Ten Most Useful Languages

Posted on 2005/09/02 04:51:24 (September 2005) by john.

Learn how to communicate with over half the world!

As a leaving present, Rob et al gave me the rather excellent Traveller's Companion - a book in the style of those Shott's Miscellany books. It's full of lots of interesting bits of travel trivia and has proved a very interesting read over the past few months.

One of the snippets that particularly caught my eye was a list of the 10 most useful languages. It occurred to me that it would be rather handy to know at least a word or two in each of these, so that, if nothing else, you could at least amuse the staff when dining out in foreign restaurants. So, I've done a bit of research, and provided you with this handy linguistic resource, hoping to encourage world peace, and, perhaps more importantly, to give waiters the chance to chuckle at silly customers.

1) Mandarin (1,075 million speakers)
This is of course the first official language of China, the most populated country in the world. So it's not such a great surprise this comes out tops. Having said that, quite a lot of people in China speak Cantonese instead don't they? So not entirely sure how accurate the above figure is, but still, I'm sure it is at least "quite a lot".

Hello: N�«Ã h�«¦o (nee how)
Goodbye: Z�«¢iji�«¢n (zai jin)
Thank you: Duo xio le (doh chay le)

2) English (514 million speakers)
Ahhhh.... English. What a triumph to be in second place for such a little island! I guess the numbers here are somewhat helped by the USA, Australia etc. Still I can't quite seem to count up to 514 million in this way, so perhaps these statistics include people who have English as a second language...?

Hello: hello
Goodbye: goobye
Thank you: thank you

3) Hindustani (496 million speakers)
We have a large Indian/Pakistani population in Britain, and yet how many of are able to speak any of the languages from these countries? Pretty much none. In fact, to most, I would suspect even the names of the languages involved are somewhat unusual. According to wikipedia, Hindustani really descibes an umbrella of related languages including Urdu (official language of Pakistan and some regions of India) and standard Hindi (the official language of India) as well as a number of other regional dialects found on and around the Indian sub-continent. As an amusing aside, an Indian friend of mine once told me that, so far as he could tell, many of the Hindustani dialects were just like standard Hindi, but pronounced with a Scottish accent! I'm sure the differences are somewhat more involved than this, and indeed many of these "dialects" are considered as independent languages - including Punjabi, Bihari, Rajasthani and many more. So, given all of this, it may be difficult to find any "standard" Hindustani that will be understood across the wide plethora of dialects, but I'll have a bash:

Hello: namaste (nah-mah-STAY)
Goodbye: alavidha (al-vee-dah)
Thank you: dhanyavaad (dun-ye-waad)
Thank you very much: aapakaa bahut bahut dhanyavaad

4) Spanish (425 million speakers)
Thanks to some pretty determined conquering of the Americas in the 1500s, Spanish is now a strong rival to English for most widely used European language.

Hello: hola
Goobye: adios
Thank you: gracias

5) Russian (275 million speakers)
I've recently had a strong urge to travel to Japan by way of the Trans-Siberian railway - what with the channel Tunnel you can now get all the way from London (hell, even Inverness) to Vladivostok by train. From Vladivostok it's just a short (ish) ferry to Japan. As the majority of this route goes through the former USSR, Russian would be a pretty handy language to know.

Hello: priyvet
Goodbye: do svidaniya
Thank you: spa`sibo

6) Arabic (256 million speakers)
Having done a fair chunk of my PhD in a largely Arabic speaking research group, I have already picked up a few words of this very nice sounding language.

Hello: mahr-ha-ba
Goodbye: salam
Thank you: shukran

7) Bengali (215 million speakers)
Another Indian language, apparently not grouped within the Hindustani umbrella (don't ask me why!).

How are you: Kamon Acho
Good-bye: Shuva-bidhai
Thank you: Dhanabad

8) Portuguese (194 million speakers)
I guess this is largely down to Brazil then....?

Hello: ola
Goodbye: tchau
Thank you: obrigado

9) Malay/Indonesian (176 million speakers)
I wouldn't have guessed this was in the top ten actually...!

Hello: Selamat siang
Goodbye: Saya pergi dulu
Thank you: Terima kasih

10) French (129 million speakers)
Once the international language of diplomacy, it seems La Belle Lingue has slipped down the list a bit in terms of usefulness, but is still making into the top ten.

Hello: bonjour
Goobye: au revoir
Thankyou: merci

ah now I see what I have been doing wrong all these years when people don't realise I am going somewhere - i should be saying 'goobye' or perhaps 'gubei' ?

Posted by Kev at 2005/09/02 10:33:00.

