Which languages would you say..?

Question

are the top 5 in fastest growing or most globally important?

Answer 1

Your question says 5, I'll give you 5.

English
Mandarin
Spanish
Arabic
Russian

I think the choice for the first three are obvious.

Arabic is also close to obvious. It is the only language in much of the Middle East and North Africa, where knowledge of the other languages listed is often poor. What happens in the Middle East is of huge signifficance to the whole world.

I include Russian because Russia is an important industrial power, and many of it's speakers cannot speak one of the other languages I listed. Also Russia is an enormous country geographically, with an educated population and signifficant growth potential.

Japanese is also important, but eventually I decided in favour of Russian. Japanese is a surprisingly closed society, given it's economic standing in the world. Much of Russia's anticipated growth is going to require foreign people working in Russia, because of it's resources. Japan, powerful that it is, goes it's own way merrily, without requiring the rest of the world really, to see the language as important outside of Japan.

German did not make my list, but it is also important because it is the largest economy in the EU, and because in many neigbouring countries, especially to the east, it is a useful means of communication, where English often fails. German is also important for academic research, since it is the second largest language on the internet. Most Germans first language speakers can speak English.

Hindi has a lot of speakers, but English is widely used in India. I was still tempted to include it, but of the five languages listed, there wasn't one that I felt I could drop in favour of Hindi. There are many languages which are themselves big (like Urdu) of which the speakers can understand Hindi. French is too low down on the list of number of speakers (17th according to Wikipedia), and the per capita income of French ex colonies in is lower than Spanish, Portuguese and English. So it make no sense to put French there and not Portuguese (which on my list just misses out). In terms of importance, French is one of the most over estimated languages.

What's this thing about Swahili? I have lived in Africa all my life, and have never encountered a Swahili speaker. It is only spoken in three neighbouring African countries. Important language maybe, but not top 10 material.

Answer 2

Chinese (Mandarin) - 1.3 billion people with a huge market.
English - 300 million Americans; world's lingua franca
Spanish - South America; the USA's second language
Arabic - mideast, a very important region
German - like DW says, "at the heart of Europe"

Other useful languages include Russian, Portuguese, Thai, Farsi, Urdu, French and Swahili

Answer 3

English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic

Those are, in my opinion, the most globally important.

Answer 4

English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Answer 5

1. Chinese (Mandarin)
2. English
3. Spanish
4. Hindi
5. Arabic
6. Bengali
7. Russian
8. Portugese

Answer 6

globally important
english, spanish, french, arabic
fastest growing
chinese
anime culture
japanese

Answer 7

english-language of business
spanish-second most spoken language, rapid growth
chinese-ranked 1 when it comes to speakers, but only within china do they speak chinese
french-still seen as growing language
arabic-many speakers moving abroad and growing

Answer 8

English internationally and for Europe
Mandarin and Cantonese for Asia
Russian for Eastern Europe and former USSR places
Swahili for Africa
Arabic for the Middle East
Portuguese for South America

Answer 9

Spanish, Arabic, English, Chinese, Japanese.

Answer 10

English
French
Spanish
German
Japanese