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[quote=Anonymous]Out of curiosity (based on reading this thread) I looked up how many people speak each language on Wikipedia. It's actually really interesting:

1. English - 1.456B speakers (380M 1st language, 1.077B 2nd)
2. Mandarin - 1.138B (939M 1st, 199M 2nd)
3. Hindi - 609M (345M 1st, 266M 2nd)
4. Spanish - 559M (485M 1st, 74M 2nd)
5. French - 310M (81M 1st, 229M 2nd)
6. Arabic (modern standard) - 274M (0 1st, 274 2nd)
7. Bengali - 273M (234M 1st, 39M 2nd)
8. Portuguese - 264M (236M 1st, 27M 2nd)
9. Russian - 255M (147M 1st, 108M 2nd)
10. Urdu - 232M (71M 1st, 161M 2nd)
11. Indonesian - 199M (44M 1st, 155M 2nd)
12. German - 133M (75M 1st, 58M 2nd)
13. Japanese - 123M (123M 1st, .2M 2nd)
14. Nigerian Pidgin - 121M (5M 1st, 116M 2nd)
15. Egyptian Arabic - 102M (77M 1st, 25M 2nd)
16. Marathi - 99M (83M 1st, 16M 2nd)
17. Telugu - 96M (83M 1st, 13M 2nd)
18. Turkish - 90M (84M 1st, 6M 2nd)
19. Tamil - 87M (79M 1st, 8M 2nd)
20. Yue Chinese (incl. Cantonese) - 87 M (86M 1st, 1M 2nd)
21. Vietnamese - 86M (85M 1st, 1M 2nd)
22. Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese) - 83M, (83M 1st, 0 2nd)
23. Tagalog - 83M (29M 1st, 54M 2nd)
24. Korean - 82M (82M 1st, 0 2nd)
25. Iranian Persian - 79M (57M 1st, 21M 2nd)

These are just absolute numbers (and likely very rough estimates, and another metric that is relevant is WHERE languages are spoken, as languages track both colonial patterns and immigration and that has a huge effect on how influential a language is. It's also relevant how many native speakers of a language learn a second language -- for instance Hindi is spoken by an enormous number of people but what percent of Native Hindi speakers also speak English? This lessens global demand for Hindi as a second language because British colonialism so heavily Anglicized India.

I don't think this list argues either against or in favor of more German language offerings in schools -- I think you can make the argument either way. It's more globally prevalent than Japanese, Korean, or Italian. Also, those three languages are interesting in that they are the 2nd language of very few people -- likely the fact that Germany accepts such a large number of immigrants greatly boosts the number of people learning it as a second language, whereas Japan, Korea, and Italy are much less cosmopolitan in this respect.

But certainly there are also arguments in favor of other languages before German -- Arabic and Russian being the big ones, I think, based on sheer number of speakers and value in terms of politics, commerce, and cultural understanding. Arabic is fascinating as the language that unites a large number of people whose native dialect is something else -- it is to the Arab world what Latin once was to the Western world.

My attitude is that more language is better, and I think the way DCPS approaches languages is pathetic and anemic. I also think the development immersion charters and the existence of DCI has probably made DCPS more complacent on these issues than it could be otherwise, and in so doing it does a disservice to students. I'd love to see not only German, but also Arabic, Hindi, and other languages offered. This city is so internationally diverse and also holds such an important position in the global political landscape, it is sad that our school system isn't really preparing its students to participate in that. I think learning Spanish as a 2nd language has enormous value (I speak Spanish and have studied it longer than any other language), but the idea that French and Mandarin are the ONLY other offerings necessary is just... wrong. It should be embarrassing to DC and it's people that we don't offer more.[/quote]

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