I checked that list as well, they just determined that by taking the population of a country and adding that to whatever the official dialect is for the country. China's "official" dialect is Mandarin, thus adding most of China's population to that category. They neglected to realize that most speakers of different languages learn at least basic English at a semi-early age. Heck, even Korea learns English in early school years! Oh yeah... don't forget that English is the hardest language to learn. Many people go into college still taking English courses in America, due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to learn all of the different situations and what word to use in them. Okay... Rant over. Correct me on anything if I'm wrong
Because it is the historic language of international trade. Should the balance of economic power shift eastwards then perhaps that will change.
@nightrider What list? But yes I was going by population and put 'used' in quotes as no-one has defined quite what we are measuring. It stands to reason, more or less, that the ethnic population would 'use' the language of their own nation first and foremost. Anyway this came out of my opinion that bullying people for their use of grammar on an international forum for those 9+ years of age is a woefully dumb and even nasty thing to do, which it is. Those who do it just look like complete douches.
I posted as an informative not an insult. I don't take critiques personally when I've made an honest mistake. Maybe I should sugar-coat things so that people don't get their feelings hurt, much like some teachers having to use pens other than red to make corrections on pupil's papers.
It honestly is, I can certainly agree with you there. And the 'list' was on google, first result when you search most common language. You must be quite the educated person to know those facts without searching it.
i'ld say Japanese and Chinese are harder to learn then English. Japanese has "3" different scripts that they use and one of them (kanji) is basically a form of hieroglyphics ...I'm not sure but I think for someone to be considered literate in Japanese you have to know a couple thousand kanji (I think but not sure) and there's over 50k kanji. Chinese has over 2 thousand characters, but not sure how many you have to memorize to be considered literate in Chinese. I don't know about other Asisn languages.
Completely agree with this post. "Spare time" being the most important thing. If the owner and/or admins don't have time it will fail.
You are correct. It was not mentioned and the "their there" I pointed out had been mentioned. My bad ️