jdSiFKo8Ny4.srt

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According to my research,
there are 26 countries in Latin America.

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So the most widely spoken language in 
the world is obviously Latin.

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Right.

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Good evening everyone.
Today I'm going to talk about what are 

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the most commonly spoken languages in 
the world.

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A lot of people want to know that.
What are the most commonly spoken or 

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most widely spoken languages on earth?
Well,

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it depends on how you measure it.
It depends on whether you measure only 

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native speakers or if you measure the 
uh,

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the number of second language,
third language speakers,

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all that.
Uh,

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so let's just talk about a couple of 
different ways to count the number of 

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speakers.
So the first way is just by native 

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speakers.
If we do that,

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then mandarin is the most widely spoken 
language in the world with 1.1

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billion speakers,
that's billion with a b.

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And that's only Mandarin.
That doesn't include all of the other 

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Chinese languages in China.
Uh,

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if you include those,
that would be another couple hundred 

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million.
But just native speakers of Mandarin 1.1

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billion.

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You mentioned that billion after that.
Number two is English,

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which is far,
far behind with 330 million native 

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speakers.
Uh,

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as you might expect,
it's in the top couple,

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but it's only number two after,
after Mandarin Chinese number three is 

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Spanish with 300 million people.
So what's not far behind English?

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Judging by the number of native 
speakers,

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it's not far behind English,
but we'll get to that again later.

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And number four is Hindi slash or do,
uh,

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that's widely considered to be the same 
language.

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It's Hindi in India,
but it's Urdu in Pakistan or when 

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spoken,
um,

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in,
uh,

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by Muslims.
And you've written in the Arabic script,

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but it's usually considered the same 
language because the core is the same 

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and they are mutually intelligible.
So same language,

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basically.
Number five is Arabic with 200 million 

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people.
A Bengali with 185 million people is 

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number six.
Bengali is up,

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the language spoken in Bangladesh and 
that area of the eastern part of Indian 

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sub continent and number seven is 
Portuguese with 160 million people.

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Number eight is Russian with 160 
million.

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About the same as Portuguese and 
Japanese.

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122 million,
puts it at number nine,

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and then German is number 10 with a 100 
million.

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Then we have Punjabi Javanese that's 
spoken in Indonesia,

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and then French is number 13.
Umm,

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so let's compare that to the number of 
speakers including second language 

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speakers,
but proficient second language speakers 

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proficient meaning that they can speak 
it fairly well.

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Uh,
even though it's not their native 

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language.
So number one is still mandarin Chinese 

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with 1.3
5 billion.

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So basically the speakers of all the 
other Chinese languages also learn 

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mandarin as the national language of 
China.

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That's why there's an extra 200 or two,
250 million speakers of Mandarin Chinese

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when we include the second language 
speakers.

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Now English is surprising one,
well not surprising,

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but impressive with that.
It's still at number two with 1.2

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billion speakers,
including the second language speakers.

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So that's quite a difference between the
number of native speakers.

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330000001.2
billion.

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So that's something like 870 million 
people have learned English as a second 

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language and speak it proficiently.
That's quite impressive.

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That's a large percentage of the world's
population.

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Uh,
when we get to number three,

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there's a change.
It's not Spanish,

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it's Hindi and Urdu because in India and
in Pakistan,

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those languages are not the native 
language of everybody.

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But a lot of people who speak a 
different language learn Hindi and Urdu 

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as a second language.
Uh,

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so they can communicate with speakers of
other languages in the Indian 

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subcontinent.
So that has a 750 million proficient 

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speakers if we're including second 
language speakers.

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So that displaced Spanish from number 
three,

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but no Spanish is still at number four 
with 530 million speakers including 

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second language speakers than Arabic.
Still at number five with 300 and 

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million,
319 million speakers.

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And that's because a lot of people in 
Africa learn Arabic as a second 

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language.
Uh,

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number six is French with 274 million.
So French is another one that jumped way

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up the list when we included second 
language speakers.

