World Languages
English in the world
Where is English spoken as an official language?
Look at the map below, and highlight the countries where you think English is the official language. What can you notice? What language(s) do you feel would be important to get by in?
The following map shows countries that have English as their official language (shaded in blue).
On the following map, countries in which English is the first language of a large fraction of the population are shown in dark blue. The light blue (turquoise) shading shows countries where a substantial proportion of the population has adopted English as their main language.
Official language
Below is a list of ten countries. Note down what you think the official language is in these countries.
- Brazil
- India
- South Africa
- Switzerland
- Egypt
- Ukraine
- Philippines
- Andorra
- Chile
- Malaysia
Table 1 reveals the answers.
|
country |
language |
|
Brazil |
Portuguese |
|
India |
Hindi |
|
South Africa |
Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swati, Tsongo, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu |
|
Switzerland |
German, French, Italian and Romansh (descending from Vulgar Latin) |
|
Egypt |
Arabic |
|
Ukraine |
Ukrainian |
|
Philippines |
Filipino, English |
|
Andorra |
Catalan |
|
Chile |
Spanish |
|
Malaysia |
Malay |
Table 1. Official languages of ten (arbitrarily chosen) countries
Most spoken languages in the world
The image below shows a list of the most spoken languages around the world. Try to put them in order of popularity and estimate the number of native speakers.
Table 2 reveals the rank order.
|
rank |
language |
speakers (millions) |
|
1 |
Chinese |
1,213 |
|
2 |
Spanish |
329 |
|
3 |
English |
328 |
|
4 |
Arabic |
221 |
|
5 |
Hindi |
182 |
|
6 |
Bengali |
181 |
|
7 |
Portuguese |
178 |
|
8 |
Russian |
144 |
|
9 |
Japanese |
122 |
|
10 |
German |
90.3 |
Table 2. Top ten most spoken languages in the world [Source: Lewis, 2009]
English words of international origin
The following list of words comes from what could be called ‘common languages’, as opposed to obscure ones. Think about the possible origins of each word, and note down what language you think they come from. In total you will there are five different languages.
- alcohol
- bonanza
- cafeteria
- casserole
- hamburger
- jungle
- muesli
- shampoo
- tartare
- tobacco
Table 3 reveals the origins.
|
word |
origin |
|
alcohol |
Arabic |
|
bonanza |
Spanish |
|
cafeteria |
Spanish |
|
casserole |
French |
|
hamburger |
German |
|
jungle |
Hindi |
|
muesli |
German |
|
shampoo |
Hindi |
|
tartare |
French |
|
tobacco |
Arabic |
Table 3. Some English words of international origin
References
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
Acknowledgements
[Information last accessed: 27 July 2017]
This article is adapted from ‘Languages at Work’. An OpenLearn (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/) chunk reworked by permission of The Open University copyright © 2016 – made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence v4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_GB. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.