LogFAQs > #960954252

KamenRiderBlade posted...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

TOTAL SPEAKERS = Primary + Secondary languages

And the majority of that 1 billion+ people who can speak mandarin, they're all stuck in China.

So if you intend on going to China and living amongst the populace, by all means, learn mandarin.

That's your free time.

There are some strange aspects to that list though. It says that the total number of second language speakers of Japanese is 121,500, but there are almost 3 million foreigners living in Japan, about 2.3% of the population. And I hang out with many of them where I live and we usually use Japanese to communicate. I find it strange only about 4% of the foreigners living here speak Japanese, as most people such as myself and my wife, work in Japanese language environments.