Talk:World language

How can Russian be a potential world language? The only thing that would suggest that is old Soviet propaganda. Many Russian minorities living in the country barely understand Russian, and its their second language despite living in that country and speaking languages that have less than 100000 speakers usually. YT DomDaBomb20 (talk) 20:41, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

It is indeed true that Russian suffered from a big setback when eastern Europe broke away - such that many people there preferred to choose English [or German or French] as their second language. Something along these lines could be mentioned in the main article.

As I'm sure you know, Wikipedia insists on sources to justify its content - but in this context we could certainly ask whether some of them have now become outdated.

Admittedly, Russian is still widely used in much of central and west Asia [Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan etc.], and is probably the second language taught in Mongolia. In addition, it continues to carry some importance in the scientific world.

Let's see what other editors say. --DLMcN (talk) 06:19, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll refer to a comment I made about two years ago on this talk page (since archived) about writing something about the decline of the Russian language in the article:

Only if we can find a WP:RELIABLE source which makes this point in connection to an assessment of the Russian language's status as a world language, I'd say. I'll note that while Ammon says Comparison of the numbers for 2005 with those for 1989 shows that the following languages have risen in economic strength: Chinese and Italian (2 ranks), Portuguese and Spanish (1 rank). Russian has declined (4 ranks), while English, Japanese, German, French, Arabic, and Hindi and Urdu have maintained the same rank. Bengali and Indonesian cannot be judged, the latter being a special case, for which the method of counting speakers seems to have changed in the source. For Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish, the function of international languages has probably increased, and for Russian it has decreased, in line with the economic rank. (p. 111, section "Economic Strength") and In recent times, access to virtually all countries world-wide, the political prerequisite of 'globalization,' gave an additional push to the predominance of English, since regions of special protection for other languages were eliminated (for instance eastern Europe for German and Russian). (p. 117, section "The Rise and Stabilization of a Single, World Lingua Franca"), he also notes that Graddol foresees the growing importance of Chinese, Russian, [...] (p. 119, section "The Rise of New and the Continuation of Traditional Subordinate and Bilateral World Languages"). I don't think that is sufficient sourcing. For one thing, the 2005 figures are now just as out of date as the 1989 figures were in 2005. For another, we could only make very weak/heavily qualified statements about this based on this sourcing, and those statements would almost certainly not be WP:DUE. I don't think the statement "Following the end of the Cold War, the Russian language's relative position as a world language declined" would be controversial among scholars, but at present it's not attributable. TompaDompa (talk) 21:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I still don't see any such sources. I have consequently removed the addition to the article that mentioned this aspect—it seems relevant to me, but it really needs to come from sources on the topic. TompaDompa (talk) 19:20, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

We have sources confirming that the number of second-language speakers of Russian has fallen significantly since 1990. We agree that the "Number of second-language speakers" is the most important indicator for deciding whether or not a language should be accorded "World status". Are the Wikipedia rules really so strict - that we are not allowed to put those^ two points together? --DLMcN (talk) 07:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes. TompaDompa (talk) 09:26, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

German is described as a “major language of the world” in its own article. So why not add it here as well? XXE XDXx (talk) 10:28, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

The short answer is that sources on the subject of world languages typically do not consider it one (thought there are some exceptions). What level of sourcing to require was discussed back in 2021 (see Talk:World language/Archive 3#A summary of the sources located so far, and a suggestion), and it was decided that we would be fairly strict. It may be useful to look at the table of sources compiled at the time, which I'll copy here for convenience. TompaDompa (talk) 10:45, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

German is not usually considered to be a world language because:

• It has not that many (total) speakers compared to other languages which are typically considered world languages.
• It is mainly spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, meaning that the language is not very widespread aside from Central Europe.
  • These are all very developed countries, meaning that almost all German speakers also speak English to a sufficient degree, making it quite unnecessary to learn German as a lingua franca.—-Maxeto0910 (talk) 12:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The main reason why I became interested in this Wiki-article, was to try and learn how useful - around the world - were the various languages which I had studied - namely, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and Arabic]. Certainly, the picture is somewhat different now than it was in the 1960s, when I first looked at that question. At that time, German was very much a lingua franca in central and eastern Europe (and indeed Turkey) - and, to an extent, still continues to serve as one even now, despite having conceded ground to English.... But Maxeto is correct: it is no longer a lingua franca once you leave Europe.

I do of course realise that "my own personal impressions" do not qualify as a reliable source in the Wikipedia context ! --DLMcN (talk) 12:23, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

How about including this sentence at the very end of the article? >

Some scholars (but only a minority) would also include Portuguese, Chinese, and/or German in their list of world languages.

.... and then adding Benrabah [and perhaps Wright and de Mejia] as sources?

[We did discuss this possibility in May 2021].

--DLMcN (talk) 16:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Whatever we do, we have to be consistent about it. For instance, if Benrabah is sufficient sourcing to add Portuguese, then the same must apply to adding Japanese and Swahili. The easiest ways to be consistent are to be as inclusive or as restrictive as possible. The article is currently closer to being maximally restrictive. I think it would be very different to be any more inclusive while staying consistent without going all the way to maximum inclusivity. This specific suggestion would create a two-tier system, which was discussed at some length back in February and March of 2021 (see Talk:World language/Archive 3#Two categories?) and which I don't think is a particularly good idea. I laid out my thoughts on the sources and how to apply them, as well as some reasons why this is somewhat complicated, back in May 2021 at Talk:World language/Archive 3#A summary of the sources located so far, and a suggestion. I don't think we have sufficient sourcing to say that only a minority of scholars would include certain languages. TompaDompa (talk) 19:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)