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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 de facto 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 de facto world language. Many natural languages have been proffered as candidates for a global lingua franca, including Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, German and Malay.[2]
De facto world languages
A de facto world language has the following properties[3]
- a large number of speakers
- a substantive fraction of non-native speakers (function as lingua franca)
- a standard register which is widely taught as a foreign language
- the linguistic community is not defined along ethnic lines (multiethnic, pluricentric language)
- official status in several countries
- use in international trade relations
- use in international organizations
- use in the academic community
- significant body of literature
- association with linguistic prestige
World languages in this sense are the six official languages of the UN (Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic) as well as German, Hindi and Portuguese:
All the languages listed have more than 100 million speakers (as of the 2000s, estimates based on SIL Ethnologue). There are two other languages with a number of speakers in excess of 100 million, viz. Bengali and Japanese.[8] Both of these are not considered world languages, because their communities are strongly tied to ethnicity, and are regionally limited sphere of influence;[9]). Of the nine de facto world languages listed, six have a significantly intercontinental sphere of influence, with Chinese, German and Hindi restricted to a more regional Sprachraum, Greater China, Europe and South Asia, respectively, with scattered diaspora communities (Chinese diaspora, German 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).
The Nobel Prize in Literature reflects the international reception of a major language's literary production. Literary languages with five or more Nobel laureates are:
| Language written |
Laureates | % |
|---|---|---|
| English | 27 | 25.47 |
| French | 13 | 12.26 |
| German | 12 | 11.32 |
| Spanish | 10 | 9.43 |
| Italian | 6 | 5.67 |
| Swedish | 6 | 5.67 |
| Russian | 5 | 4.72 |
The distribution, again, betrays an Eurocentric bias, stemming from the age of colonialism, and form the historical origin of the printing press, and consequently of increased literary activity, in Europe. The disproportionate number of prizes going to Swedish language authors (a language with some 10 million speakers) reflects the Nobel prize being a Scandinavian institution, Alfred Nobel having been Swedish.
Other super-regional languages
- Further information: Lingua franca
Other languages of super-regional importance which fail some of the other criteria to be considered de facto world languages include
| language | native speakers | total speakers | distribution | regulator |
| Bengali | 170 M | 210 M | Bengal | Bangla Academy, Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi |
| Malay | 30 M | 200 M | Southeast Asia (the "Malay world") | Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka |
| Persian | 70 M | 100 M | Greater Persia | 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+Afrikaans | 30 M | 45 M | Dutch-speaking world | Dutch Language Union |
| Italian | 69 M | 74 M | Italy and adjacent regions | Accademia della Crusca |
Notes
- ^ Pei, p. 105
- ^ Pei p. 105
- ^ c.f. De Mejía p. 47f.
- ^ depending on what constitutes a second language speaker, estimates vary between 0.5 and 1.8 billion.
- ^ figures are based on the 1991 census of India. They are highly unreliable due to the huge population growth in the area.
- ^ Ethnologue report for language code:fra
- ^ Francophonie
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
- List of languages by number of speakers
- Ethnologue list of most spoken languages
- National language
- Universal language
- Lingua franca
- International English
- World religion
- World population
- World economy
- Intercontinental
External links
- English 'world language' forecast (BBC, December 2004)
- World Language Maps
