luigi

If you look at the top of the forum, you'll see it.

Fantasic ...ahhhh

felipealonso

According to Unesco, the top 11 most spoken languages as first mother language are (in order):

1.- Chinese (Mandarin)
2.- English
3.- Spanish
4.- Hindi
5.- Arabic
6.- Bengali
7.- Russian
8.- Portuguese
9.- Japanese
10.- German
11.- French

But, does that mean that these languages are the most important ones? No way!! There are many things to have in mind when you classify a language according to some importance. For example, if you are studying a linguistic-related career, Latin, Greek, old German, etc could be very important; the same if you're studying philosophy, old societies, local history, etc.
And there are many languages that are 1000 or 2000 years old!!!! so, they are very important, since they reflect interesting features about people, native culture, etc.
You can't sat that a certain language is most important than another one just for the number of speakers. That is mere usefulness.

Botanic

Oh, very good theme!!! It isn't very good occupation - to make ranks but I am going to do it:
1.English. I think this language is the most important because it is international now;
2.Deutch. I don't know why...
3.French. To some extent it is also the international language: on this language print the foreign passports;
4.Chinese. China is the bigest country and every 5 (or even 4) speak on this language;
5.Russian. No comments;
6.Spanish;
7.Italian. The champion of the world in a football!!!
8.hm... I don't know... Let's stop.

derstar

In my opinion the 10 most important languages are:
1. English (most important language of the western world, nearly everybody speaks it as a second language)
2. Chinese (language with the most native speakers. China is a growing nation in business and very mighty)
3. Spanish (spoken in south and central america and for sure in Spain. 2nd most important language in the USA)
4. French (language of many International Organisations and also important role in Africa; spoken in many former colonies)
5. German (language with the most native speakers in Europe and 2nd of second language learners. Important language in busines, literature and science. also very important in eastern europe)
6. Arabic (large number of speakers. Also important language in culture and business)
7. Russian (many speakers and also important in other countries)
8. Japanese (strong economic power)
9. Portuguese (Brazil is also a fast growing nation)
10. Hindi (2nd most native speakers. but there are many dialects and most educated indians understand english)

Dgirl

Wait - is it now about those languages the person who started this topic gave, or about my own most important languages? Anyway, I'll do the first one.


1. English - It's not my native language, but it's the language I speak best, after Dutch perhaps..
2. German - It's the language of a near country, it's similar to Dutch, many people here speak it, many German people come to my country...
3. French - One of the most spoken language, and also quite many Dutch words come from it. It's also quite pretty language
4. after long doubting I choose for Spanish.. I don't really have much to do with that language but I really like it!
5. Italian - I listen to Italian songs a lot And I really like the language
6. Chinese - is a very important language in the world
7. Hindi - Many languages are derived from it, and in my (old) neighbourhood many people speak one of those languages
8. Arab - Spoken by many people, nice language too
9. Portuguese - Spoken in many parts of South-America too, and I want to go there
10. Russian - Also quite close to my home :P And Russia is such a big country...:|
11. Japanese - it may be an important businesslanguage but I have nothing to do with it... Only perhaps the Japanese tourists coming here, but they speak English..

__________________
Katten hebben negen levens en maar één taal. Mensen moeten soms negen talen spreken om één keer te kunnen leven. What's going wrong?

Atlas

1. English - I obviously use this one the most.

2. Chinese - I'm studying abroad in Taiwan this fall...pretty important. Also one of the languages I plan on translating.

3. Arabic - The other language I plan on translating.

4. French - I'm going to spend a lot of time in Africa.

5. Spanish - I use this one a lot right now since I live near Mexico.

6. Japanese - Japan's pretty cool.

7. Hindi - India's also a neat place.

8. German - This one would be tied with Italian, but it has more speakers. Beer, trees, electronica.

9. Italian - Attractive people and a lovely country.

10. Russian - Snow. It's a gorgeous language.

11. Portuguese - Also gorgeous, but I'm not very interested in Brazil.



The only languages here I really don't like are English, Spanish, and German. Oh well, I guess.

justme

Well if you ask me I think that the most important language to learn is English. And thats not beacuase I live in America. It's because English is so widely spread. In other countries children MUST take classes to learn English so it is most common. The rest of the list is as follows.

1.English-most common
2.Spanish-becoming very common
3.Chinese-lots of business men are Chinese
4.Arabic-very large populaion of Arabics
5.Japanese-very good business men
6.Russian-large area
7.French
8.Hindi
9.German
10.Italian
11.Portugese

Thank you for reading my opinion!