[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[Gregory Maxwell]

What is the minimum number of languages must you write in to
effectively communicate with 99.9999% of all the world's literate
people?


Note that I'm asking 'effectively communicate' not 'communicate in a
language historically spoken by the ancestors of each person' or other
interpretations.  Well understood and comfortably used second and
third languages are acceptable.

I think I vaguely know an answer to this, but I'd like a good citation
so that I will not be called a bigot by the sort of people who think
we must support 25,000 'languages' in order to support the world.

Ideally I'd like to know the number of people reached as a function of
supporting the N top languages.

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.