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That's because there are a lot of 
countries in the world where French is 

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not the native language,
but it's the official language or it's a

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language that is spoken by a large,
a large proportion of the population,

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so that includes much of Africa.
A French is widely spoken in Africa and 

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a lot of different countries,
so that's why it goes up from 75 million

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to 274 million.
It's almost 200 million people speak 

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French proficiently as a second 
language,

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so that's quite impressive to number 
seven we get a language that wasn't even

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on the list for when we calculate it,
just native speakers and that is molay.

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Slash.
Indonesian.

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That's another one of those languages 
that has two different names because 

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people in different cultural groups or 
different countries call it something 

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different.

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So Malaya Malaya has Malaysian language 
in Malaysia and it's Indonesian language

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in Indonesia,
but same language,

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almost entirely the same.
Just some different vocabulary and 

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different accent and that kind of thing.
That one goes up to 270 million if we 

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include second language speakers.
And that's because in Indonesia it's,

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it's not the native language of very 
many people.

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I think it's five to 10% of the people 
who speak it as their native language.

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But it is the national language and 
everybody learns it as the Lingua Franca

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and as a language of education that of 
business and everything.

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So it doesn't have that many native 
speakers,

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but it has a huge number of speak 
proficient speakers,

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including second language speakers.
So Indonesian and Malay with 270 million

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people.
And then after that,

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um,
I didn't keep track of all of them.

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But it's interesting how the most 
important languages are not necessarily 

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the ones with the most native speakers 
because languages can be important based

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on their status as a Lingua Franca.

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So we see that with melee and 
Indonesian.

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So just because a language has a lot of 
speakers doesn't necessarily mean that 

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it's the most important or most 
influential language on a global scale.

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So another factor that we can think 
about introduced into the conversation 

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is how many places that language is 
spoken in over how wide of a geographic 

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area is it spoken?
So if you think about Chinese,

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it's spoken basically only in China.
If we're thinking of Mandarin,

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it's spoken in China,
it's also spoken in Taiwan,

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although they claimed Taiwan as part of 
China.

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Um,
and it's also spoken in the Chinese 

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diaspora to a large extent,
but basically it's only in China,

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just that one country.
It's a big country.

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It's an important country,
but it's only that one country.

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So does that make Chinese the most 
important language?

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Is Mandarin the most important language?

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Just because it's spoken by the most 
people?

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Well,
I would say no because on a global scale

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it's not used that much by a non native 
speakers.

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And it's not used between people of 
different countries as a Lingua Franca,

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it's not used as an international 
language of business.

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So I would say it's not the number one 
most influential or important language.

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Even though China has any emerging 
country and it's a powerful country,

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an important country,
it's still not the most important 

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language in the world.
I would say it.

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English you could argue is the most 
important because it has such a huge 

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number of second language speakers but 
it's,

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but they're dispersed all over the 
world.

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So everywhere you can find people who 
speak English.

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So it's arguably the most important.
Um,

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Spanish is also a very important one 
because Spanish is spoken in so many 

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countries,
uh,

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and it has native speakers in so many 
countries.

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So Spanish could be,
uh,

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one of the top most influential 
languages,

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Arabic as well as spoken in a lot of 
different countries.

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Arabic is a tricky one though because it
has a huge number of dialects and the 

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dialects can vary quite a bit.
So whether you can communicate with 

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speakers in a different country or not,
if you learn Arabic,

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that's an entirely different issue in 
that complicates the matters with 

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Arabic.
So I would say Arabic is not one of the 

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most important though.
It's,

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it's up there.
It's quite important and quite useful 

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around the world,
especially in Africa and the Middle 

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East.
French is globally important because of 

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that,
because of all the places it's spoken.

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It's spoken in a lot of former colonies 
in Asia and the Caribbean and South 

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America a little bit.
Um,

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and especially in Africa and in many 
countries.

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In Europe,
French is spoken,

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so French is also one of the most 
important languages because of its 

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dispersion over a large area.
I would say English,

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Spanish,
French,

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maybe Arabic would be the most important
on a global scale if we're thinking 

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about the number of countries and the 
widest geographic area.

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All right.
Those are just my thoughts on the 

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matter.
Those are the most important,

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most widely spoken languages in the 
world,

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I guess.
What do you think?

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Which ones are the most important?
Leave your comments below and let's have

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a chat about it.
All right.

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Thank you very much.
Talk to you later.