Spread of World Languages

A world language is a language that is spoken internationally and is learned and spoken by a large number of people as a second language. A world language is characterized not only by the total number of speakers (native and second language speakers), but also by its geographical distribution, as well as use in international organizations and diplomatic relations. The handbook will cover living world languages (English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish etc), supra-regional languages (Russian, Bengali, Malay etc) and historical world languages (Latin, Sanskrit etc).