What?! French… tenth place in the top ten?!! Fuck-a-doodle-do!!!! Come on, fellow francophones, time to leap up and perform our duty! Let us breed joyfully and frantically to prevent extinction!!! Let us organize a massive orgy to counter numerical submersion! Allons, enfants de la patrie… !

Posted by Sheri D. at 2005/09/04 18:06:39.

I think it's a wonderful tribute to the French that you choose this sort of solution to the problem (i.e. breeding), rather than just invading another country like everywhere else... In terms of land mass France is actually a very big country - the largest in Europe at an impressive 547,030 km² - twice the size of the united kingdom! Plenty of room for a larger population...

Posted by John at 2005/09/05 03:35:13.

Oh and let's not forget Canada - a significant part of it is French speaking and that is the second biggest country (in terms of land mass) in the world! Maybe if you could just persuade the Russians to speak French instead of Russian, you'd be onto a winner.

Posted by John at 2005/09/05 03:37:04.

Not to mention the poor old Belgians (5 million French speakers) at present time in the throes of a linguistic civil war with their Flemish counterpart.

Posted by Sheri D. at 2005/09/05 06:56:53.

Ahhh the Belgians. I have been there twice and nobody seemed to want to speak so much of a word of French. Perhaps I was in the none French bit though...? I think I have just been to Brugges and Antwerp.

Posted by John at 2005/09/05 10:51:22.

Yes, Bruges and Antwerp are in the Flemish speaking part of Belgium. I tend to view Belgium as a ship which is sinking while the crew members fight each other in order to be at the helm. Ironically, Belgium’s motto is “l’union fait la force”…! United we stand… divided we fall!

Posted by Sheri D. at 2005/09/05 14:55:41.

Is it Belgium French which has all those sensible modifications like "septante" instead of the slightly silly "soixante-dix"...?

Posted by John at 2005/09/05 15:14:44.

Sorry I think I meant Belgian French there, not Belgium French.

Posted by John at 2005/09/05 15:15:16.

Quite right, Belgians say “septante” and “nonante”. In French speaking Switzerland, you also say “octante” for “quatre-vingts”.
From your journal, I gathered you are in Japan with your girlfriend. You speak Japanese ? Have you ever read “Stupeur et Tremblements”? If not, you must. The author, Amelie Nothomb, writes about a job she got for a few months in Japan. Kind of scary, I must say...! Given its success, I s’pose it has been translated in English.
My regards to Chie.

Posted by Sheri D. at 2005/09/05 17:37:48.

Now "octante" also sounds very sensible too - "quatre-vingts" has a certain charm about it, but it is a little illogical - it is as though it was an after thought or something!

Yes you're right Sheri I am currently in Japan with my girlfriend - just on holiday at the moment but I will start work here next month hopefully. I speak some Japanese, but have never had any proper lessons, I have just picked it up as I go along.

Nope I haven't read "Stupeur et Tremblements", I shall have to look out for it. I'm a great fan of French films, so hopefully I might also get on well with French fiction...?

Posted by John at 2005/09/06 03:24:24.

About “Stupeur et tremblements”
It so happens they made a film of it. You may perhaps find it.

Avec Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji, Taro Suwa, Bison Katayama, Yasunari Kondo, Sokyu Fujita
Réalisateur : Alain Corneau
Langues et formats sonores : Français (Dolby Digital 5.1), Japonais (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Sous-titres : Français

Posted by Sheri D. at 2005/09/06 06:39:52.

Thanks Sheri - I managed to find it on IMDB - apparently the English title is "Fear and Trembling". I will have a look for it next time we go to the video rental place!

Posted by John at 2005/09/06 08:31:13.

It's interesting that French is listed tenth, but the people doing all the chatter on this site French speakers.
There should be a new survey. Which group loves to hear themselves speak and talk about themselves. I'm sure in that survey you frogs would win hands down. lol
Oopps I meant French. lol

Posted by Nick; speaker of both Chinese and English at 2006/01/09 20:50:24.

Remember as people who work with computers, there are only 10 languages which we need to know about. English and Binary.

Posted by Jon at 2006/02/01 14:34:27.

Hahah... for those of you, and I assume most people won't since this is more of a language forum rather than EECS forum, that don't know what 10 means in binary, each placeholder in binary code represents a power of 2 and you turn them either on or off depending on whether it's a 1 or a 0. The first placeholder stands for 2^0 (that's = 1), the second placeholder is 2^1 (that's = 2), but since our hillarious Jon said 10, the first placeholder is not contributing anything to our final number and only the second placeholder is; therefore, by 10 he means 2 :) Have fun.

