The 10 most spoken languages in the world

[gangleri2001]

I don't know about Bulgarian and Serbian but I'm pretty sure Spanish and Italian are NOT unless if they've learned a bit of both. If you said Spanish and Portuguese, okay I might let it pass.

Spanish and Italian ARE mutually intelligible.

Here you got this list of mutually intelligible romancelanguages (according to my experience):

Spansih speaker: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan
Italian speaker: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan
Portuguese speaker: Spanish, Italian, Catalan
Catalan speaker: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (French partially)
French speaker: Catalan partially
Romanian speaker: No one understands these romanians, but according them, they can understand Italian.

 

[RedRalph]

you could probably get by with someone speaking Scots Gaelic if you can speak Irish

 

[Mirc]

Spanish and Italian ARE mutually intelligible.

Here you got this list of mutually intelligible romancelanguages (according to my experience):

Spansih speaker: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan
Italian speaker: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan
Portuguese speaker: Spanish, Italian, Catalan
Catalan speaker: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (French partially)
French speaker: Catalan partially
Romanian speaker: No one understands these romanians, but according them, they can understand Italian.

I've never been aware that Italians can understand Portuguese very easily...

Anyway, that's called asymmetrical intelligibility. Basically, a French or Romanian speaker would have a much easier time understanding another Romance language than a person speaking a different Romance language would have trying to understand any of those two. It's because of "closed" vowels and different article grammar in the case of Romanian and because of too many transformations and "swallowed" endings in the case of French.

Had the Dalmatian language not died, Romance languages in Europe would still be a dialect continuum. As in, from one end to another, each language would be understandable to its neighbors but less and less understandable as you go further away. As Dalmatian died early on, complete connection was broken, and only Portuguese -> Spanish -> Catalan -> Italian are still a dialect continuum. It used to be Portuguese -> Spanish -> Catalan -> Italian -> Dalmatian -> (Aromanian*) -> Romanian.

*= if you consider it a language and not a dialect

BTW, if we go by Wiki, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian are languages and not dialects so we here understand 3 romance languages easily and one partially (Spanish).

Anyway, from my experience, in Romance languages, the more central you get, the easier it is to be understood by everyone and the harder it is to understand the others. Which is why Italian and Spanish are understood by almost all (can't comment on Catalan since unfortunately not enough people I know have too much of a contact with it), yet they have a harder time understanding peripheric Romance languages (like French, Romanian).

BTW, for me written Catalan is completely understandable (don't think I've heard it spoken too much though), but then again I learned to speak reasonable Italian (yes, without even trying, in two months of staying there ) so I'm probably more experienced in this than your average Romance-speaker.

 

[Lillefix]

Now what is the end result? Spain has 3 1/2 languages now after at first going the prescriptive route, then hitting a bit of a bin when the Spanish Civil War ended, resulting in Castellano (Spanish), Basque and Catalan plus whatever the hell is being spoken in Valencia

Didn't you forget Galician?

 

[scherbchen]

Didn't you forget Galician?

if you do not count it as a variety (/hybrid) of Portuguese, sure. It has probably about the same claim as others but then we would have to up the count for languages in France by quite a bit, right?

 

[Elta]

Anyway, from my experience, in Romance languages, the more central you get, the easier it is to be understood by everyone and the harder it is to understand the others. Which is why Italian and Spanish are understood by almost all (can't comment on Catalan since unfortunately not enough people I know have too much of a contact with it), yet they have a harder time understanding peripheric Romance languages (like French, Romanian).

I'd like to add that we should consider the "homeland" of French to be North France and thus a very peripheric language seeing as how the conquered all of that southern area.


I am sure most people already no that, but I thought I'd add that.

 

[Elta]

if you do not count it as a variety (/hybrid) of Portuguese, sure. It has probably about the same claim as others but then we would have to up the count for languages in France by quite a bit, right?

I find Galician and Portuguese to be like Picard is to French rather than say Occitan and French.

 

[scherbchen]

meh, everybody has their opinions on what should be considered a variety/dialect or a language all by itself. only the speakers of a dialect can, as a collective consciousness if you will, decide to make it a language. that is what turned a German dialect into Dutch. Now I do not know anything about Gallego but is there a generally accepted dictionary, orthography or grammar, printed and televised media following those guidelines? If that is the case then, sure, it is a language.

 

[Lay_Lay]

As an English speaker, I do feel like I have the ability to read or understand spoken German, Dutch, then French more easily than any other foreign languages, if having studied none of them.

However, we Americans get a bit of Spanish in our television and school, if not in our community, so Spanish gets the nod for understandability to most of us. Just through repetition.

 

[gangleri2001]

can't we just open a thread that is a pledge to recognize the individuality and wonderfulness of Catalunia (maybe somebody can do an impersonation of Pepe Carvalho), sign it all and just be done with that same ol' song and dance? we'll even throw in a few words that recognize the speakers of Catalan in France just to make sure (nevermind that most of them believe that they are speaking a French dialect).

