Marco Cimarosti scripsit:

> Unluckily, no two sources give the same numbers and, well, apologizes to SIL
> people here but The Ethnologue's estimates do not have great fame of
> reliability.

Okay. Comrie's 1988 numbers for Encarta:

# Mandarin Chinese (836 million)
# Hindi (333 million)
# Spanish (332 million)
# English (322 million)
# Bengali (189 million)

The World Book gives similar numbers. Any way you slice it, Chinese is
waaaaaay out in front, and Hindi and English are both substantially
larger than Bengali.

> > The CIA Factbook says that Israeli Arabic is official only if you are
> > an Arab,

That was an editing error. I meant to write "says that Arabic is
official only if you are an Israeli Arab".

--
"May the hair on your toes never fall out!" John Cowan
--Thorin Oakenshield (to Bilbo) jcowan@...