Language support summary/discussion

[Thibaut Varene]

hi,

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:18:28 +0100, Matthias Urlichs
<smurf at smurf.noris.de> wrote:
> Thibaut Varene:
> > > The problem is that weighing these factors is a highly subjective
> > > matter, as evidenced by the fact that he ended up with English in
> > > the first slot. ;-)
> >
> > So you wouldn't ACK English as being the most influential (not to say
> > widely spoken) language of the world? Can you tell me in what world do
> > you live? :P
> >
> If you weigh the number of native speakers more, you end up with
> Chinese. [snip]

Yes, as stated on
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm (the link Martin
posted) in the first table of the page.

The weighing mentioned in the table I quoted is a "list of the world's
ten most influential languages", as it is said. The list of most
spoken languages is available on that page too, it's obtained by
adding native and secondary speakers, and I think this is the correct
set of figures to use for our purpose.

The "influential languages" set is just (IMHO) an interesting way to
weigh the impact of having a language set or not on the CD toward a
certain portion of the world (number of speakers, weighed by the
economic power, in particular).

Such a factor (like economic power), should you agree with it being
important or not (and I'm not discussing that point either), has to be
kept in mind for it has an *impact*, depending on your "target
market", so to speak...

Now I don't know what's the target market for Ubuntu ;)

I hope I made myself clear enough this time :)
Please look at the webpage for further details.

-- 
Thibaut VARENE
Ubuntu, Debian and Kernel Hacker