On Jan 23, 2008 8:08 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
What is the minimum number of languages must you write in to effectively communicate with 99.9999% of all the world's literate people?
<snip>
Note that I'm asking 'effectively communicate' not 'communicate in a This seems like a simple and important question which others should have asked and answered definitively long ago, yet I can't seem to find a good reference. It also seems to me to be the sort of question which should play an important role in the foundation's long term resource allocations.
With some quick searches:
I suspect that the four-volume tome "The written languages of the world : a survey of the degree and modes of use" http://worldcat.org/oclc/4931003 would answer your question, but you'll probably have to go to a university library to use it.
This book: http://www.amazon.com/Languages-Globalising-World-Jacques-Maurais/dp/0521533... does seem to address the question of which languages will predominate, and also heavily references a 1997 report by David Graddol called "The Future of English?" which seems to sort out how widely the big languages are spoken vs the little ones. This doesn't directly answer your question but will probably will point you in the right direction. I would imagine there are many other books relating to globalization and languages that might also address the question.
There are several language reference works that catalog the number of native speakers of any given language; I'm fond of "The Dictionary of Languages", not least because it's fun to browse. However, again may not answer your question on a global scale with regard to literacy. http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Languages-Definitive-Reference-More/dp/0231...
Finally, I'd be surprised if the Ethnologue doesn't address this -- but I don't have one handy to check. http://www.ethnologue.com/print.asp (though, given its relative importance in what we do, the Foundation should definitely have one on hand -- and I'd be happy to buy one to start off a new SF office library :) )
As someone else pointed out, it's the issue of multi-lingual speakers and not counting people twice that is the tricky part. Determining global literacy rates also seems pretty tough, since I would assume there are probably countries that don't have accurate data for that.
-- phoebe