Can the variety of world language be captured by looking at just 40 examples? Well, no. But one needs to start somewhere.
By anyone’s count, there are thousands of languages alive in the world today, though the precise number will always be difficult (if not impossible) to pin down. Some, like the one you’re reading in now, are spoken by a hundred million or more people as their first or native language, and tens of millions more as second (or third, or fifth) languages with varying degrees of proficiency. Besides English, these include languages like Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi. Others are ‘niche languages’ that remain alive and well inside their zone of origin, but are not well-known to the broader world. Examples are Icelandic, Finnish, Igbo, Mongolian or Punjabi: Not going away, but also not reaching far beyond their own borders. Still others fall into the category of endangered—those with speakers numbering in thousands to tens of thousands, or even fewer—and whose continued survival depends on the concerted effort by schools, governments, and families to fight for their relevance vis-à-vis larger, more popular and worldly tongues. Examples include most indigenous languages of North and South America; Polynesian languages like Hawaiian; and European regional tongues such as Welsh, Cornish, Galician or Sicilian. With such a plethora of global languages to choose from, by what criteria could or should one choose which are most worthy of one’s attention, given the limited number of hours in a week (not to mention the limited language processing and storage capacity of any single human brain)? It’s hard enough to use Google Translate as a numerical benchmark—this a constantly moving target, because the number of languages included there has climbed steadily over the years—from a handful when the service was launched in 2006, to 80 by February 2014, then 133 in May of 2022, and mushrooming to a total of 249 in June 2024. That month a record 110 languages were added in one fell swoop—including Jamaican Patois, Manx (like the cat!), Cantonese (Jackie Chan movies!), Tuvan (throat singing!), Faroese and Kalaallisut (if you think Danish is too easy!). The advent of AI language modeling, which is only just getting started, guarantees that this list can only grow longer with time.
So, if one (and by one, I mean me) wanted to limit their focus to only the languages that Google Translate could manage, one would have to go back in time to 2009 (16 years ago as of this writing) to have a list no larger than 40. I have decided that forty is a nice round number—also carrying echoes of references that range from Biblical (40 years in the wilderness; Noah’s 40 days and 40 nights) to historical (40 acres and a mule) to scientific (40 days’ quarantine from the plague) to pop culture (America’s Top 40). It’s a large enough number to include both the most-spoken and -searched global languages (a.k.a. the Berlitz Guide languages) as well as provide at least a cursory representation of languages from geographies and families that tend to draw less outside attention. At the same time, it’s a small enough number that I can reasonably fit 40 words into each post and hopefully expect readers to continue to the end without tiring out. Maybe that’s why we count down Top 40 music—it seems like the limit of a normal human attention span? (I know… not every list runs to 40; some lists can also be Top Tens, Twenties, or Fifties. But if it’s good enough for Ryan Seacrest or BBC Radio 1, it’s good enough for me.)
Naturally, I had to make some (admittedly subjective and arbitrary) choices about which languages to include in this list on a regular basis. Apologies in advance: I acknowledge up front that for many of you out there, your own native/second/fifth/favorite language may be missing from this list. This being the Internet and all, I trust that if you disagree with me enough, you’ll leave me a comment about why; I sincerely welcome your feedback. With that disclaimer in mind, and without any further ado, here are the More Than Words “Top 40” and the reasons why they were chosen. I will reserve the right to tweak this selection in the future, and plan to include occasional ‘guest appearances’ from other languages as well.
My decisions were based on several categories:
- 1) Number of native speakers. This was an important, but not all-defining criterion. Naturally, the top five languages in this category are represented (Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic), as are several more in the top twenty (Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Vietnamese)—but on the other hand, several others in the global top twenty for native speakers didn’t make the list (Bengali, Punjabi, Javanese…sorry, it’s not personal). I had to make some judicious cuts in order to make room for smaller languages that shine for reasons 2 through 6…
- 2) Breadth of use/Non-native or secondary speakers. While Chinese (specifically Mandarin) may be the clear winner in native speakers (though being born in China doesn’t necessarily make Mandarin your ‘first’ language…a topic for future posts), the ranking by speakers changes significantly when second- (third-, fifth-, etc.) language users are included, catapulting English to the top. Other languages like Spanish, French and Russian are boosted by their popularity as second languages in schools of other countries; the latter two also by their persistence as second languages in formerly colonized nations (such as Algeria or Senegal for French, Kazakhstan or Belarus for Russian). On the other hand, Swahili is a widely used lingua franca (we’ll get back to that term later) throughout East Africa, despite having far more secondary than first-language speakers. Malay (including its variant, Indonesian) serves a similar function across the Southeast Asian archipelago, again with second-language speakers making up the majority.
