Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Guardian Online book review

About languages. Very Interesting.

Currently English rates 2nd amoung number of speakers, but it has only about half the number of speakers as Mandarin. Hindi ranks 3rd - just behind english.

The really interesting bit is about the evolution of languages. For example, Latin used to be thought of as a language that was going to be spoken by the world. Now latin is a very dead language - except perhaps in the sciences. Now English is considered to be the language that will unite the world and all her people. Think about this. English has half the number of speakers that Mandarin does. Perhaps we should all learn a second language.

Anyway, the review is here. Well worth a read

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