Re: Essential Swedish?

From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>

> Quoting Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>:
>
> > Spanish is essentially the English of the future (it is now the second
most
> > spoken first language).
>
> Reference for that?
Might be. According to the Ethnologue (numbers from the 1999 World Almanac
survey):

English: 341 million first language speakers, 508 million including second
language speakers

Spanish: 322 to 358 million first language speakers, 417 million including
second language speakers.

I've seen other lists placing Spanish above English and others vice versa,
but since birth rates in Latin American countries are considerably higher
than in the UK, Canada, US, Australia and NZ, it would surpass English soon
if it hasn't already.

By the way, Hindi (not counting Urdu) is shown with 366 million first
language speakers, 487 million including second language users. But Hindi is
limited mostly to the Indian Subcontinent and a few other nations such as
Uganda and South Africa (and immigrant communities in the UK and USA), so
it's not an "international language" to the extent that Spanish and English
are.