All social animals generally communicate with each other through a specific language which was developed according to their uses, life style and geographical region. Particularly we as humans have developed a language and also communicate with each other in similar manner as others creatures on this planet. It is really a difficult thing to point out that when and how these languages developed. But we generally assumed that languages have been developed with a long process or evolution of every creatures on this planet. Even we don’t know how our forefather were probably speaking a million years ago, it may be something called their languages with low speed or high speed with limited vocabulary and above all having no concept of grammar etc.
World languages
A world language is a language that is spoken internationally and this is learned and spoken by a large number of people as a second language and still learning process is on. A world language cannot characterized by only total number of speakers used by a native and second language speakers. It is also characterized by the different geographical regions. It is being used worldwide in international institutions and for cross border or diplomatic relationships.
Most popular Languages
English
Today, English is the most widely spoken and fastest spreading world language, which has over 840 million primary and secondary users worldwide. It is also estimated to have as many as 700 million “foreign” learners of the language,
As far as English language learning is concerned only China has approx, 200 to 350 million people are involved in learning of this language. Actually it is very difficult to assess the accurate figures at varying levels of study and proficiency. But the good things happening with English is that this is becoming the dominant language of innovations, scientific research and published papers worldwide, having even outpaced national languages in Western European countries, including France, where a recent study showed that English has massively displaced French as the language of scientific research in “hard” as well as in applied sciences.
Chinese
StandardChinese( simplified ) is the direct replacement of Classical Chinese, which was a historical lingua franca in Far East Asia until the early 20th century, and today provides a common language between speakers of other varieties of Chinese not only within China proper (between the Han Chinese and other unrelated ethnic groups), but also in overseas Chinese communities. It is also widely taught as a second language internationally.
Spanish
Spanish was used in the Spanish Empire and today is in use in Spain, in Latin American countries (except Brazil, French Guyana, Haiti and other Caribbean islands), and is also spoken in many parts of the United States, particularly in Florida and the states which border Mexico. German served as a lingua franca in large portions of Europe for centuries, mainly the Holy Roman Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It remains an important second language in much of Central and Eastern Europe, and in the international scientific community.
French
French, which has long been the language of communication and diplomacy, and the favored second language among the elite and the educated classes in Europe, including Russia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Ottoman Turkey, as well as in Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and South America, had declined steadily since World War I, but still remains one of the working languages of many international organizations.
Arabic
Arabic gained international prominence because of the medieval Islamic conquests and the subsequent Arabization of the Middle East and North Africa, and is also a liturgical language amongst Muslim communities outside the Arab World.
Russian
Russian was used in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and its teaching was made compulsory in the Eastern Bloc countries. However, the use and teaching of Russian has declined sharply in both the former Eastern bloc and the near abroad since the break up of the Soviet Union and Russia’s deputy education minister was quoted as saying in December 2013 that the number of Russian speakers had fallen by 100 million since that date.
Indian languages
The major languages of the Indian subcontinent have numbers of speakers comparable to those of major world languages primarily due to the large population in the region rather than a supra-regional use of these languages, although Hindustani (including all Hindi dialects, and Urdu), Bengali and to a lesser extent Tamil may fulfil the criteria in terms of supra-regional usage and international recognition.
As an example, the native speaking population of Bengali vastly outnumber those who speak French as a first language, and it is one of the most spoken languages (ranking fifth[or sixth ) in the world with nearly 230 million total speakers, and is also known for its long and rich literary tradition. However, while French is spoken intercontinentally, is internationally recognized to be of high linguistic prestige and used in diplomacy and international commerce, as well as having a significant portion of second language speakers throughout the world, the overwhelming majority of Bengali speakers are native Bengali people, with not much influence outside of its regionally limited sprachraum or language space
Historical & Empirical languages
Historical languages which had international significance as the lingua franca of a historical empire include Egyptian in Ancient Egypt; Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic in the various Mesopotamian civilizations and empires in the Ancient Near East; Ancient Greek in the Greek colonies in the form of various dialects, evolving to Koine Greek in the Hellenistic world, after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire, and subsequently in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and the territories of the Byzantine Empire; Latin in the Roman Empire and presently as the standard liturgical language for the Catholic faithful worldwide; Classical Chinese in East Asia during the Imperial era of Chinese history; Persian during the various succeeding Persian Empires, and once served as the second lingua franca of the Islamic World after Arabic;
Sanskrit during the ancient and medieval historical periods of various states in SouthAsia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia, and like Latin an important liturgical language of the Vedic religions.
The Romance languages bear testimony to the role of Latin as the lingua franca of the Roman Empire; for example, Italian has always been important in the Mediterranean region, and nowadays it is the most-spoken language among members of the Roman catholic hierarchy and it is also used in music (especially Opera) and the fashion industry. Turkish was similarly important as the primary language of the Ottoman Empire. Koine Greek was the “world language” of the Hellenistic period, but its distribution is not reflected in the distribution of Modern Greek due to the linguistic impact of the Slavic, Arabic and Turkic expansions. The distribution of the Arabic and Turkic languages, in turn, are a legacy of the Caliphates and the Turkic Khaganate, respectively.
It’s pretty much seen as all the living languages owe their status to their empirical or etymological colonialism, the recommendation of a given languages as a world language or “universal language” has a strong political ramifications. Thus, Russian was declared the “world language of internationalism” in Soviet literature, which at the same time denounced French as the “language of fancycourtiers” and English as the “jargon of traders”.
A number of international auxiliary languages have been introduced as prospective world languages, the most successful of them being Esperanto, but none were learned by as many people as the world languages were. Many natural languages have been proffered as candidates for a global lingua franca.
