About: World language   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

A world language is a language spoken internationally, which is learned by many people as a second language. A world language is not only characterized by the number of its speakers (native or second language speakers), but also by its geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic relations. In this respect, major world languages are dominated by languages of European origin. The historical reason for this is the period of European colonialism. World languages originating with historical colonial empires include English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The international prominence of Arabic has its historical reason in the medieval Islamic conquests.

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  • World language
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  • A world language is a language spoken internationally, which is learned by many people as a second language. A world language is not only characterized by the number of its speakers (native or second language speakers), but also by its geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic relations. In this respect, major world languages are dominated by languages of European origin. The historical reason for this is the period of European colonialism. World languages originating with historical colonial empires include English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The international prominence of Arabic has its historical reason in the medieval Islamic conquests.
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abstract
  • A world language is a language spoken internationally, which is learned by many people as a second language. A world language is not only characterized by the number of its speakers (native or second language speakers), but also by its geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic relations. In this respect, major world languages are dominated by languages of European origin. The historical reason for this is the period of European colonialism. World languages originating with historical colonial empires include English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The international prominence of Arabic has its historical reason in the medieval Islamic conquests. Other major languages are not widely used across several continents, but have an international significance as the lingua franca of a historical empire. These include Mandarin Chinese in the Chinese empire, Russian in the Russian empire, German in the German empire, and Hindi following the British Raj which united India. The major languages of the Indian subcontinent, Hindustani (including all Hindi dialects and Urdu) and Bengali, have numbers of speakers comparable to those of major world languages primarily due to the extreme population growth in the region in recent decades rather than a super-regional use of these languages. Similarly, Japanese has more speakers than French, but while French is spoken intercontinentally and has a significant portion of second language speakers, the vast majority of Japanese speakers are native Japanese.
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