Living language
A Langue is known as alive when there exist still Locuteur S natives using it. One opposes this term to that of Dead language. The living languages are usually used for the communication between the people.
Their employment is naturally developed by the education (the parents generally learn with their children the languages which they speak). Nevertheless, of many cultures support the development of the teaching of living languages in order to support the trade with the other cultures. Thus in ancient Europe, Latin was used like language of the commercial exchanges and cultural through all the Roman Empire.
Today, it is current to say that English became the lingua franca (Latin expression which was used in connection with this language even) to exchange through the greatest part of the world developed. Some point out however that it is about a a little particular dialect which is based on the language of Shakespeare but in its form evolved/moved with the the United States of America and transformed by nonnative speakers.
At all events, the great living languages spoken in the world are (the figures given are orders of magnitude):
- Chinese (1 000 000 000 speakers)
- English (520 000 000 speakers)
- Hindi (500 000 000 speakers)
- Spanish (400 000 000 speakers)
- Russian (280 000 000 speakers)
- Arab (250 000 000 speakers)
- Portuguese (230 000 000 speakers)
- Bengali (200 000 000 speakers)
- Malayan (175 000 000 speakers)
- French (130 000 000 speakers)
- Japanese (125 000 000 speakers)
- German (120 000 000 speakers)
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