Posted by Ruiz at 2006/07/06 22:06:16.

Also, why do we rate the usefulness of languages based on how many people speak it? What if I am an engineer trying to figure out what language to learn? I don't care if I can go to a country and communicate with the bartender; I care if I can pick up a book and understand what the author is trying to tell me. With that said, why don't we take into consideration the number of pieces of literature written in a language (poems, scientific articles, political documents, etc) and other forms of communication that implement the use of a language such as music and even computer languages (there's quite a bit of English in those as far as I can tell)? It's worthy to note that not only because a lot of people speak a language does it also mean that a lot of pieces of literature will be written in that language... many of these languages that you mentioned have not been as proliferate as other "less important" languages that you seemed to ignore in the list (I don't know numbers, but I am sure that, as an example, German is up there in the criterion that I suggested)

Posted by Ruiz at 2006/07/06 22:17:07.

There's no such language as 'Hindustani' (perhaps you meant Hindi???) and German is far more useful than French unless you're going to Senegal (or France, but who is that stupid?). Thanks

Posted by michael at 2006/07/27 18:53:30.

On counting up English speakers: I was actually surprised the number was so low. Remember, the country with the most English speakers is not the US - it's India. Now you know why the guy on the phone is always from India.

Posted by Will at 2006/11/02 02:04:38.

Your Mandarin pronunciations are a bit off. "Zaijian" sounds more like "dsai jee-en." "Duo xio le" should actually be spelled "duo xie le," which is pronounced like "d-war (minus the r-sound -- sort of like when a British or retarded person says the word "war") xee-eh luh," where the "x" sounds like a person with a terrible lisp trying to make the sh-sound. Not that this matters too much, though, since the Chinese almost always just say "xiexie." You got the pronunciation of "ni hao" right, though.

Posted by Uterus Chewer at 2007/01/06 15:26:42.

What about German. Is that a useful language because I am intrigued by it.

Posted by Tom Baldwin at 2007/01/14 23:11:03.

The japanese is missing. Am sure it should be in top 10. Forget about French men and women. haha !!!

Posted by ctw at 2007/02/20 02:47:02.

I am teaching myself dutch. I like the Germanic family of languages.

Posted by Tom at 2007/03/04 23:14:32.

French really should be higher! Here in the United States, French is a very popular language to study. J'aime Francais!

Posted by Sarah at 2007/03/19 20:25:17.

shouldn't it be "J'aime le français"?? i'm not correcting you, i'm actually not sure...

i don't think this list does a very good job; i agree with whoever said that a language is not rated in usefulness by the number of speakers. instead, they should be rated by the number of second-language speakers.

people learn a second language because they think that language is useful, so it would make more sense that way.

Posted by Juan at 2007/04/23 02:22:44.

interesting conversation...french is definetly on the decline in the world (to french people's disdain and ignorance). But I would say German is a more useful language, considering German is the language that is most translated from. Think books, history, science papers, etc. Portugese is probably over-represented here, although the people in portugal, brazil, angola and east timor may not think so...

Posted by german!! at 2007/06/07 23:27:10.

A language is more useful to me in terms of the many places you can speak it. Mandarin and Hindustani are primary languages only in China and India respectively. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Canada, and many African countries. Spanish is spoken in much of the US, Mexico, most Latin American countries, and Spain. Greek serves as the root language of many other languages. And that is how a languages usefulness should be measured.

Posted by languagegeek at 2007/11/04 19:50:28.

I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting!

Posted by ethedyhip at 2007/12/14 07:17:25.

Very interesting. I've always been thankful that my native tongue is english. My only regret is that the Americans don't really see the importance of learning a language at a young age. I never took a language class. Ever. I did however move to Germany for a year and found that learning German is very useful and quite easy (once you get past the grammar). Next on my list: Russian!

Posted by Kristen at 2007/12/25 18:24:06.

goodbye in portuguese isn't "tchau" but "adeus"

Posted by portuguese_girl at 2008/02/19 21:59:47.

what a completely flawed list; it only takes number of speakers into account. no mention of cultural, literary, technological or economic factors at all! what a lazy-arsed crock o' shite of a list!

Posted by leonard at 2008/04/03 18:13:32.

Leonard, you'll like this list better

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-twelve-most-useful-second-languages-for-english-speakers.html

Posted by Heathe at 2008/05/02 19:52:06.

gjeml xwchmzf nilyjufbh idsm kyabfsv ejvb tscfwr

Posted by cfomzargq upcorlv at 2008/05/04 22:08:47.

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