If French is the language of love and romance, what’s English – the language of unbridled capitalism or the internet or something? How about other languages?

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• What's that rude phrase - calling someone a rotten turtle egg or something like that?

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  by Amorphous Blob on January 28th, 2008

• Oh, there's worse, much worse, trust me.

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  by iLove on January 28th, 2008

• Wow!! never knew that :)

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  by The0Rising on June 1st, 2009

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• Agreed :)

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  by The0Rising on June 1st, 2009

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• Ok, @hopbzhk, I don't know which donkey you just fell from but how long has it been since you read anything?
  
  Since you are so good with statistics, please tell everybody what the real deal with Spanish is. I hate (actually, no) to break it to you but...that "spanish never" already happened years ago señor, or would you prefer monsieur, oh no that's right, nobody hears that around anymore. I bet you are not even a real french. Either a fascist or a halfie, or even a forthie who's just looking to fit in somewhere.
  
  How about you do some research before posting anything, for a change, huh? It's really not that difficult, just type "most spoken languages in the world" and it's right there. And ooooh what is that?? FRENCH IS NOT EVEN IN THE TOP 10 LANGUAGES! aaaaw.....désolé....so sorry! It's not even in the top 15......c'mon señor....This is why everybody hates French people, because you are just a bunch of pretentious douches.
  
  For those interested and too tired after so much reading to search for the list (if it's not already listed somewhere above) here's an actual link that backs up my arguments, not like other people who just say things...how about an essay 101 for "those"?
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

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  by awadulce on December 1st, 2011

• hopbzhk: do you have some source for this information?
  This is what I found. The often quoten Weber report gives about 190 million French and 20 millions Spanish secondary speakers, putting French at the first and Spanish at the 6th place in that list. (the value for Spanish looks very low to me, by the way). This report bases on 1995 data, though.
  "This article was researched by George Weber in the early 1990s and written up in 1995"
  "Results are based on data collected between the early 1980s and mid 1990s - do they need updating?
  - No, they do not. The number of speakers of all the top ten languages have gone up in the last quarter century but relative to each other, the situation among the top ten remains unchanged. George Weber, 2008"
  http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm
  (also quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers )
  
  However, I guess that Weber's statement cannot apply to the relative situation of French and Spanish.
  Ethnologue gives for 1999 the following estimation (in millions):
  Language: 1st language speakers - 1st and 2nd language speakers
  Spanish: 322 to 358 - 417
  French: 77 - 128
  Source:
  http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/most_spoken_languages.htm
  This would yield by difference:
  - 51 million 2nd language speakers for French
  - 59 to 95 million 2nd language speakers for Spanish.

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  by iwnit on December 1st, 2011

• awadulce: please don't insult other users or other nationalities in general. Also, hopbzhk is here talking about the list of the "most studied language in the world as a foreign [language]", which is not the same as the list of languages by number of native speakers.

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  by iwnit on December 1st, 2011

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