What the hell has anything to do with Catalan and Catalonia in this thread?

(French dialect... )

Edit: Who the hell is Pepe Carvalho? What has someone with a Portuguese name to do with Catalonia?

 

[Bast]

I do understand some Italian if spoken slowly. I can also understand written text in that language and I've never had any Italian lessons. Same happens when I'm reading some Dutch texts, I can understand some of it, because I speak a bit of German and the languages seem quite similar.

Spanish and Italian ARE mutually intelligible.

Here you got this list of mutually intelligible romancelanguages (according to my experience):

Spansih speaker: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan
Italian speaker: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan
Portuguese speaker: Spanish, Italian, Catalan
Catalan speaker: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (French partially)
French speaker: Catalan partially
Romanian speaker: No one understands these romanians, but according them, they can understand Italian.

Oh okay. Thanks. I really should learn Spanish instead of bothering with French and its les liaisons dangereuses.

 

[gangleri2001]

I've never been aware that Italians can understand Portuguese very easily...

Anyway, that's called asymmetrical intelligibility. Basically, a French or Romanian speaker would have a much easier time understanding another Romance language than a person speaking a different Romance language would have trying to understand any of those two. It's because of "closed" vowels and different article grammar in the case of Romanian and because of too many transformations and "swallowed" endings in the case of French.

Had the Dalmatian language not died, Romance languages in Europe would still be a dialect continuum. As in, from one end to another, each language would be understandable to its neighbors but less and less understandable as you go further away. As Dalmatian died early on, complete connection was broken, and only Portuguese -> Spanish -> Catalan -> Italian are still a dialect continuum. It used to be Portuguese -> Spanish -> Catalan -> Italian -> Dalmatian -> (Aromanian*) -> Romanian.

*= if you consider it a language and not a dialect

BTW, if we go by Wiki, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian are languages and not dialects so we here understand 3 romance languages easily and one partially (Spanish).

Anyway, from my experience, in Romance languages, the more central you get, the easier it is to be understood by everyone and the harder it is to understand the others. Which is why Italian and Spanish are understood by almost all (can't comment on Catalan since unfortunately not enough people I know have too much of a contact with it), yet they have a harder time understanding peripheric Romance languages (like French, Romanian).

BTW, for me written Catalan is completely understandable (don't think I've heard it spoken too much though), but then again I learned to speak reasonable Italian (yes, without even trying, in two months of staying there ) so I'm probably more experienced in this than your average Romance-speaker.

You wrote a really good post there. I don't agree with one thing regarding to Catalan. Maybe you didn't say this because you don't know it, so there we go.

Catalan must be placed in two dialect continuum axis. One is Portuguese > Spanish > Catalan > Italian as you said, the other is French > Occitan > Catalan. Catalan was during its first centuries of existence a Gallo-Romance language. Due to expansion to the south, commerce within the mediterran area and neighborhood with other Iberian languages, it became closer to Aragonese, Spanish and Italian (if you think of all those italian languages as a dialect continuum in itself).

In fact, sometimes philologists classify Catalan as a "transition language" between Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance.

So, in my opinion a complete map of the dialect continuum of Romance languages would look like this:

 

[philippe]

you forgot wallonian and Romansh.(the language in switzerland spoken by 3% of the populace)

 

[gangleri2001]

you forgot wallonian and Romansh.(the language in switzerland spoken by 3% of the populace)

Wallonian = French
Romansh included in the Italian group (even though it shouldn't be)

 

[Bast]

A famous Walloon:

I agree, it's just French.

 

[classical_hero]

I have trouble believing more people speak German than French.

EDIT: particularly when it says "Standard German" and the figures include Swiss German.

THis is totally screwed up. Look at the notes:
on Wiki:




I mean... 113 million native French speakers vs 101 million native German speakers? Isn't that contradictory with the rankings?

Form Ethnologue:





I am saying the figures Godwynn quoted are BS.

Well there is a talk page on that article, since the Numbers do not look right. Even the list for total speakers is wrong.

 

[Zenon_pt]

The three most famous words in Portuguese:

Saudade

Seca

Fado

 

[Mirc]

What does "seca" mean?

My Romance vocabulary knowledge tells me it should be the female for "dry" (considering Italian "secca", Romanian "seaca"), but my instinct tells me that's not quite what it means.

 

[Rossiya]

Spanish and Italian ARE mutually intelligible.

Here you got this list of mutually intelligible romancelanguages (according to my experience):

Spansih speaker: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan
Italian speaker: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan
Portuguese speaker: Spanish, Italian, Catalan
Catalan speaker: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (French partially)
French speaker: Catalan partially
Romanian speaker: No one understands these romanians, but according them, they can understand Italian.

That is utter crap.

According to that I would be able to speak 8 languages, but in actual fact I can only speak 2, and I can only understand 2.

 

[PiMan]

That is utter crap.

According to that I would be able to speak 8 languages, but in actual fact I can only speak 2, and I can only understand 2.

There are only six languages listed there, what are the other two?