It is estimated that the World has 6,500 spoken languages today though 2,000 of the languages have less than 1000 speakers.
The most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese with 1,213,000,000 people in the world speaking it while the most powerful language in the World is English according to the Power Language Index (PLI) given its use in International platforms in the World.
Factors considered to determine the list include the language’s ability on the speaker such as the ability to travel widely, communicate with others, earn a livelihood, acquire knowledge understand the media and engage in diplomacy.
Below is a list of the most powerful languages in the World
- English
- French
- Mandarin
- Spanish
- Russian
- Arabic
- German
- Japanese
- Portuguese
- Hindi
The PLI compares the efficiency of over one hundred languages. PLI does so by mapping to languages a set of 20 indicators, such as tourist flows, GDP per capita and a number of speakers, in an articulate and fluent way.
Each language is ranked depending on the ability it possesses in given domains marked as ‘geography’, ‘economy’, ‘communication’, ‘knowledge and media’ and ‘diplomacy’.
The overall score is derived from these five sub-ranks, with diplomacy given less weight than the first four.