obi
formerly david stone
Is there a list somewhere showing which languages someone would need to learn to be able to speak to the largest number of people given that they are willing to learn some arbitrary number of languages? The only lists I can find give me that language for knowing only one language (it's English). But once I am willing to learn two languages, I don't know which two pair best. It could be that two languages with each over half the amount of speakers of English have such little overlap in speakers that knowing both gives me more people I can talk to than English + any other language, for instance.
I would be interested in writing a program that determines stuff like this if I could find at least a list of how many people speak combinations of languages (for instance, 300 million people speak only English, 200 speak English + Spanish, 500 million speak only Mandarin, 27 speak Estonian + Lojban, etc.).
I would be interested in writing a program that determines stuff like this if I could find at least a list of how many people speak combinations of languages (for instance, 300 million people speak only English, 200 speak English + Spanish, 500 million speak only Mandarin, 27 speak Estonian + Lojban, etc.).