I somehow found myself researching the Ainu people. How this happened, I really don't think I could say. Oh, mystery solved thanks to technology--ever since I turned on the function to type Japanese, I've been wondering what Ainu is. There's a keyboard for hiragana, romaji, katakana... and Ainu. So I looked it up and then spent a good 45 minutes reading, looking, and listening to stuff on the internet. Then, I come to find out that their language is dying, which is never a happy thing to hear. And then I come across this website referenced, I think, on Wikipedia called Ethnologue.
Ethnologue is made up of contributions from linguists all over the world, who help to create a global picture of how many languages are spoken, how many people are speaking them, and their level of vitality (if they're thriving, endangered, etc.).
So I pull up the page with rankings of the world's languages, starting with the ones that have the most speakers. Naturally, being a big-headed American, I was raised with little emphasis on learning another language because everyone speaks English already. So imagine my surprise when English is not at the top of the list. Guess who is.
CHINA.
How are more of us not learning Chinese? 1,197 million (i.e., over 1 billion) people speak Chinese. Of course, this is including all the dialects. I know some Chinese dialects are more widely understood than others, but this can't be any different than English and all its dialects and pidgin forms.
How many people speak English, you might ask? 335 million.
WHAT THE HELL.
Seriously?
For every English speaker, there are 3 1/2 Chinese speakers.
No wonder we feel threatened!
But seriously, how are more of us not learning Chinese? WHY are more of us not learning Chinese? What gives?
Okay, so moving on, English is obviously the second language on the list, right? I mean, the Chinese thing threw me for a loop, but we are, obviously, as the world's superpower, at least second on the list.
Goes to read #2.
Spanish?!
I ask again, WHAT THE HELL?!?!??!?!
How are more of us not learning Spanish? I mean, SERIOUSLY.
In case you think I'm going to fool you again, saying that #3 is actually Tibetan or something, it really is English. We may have scores of millions less speakers than China, but where Chinese is spoken in "only" 33 countries, English is spoken in over 100.
So, moving on down the list, I found further surprises. Naturally, in my Indo-European world-view, I presumed that French, Italian, etc. would be at least in the top 10. Not a chance. Here, for your information, are the 24 languages with over 50 million first-language speakers:
- Chinese
- Spanish
- English
- Hindi
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Bengali
- Russian
- Japanese
- Javanese
- German
- Lahnda
- Telegu
- Marathi
- Tamil
- French
- Vietnamese
- Korean
- Urdu
- Italian
- Malay
- Persian
- Turkish
- Oriya
Are you surprised? I don't even know what some of these are. I have literally never heard of them. Apparently, Lahnda (which my browser is trying to spell correct to Landau), is spoken in Pakistan, as is Urdu. Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh (and three other countries, apparently). Telegu, Marathi, Tamil, and Oriya are all spoken in India. How, in our expanded worldview, have all of these escaped our (my) gaze? I don't know what to make of this information.
Of course, our world view has less to do with people than it does with money (ain't that the truth). So, for your reference, here are the top 24 economies (U.N., 2012). Let's see how they match up.
- United States
- China
- Japan
- Germany
- France
- Brazil
- United Kingdom
- Russia
- Italy
- India
- Canada
- Australia
- Spain
- Mexico
- South Korea
- Indonesia
- Turkey
- Netherlands
- Saudi Arabia
- Switzerland
- Iran
- Sweden
- Norway
- Poland
The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Poland, are the five not represented. Then again, it is my understanding that most of these countries have many people who are at least bilingual.
What do you make of all this information? Were you surprised by anything on either list?
Getting back to Ainu, Ethnologue considers it "nearly extinct."
Now, let me tell you a quick story to explain why I'm not sure if I should feel sad about this.
I grew up loving grammar and spelling. I was not the most intense grammatical police you've ever heard of, but I certainly shared my knowledge. I also studied Shakespeare, though, and I loved tinkering with it to see how it worked--what was similar to modern English, what had changed and why, etc. So eventually, toward the end of high school, I realized that language is a living, breathing thing. It's important to have a system so that language is universally understood and credible, but I also think it's beautiful how language can transform, regenerate, create, etc. I'm not saying it doesn't bother me when people don't use apostrophes or when capital letters don't get their time to shine, but I've also begun to make my peace with the process.
This is why I don't know how to feel about languages dying. Ainu, for instance, has nothing to do with me. I'm not exactly about to start learning Ainu in addition to Japanese (and all the other languages I want to get back to). And Gaelic, which has been dying for a while, should I care? Some of "my people" come from that region, so maybe I should try to learn it. Or maybe it doesn't matter.
Do you feel connection to or emotion about dying languages? Do you feel like we should save them? Have you tried to learn one? Leave your comments below!
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