- 3) Historical and cultural importance/influence. Latin is not only the direct parent of its own family of influential modern languages—the Romance family—but as the classical language of the Roman Empire, has inspired dozens of other unrelated languages indirectly through borrowed words, as well as directly via the vocabularies of science and technology. Greek in contrast is the only living descendant of its classical parent language, but shares a disproportionate number of word roots by virtue of Ancient Greece’s legacy to science, technology, theology and philosophy. Arabic and Hebrew matter not just as living national languages, but because they are central to two of the world’s most influential faiths. Persian and Turkish are also, like Latin, the languages of vast and influential former empires; while their modern-day nations may be shadows of their historical selves, the imprint of language—reflecting centuries of lexical, grammatical, and scriptural give-and-take—endures long after empire has faded. And speaking of which, in the Western Hemisphere Nahuatl and Quechua also bear the imprint of former empires, the Aztec and Inca respectively, while the Maya civilization developed the most advanced systems of math, astronomy, and writing indigenous to the New World. French gets extra points for historical importance due to its long reign (until being dethroned by English) as the preeminent language of international diplomacy. German and Italian likewise benefit from their internationally recognized cultural associations—including music, art and cuisine. What sounds classier, eine kleine Nachtmusik or a little night music? What sounds more delicious, calamari fritti or fried squid? … I thought so.
- 4) Geography. For many reasons (primarily conquest, trade and colonization… but more on that later) the languages that meet the first three criteria have their origins disproportionately in Eurasia. Languages of other regions of the globe (the Americas, Africa, and Oceania) are no less meaningful, rich, or expressive to those who speak them. However, in those areas the challenge is that without the levelling influence of large-scale political unity, scores of small languages have survived—making it hard to do justice to the linguistic diversity of those regions without making very arbitrary choices. So: for each of those areas, I have selected a few representative languages—keeping in mind both number of speakers (Nahuatl, Quechua, Maya from Central and South America, and Navajo/Diné, the most widely spoken Native American tongue) and significance as national languages. Tagalog is one of several distinct Philippine languages but serves as co-official national language with English. In New Zealand, the Māori language holds official status alongside English (as well as New Zealand Sign Language). Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit people, shares official status (beside English and French) in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. And while Swahili may be the most widely spoken ‘lingua franca’ native to Africa, both Yoruba and Zulu are significant as well, centered within the two largest economies of the sub-Saharan continent. The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, and their language has been carried beyond the country both by the Nigerian diaspora and musicians like King Sunny Adé and Fela Kuti. Zulu, the most widely spoken first language in South Africa, also counts the world-renowned group Ladysmith Black Mambazo among its musical ambassadors.
- 5) Ethnic history. While aiming for some measure of global inclusivity (see #4), I also acknowledge that my view is colored by the fact I’m writing in English. Thus, I also factored in the number of heritage speakers—or all too often, heritage non-speakers?—in countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Thus: Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese and Korean are here for those reasons as well—as are Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, Vietnamese and Czech. Each of these represents a nation that sent waves of immigrants, though at different times, to English-speaking countries. People of Yoruba heritage are well-represented outside Africa, dispersing in two distinct waves—the first involuntarily, through the slave trade to America, Brazil, and Cuba, and the second as emigrants from Nigeria to the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and many other nations.
- 6) Uniqueness. Finally, this is the category in which I can say “just because I like it.” For instance, Basque is unique as the only surviving language isolate in Europe, stubbornly alive and well despite being neither related to any other known language family nor based in its own independent nation. How could I possibly say no? Tamil: Important both by number of native and total speakers (top 20 for both) but also as a representative of the Dravidian language family—dominant through the south of India but completely unrelated to the Indo-European tongues of the North. Hungarian: While geographically smack in the center of Europe, it represents another completely non-Indo-European family (the Finno-Ugric). Sorry, Finnish and Estonian…there was only room for one of you. Irish: Though quite small in number of speakers (a small minority even within their own country), Irish (also known as Gaelic) is proudly here to represent the Celtic languages and diaspora (not to mention the irrepressible 2024 film “Kneecap”). Sláinte! And last but not least: American Sign Language (ASL), representing the many vital languages of the world that are based on physical/spatial signs rather than sounds, and a reminder that language at its core is about communicating—not speaking.
So these are the More Than Words Top Forty. With each post we’ll delve a tiny bit further into this selected window onto the world’s languages, one word at a time (maybe two if they’re related.) Stick with us, dear readers, and in six months… well, you really won’t be able to speak any new language, unless of course you’re also enrolled in lessons simultaneously. Let’s be honest.
But you might just learn enough to say “Eggs, please” or “Hello Mom!” in 40 different ways—and you know, how cool would that be?