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Why is there no global language that at least nearly half the world speaks (3.5 billion, I'm talkin', including non-native speakers) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Hextubewontallowme@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives...

English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English%20(1%2C452%20million%20speakers)&text=According%20to%20Ethnologue%2C%20English%20is,native%20and%20non%2Dnative%20speakers.

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[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

👍

But don't try this in many parts of the Middle East.

👌

And don't do this in Brazil.

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah I specifically didn't include hand signs in my other comment because that's getting closer to sign language and many countries have unique hand signs. Smiling is also something not universal oddly enough.