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What makes France such an endearing and infuriating country at the same time?

Why are the French a people that you love one day and hate the next?

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    World Languages: French comes in at 10th place

    The French like to claim that their language is one of the world's most spoken, but the numbers don't add up.

    world languages.jpg
    According to this map (click for bigger), French barely makes it to the top-10, with 129 million speakers worldwide. Among the European languages, English scores 508 million, Spanish 392 million, Russian 277 million, and Portuguese 191 million. The world's most spoken language is Mandarin (1 billion+). Other languages scoring more speakers than French are Hindustani (497 million), Arabic (246 million), Bengali (211 million) and Malay (159 million).

    Source (Readnrock.com)

    Fri 15-Aug-08 | Posted in: Language, Statistics
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    Comments

    Comment from romke
    Time: August 15, 2008, 8:46 pm

    There probably isn\'t an official source, but just look at the way the Francophonie organisation (look on wikipedia) is blown up. Quote \"Few of the member states are majority French-speaking aside from France and its overseas possessions, and sub-national members. French functions in several other member states as a common language while having little current presence in the other members, being that the links are mainly historical and cultural.\"
    Also: French is one of the three official languages in the EU, but Spanish and Portuguese don\'t have that status.

    Comment from romke
    Time: August 15, 2008, 10:46 pm

    I should probably have used the word 'pretend' rather than 'claim'.

    Comment from dominique
    Time: August 15, 2008, 11:40 pm

    Hi,

    What is important is the number of foreign speakers, where English (and Espagnol) should be the most spoken language, en French certainly not so far.