Just started this audiobook, enjoying and learning much...

“The world’s 20 biggest languages, which are the subject of this book, are causing the decline of hundreds, even thousands of smaller ones.”

"Among them, these 20 languages are the mother tongues of no less than half the population of the world. Take second-language speakers into account, and the numbers are much larger still. Again, the figures are debatable, but it’s safe to claim that at least 75 per cent of people on this planet are able to communicate in one of the Babel Twenty. A less pertinent but more exact figure would be this: over 90 per cent of humankind live in countries where one or more of the twenty are routinely used by central government."

20 Vietnamese | 85 million 19 Korean | 85 million 18 Tamil | 90 million 17 Turkish | 90 million 16 Javanese | 95 million 15 Persian | 110 million 13 Japanese | 130 million 12 Swahili | 135 million 11 German | 200 million 10 French | 250 million 9 Malay | 275 million 8 Russian | 275 million 7 Portuguese | 275 million 6 Bengali | 275 million 5 Arabic | 375 million 4 Hindi-Urdu | 550 million 3 Spanish | 575 million 2 Mandarin | 1.3 billion 1 English | 1.5 billion

Amazon.com: Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages (Audible Audio Edition): Gaston Dorren, George Backman, Audible Studios: Books




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