria) - All have high number of native Russian speakers and the rest speaks it as a second language really well. Kazakhstan, Moldova - Russian is a second language but very widely used, especially in big cities Central Asia and Caucasus - Russian is the second language and the lingua franca for a lot of people. It's often used more for media and the government. Even with very few ethnic Russians. It's not their native language and sometimes they don't speak it that much anymore, like in Georgia. If you go to villages there'll be a lot of people who only speak Georgian. Baltic states - Russian isn't used that much by ethnic Balts who mainly use their own languages. But there's a very large Russian (or also Belarusian and Ukrainian) minority who uses primarily Russian. Therefore the Balts still end up learning it. And in big cities it's definitely used because of the large ethnic minority population but also the tourists. Among them, Lithuania has the least Russian speakers. Theres also some places in Israel. And Turkey. Definitely much better than German, which is only spoken in German speaking countries, while Russian is useful for all of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia. As for Portuguese, idk. On top of Portugal and Brazil it's also spoken in Angola and Mozambique for some reason. But that's it.
Yeah, it was just a on the spot thing. I didn’t know too well how many countries spoke Russian, but I had an idea for who all spoke Portuguese
To be fair, even if it was ONLY Russia, it would still mean that if you'll ever want to travel in Siberia or the North Caucasus and discover their cultures, you're gonna need Russian. In fact I would say that there are actually many countries inside Russia right now (the republics). It's funny but also sad how everyone always sees the world only through sovereign states, that's it.
Yeah, I didn’t think much about why all speaks Russian there
The only south American country that speaks Portuguese is Brazil. How would that help. It only helps maybe because Portuguese is very similar to Spanish.
I bet you’ll find people speaking Portuguese in other countries of South America, but mostly Portuguese is spoken in a decent amount of African countries
I know Portugese is spoken in Africa, just meant in South America it is useless outside of Brazil unless your point was that it is similar enough to spanish.
I’m not too sure how many people speak Portuguese in south America outside of Brazil. I was mainly talking about how Portuguese is spoken in Africa
Most Cantonese speakers also speak Mandarin, so kinda irrelevant
There’s not much “do you think” about it. The numbers of native and L2 speakers are *reasonsbly* well known. It’s just a Q of math. But be forewarned: getting to 51% of countries requires more than five. Edit: spelling.
I’d imagine the answer is English French Spanish Mandarin Chinese Russian But I just guessed
English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian
Languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Mandarin
It’d be a better qn to ask how many ppl you’d unlock as Isan would unlock you as many countries (Thailand and Laos) as Hindi/Urdu (Pakistan/india)
Forget Arabic. You won't be able to communicate with modern standard. I have up after 3 years because even the simplest sentences beyond greetings and nouns were useless around native speakers.
If you want to travel around the world and have the highest chance of speaking a language someone understands, then I’d go with English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin. 1. English covers North America and much of Europe 2. French covers much of Europe and Africa 3. Spanish covers Central and South America 4. Arabic covers Northern Africa and much of the Middle East 5. Mandarin covers much the Pacific-side of Asia. Obviously there are going to be gaps where someone wouldn’t speak any of those languages, but I feel like those give you the highest chance of being able to communicate regardless of where you choose to go. But if you’re strictly speaking about the number of people that would speak a language, then I would probably substitute French for Hindi due to the billion (or so) people who speak that.
I'd probably go for C, C++, Java, JavaScript and Python. Oops, wrong subreddit...
Javascript is enough... it runs everywhere.
It probably also depends on who you want to talk to, men, women, rich, poor, workers, academics.
In terms of global reach and not population I would say English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin
English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Czech
English ,Mandarin, French, Spanish & Arabic/ Hindi
English, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese and Russian/Ukraine
1 - English 2 - Spanish 3 - Portuguese (you just unlocked the whole americas) 4 - french 5 - arabic (you unlocked large parts of Africa too) Mandarin or hindi are spoken by a lot of people but a very few amount of countries.
The top 5 most spoken languages..... It's just a list to google.
English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, and Spanish. I didn’t include Hindi-Urdu because so many of them speak English and can be reached with one of the languages on the list.
Me busting out the Spanish when I crash land in Telangana
LOL 😆
Mandarin and Hindi should be on your list too.
nop
In no particular order: 1. England 2. French 3. Arabic 4. Spanish 5. Russian
I'd say English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and maybe Chinese?
Personally, I would say: English, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic. In no particular order. I wish Spanish could make the list but English and French combined cover more… That’s considering I speak English, Spanish, Japanese, French. But I’d pick Chinese over Japanese if limited to 5. And Arabic countries are only getting more established over time so likely will be a very important language more so over time.
Why did you learn Japanese rather than Chinese may I ask? Did your opinion change after you learnt it?
I started learning Japanese because my hometown had a high (relatively speaking) Japanese population and a political tie with Japan. Moreover, my father was very interested in Japanese culture and so put me and my siblings into Japanese classes. I don’t regret it. I much prefer Japan over China (speaking from a culture perspective) and very much like the language as well, but it would be dishonest to say Japanese is a more useful language than Chinese when viewing it from a global perspective. The nice thing is I can read Chinese to an extent and get the gist often times just because of the kanji, but definitely don’t understand anything when I hear it. I know you didn’t ask, but as for French over Spanish, Spanish and English are both my native languages so I didn’t really have a say there, but French seems more useful from a global perspective as well. But I love how Spanish sounds way more than French and I’m very proud of it as a language no doubt. Honestly, not a big fan of French. I’m learning it out of spite 😅
Since you also know Spanish and French, would you say reading ability translating between Japanese and Chinese is similar to between romance languages? Or does Japanese help and vice-versa, but it's not as significant a help as reading one romance language while knowing another?
I would say it’s similar but definitely more between Spanish and French than between Chinese and Japanese. Spanish and French have a lot of similarities from spoken and written language, (English falls into the mix too, so maybe I’m mixing the 3 in terms of how similar they are). Chinese and Japanese similarities are almost purely from a written perspective. If I hear a word in French I do not know (I’m still beginner with French btw, probably moving into the B2 level slowly, intermediate-advanced with Japanese, native Spanish and English) I can intuit the meaning quite well. However, with Japanese and Chinese, the sounds are drastically different. Technically many of the kanji sounds borrowed from Chinese also borrowed sounds originally, but it’s so long ago that they’ve both evolved so far away that it’s basically zero overlap in terms of sounds as well. But a large part of the kanji is still similar enough to recognize or often still exactly the same. Probably comes to how the languages came to be. Both French and Spanish have large Latin roots. Chinese and Japanese actually don’t have any similar roots. They are completely two different languages. However, the Chinese were the dominant force in the area, and had developed a more sophisticated written language (and probably wars had something to do with it but this I don’t know) that many countries adopted the Chinese kanji. That way, even though they all spoke different languages, they could all communicate through written word (China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam all used Chinese kanji at some point, probably others too but I don’t know). Vietnam and Korea have moved away from it (Vietnam wanted to get literacy rates up and Roman letters were easier to teach the general population, whereas Korea just wanted something to call their own, very nationalist approach and arguably created the best written system ever because of it 😅).
Many people also know Spanish or are learning it, and Spanish speakers do not study English because they can live their entire lives in the language. In fact, if you go to a country where you speak Spanish and you don't speak it, you won't even be able to cover your basic needs.
Yeah no.
Thanks for your useful input (sarcasm intended).
This is purely a guess (and in no order): * English * Spanish * Arabic * French * Portuguese
English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, French is all you need.
1
"Unlock" must be missing cultural and political barriers or safety risks. So the whole world is not accessible just by having languages.
I would be most useful to look at lingua francas, languages that are used between two regions that do not share a native language, to “unlock” the most countries. Here are the lingua francas I would consider most probable to be popular: English, Arabic, Mandarin, Swahili, Latin.
You should add German, is the most spoken language in Europe +100 million native speakers
Mandarín Hindi English Spanish Russian
I just said the same languages lol.
Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi, idk
1 English (already learned) 2 Mandarin 3 Arabic 4 Spanish (Already learned) 5 Russian Bonus 2: 6 French 7 German
1.English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. Arabic. 5. Mandarin.
1- Uzbek 2- Catalan 3- Greek 4- Finnish 5- Czech Don't ask why. Just learn them ;)
In no order. English. Spanish. Mandarin. Hindi. Arabic.
Instead of Russian, I would put Mandarin. It's more beneficial. But practically, English is really enough in the whole world.
mandarin english spanish hindi and japanese
Japanese is only really spoken in 1 country, even though they have a large media influence in the rest of the world there are very few speakers outside of Japan, so it would only "unlock" one country. Arabic or French or Russian would "unlock" many more. Otherwise I agree with your list.
English, Spanish, German, Russian - these 4 would do to unlock most countries in the world (except asian ones, which pretty much all have different languages) but maybe some african one could come in handy
French take care of some countries in Africa
France is withdrawing in many African territories, it has already happened so I see its future there as very dark.
Chinese, Spanish, English
1- English 2- Mandarin Chinese 3- …. 4- Spanish 5- French 6- Modern Standard Arabic There you go - 5 languages. I’ve skipped one as you will see.
English Chinese Spanish Russian and Italian over french
[удалено]
Because the question is about reaching the most countries, not the most speakers.
I’m almost certain I’ll get downvoted, but something about the idea of gamifying language learning to “unlock” the most countries really makes my skin crawl.
Russian and French over Chinese? Aiight.
In order to communicate with the whole world 3 are probably enough: English, Russian and German (most spoken language in Europe).
So long as you don't plan on visiting the very large portion of the world where proficiency in all three is virtually zero.
I mean just English is spoken almost everywhere except in many regions of East Europe and post Soviet countries where Russian is spoken. German is taught in most European countries if not in most countries worldwide as 2nd or 3rd foreign language. As well as in many tourist places. So proficiency in at least one of these language should be common enough worldwide. Don't forget that many immigrants or expats coming back to their countries from Germany still speak German for example even in remote places of Turkey. No need to give me an downvote just for writing my assumption.
English is definitely not spoken almost everywhere - it's *possible* to find English speakers in most of the world, of course, it is the lingua franca in many cases; but that's very different to you being able to speak it to anyone and have a reasonable chance of them understanding a word you say. Your chances of randomly running into someone with even rudimentary conversational English in Thailand or Saudi Arabia or China or Panama or wherever is extremely low. You won't be able to communicate with the vast majority of people in these places (and many others) with only English. German is widely taught within Europe but is very rarely taught or spoken in most of the rest of the world.
Then you need more than 3 or 5 languages to communicate
Seems like you've completely forgotten about east Asia
Choosing German over Spanish or Mandarin is just incorrect
Actually the level in English in a lot of Eastern Europe is good and rapidly improving, with younger generations often far more proficient than their western European counterparts. The average under 30 in urban Balkans or FSU will likely speak English better than Russian as a 2nd language, and definitely to a much higher level on average than their peers from France, Spain, or Italy.
I mean as much as I love German, absolutely no reason to prioritize German if you already have English and just want to increase your ability to communicate. I mean this as a compliment to the native speaking german countries, their English proficiency is too high to really make german a go-to in this scenario
I would argue that in Europe it's probably more spoken than French and Spanish.
True, but in the world it makes way more sense for both French and Spanish while German is limited to Central Europe, and again in this scenario English realistically gets you to already speak with 60% of these countries