There are said to be 3,424 spoken languages or dialects in the
world, distributed as follows: America, 1,624; Asia, 937; Europe,
587; Africa, 276.
----------+-----------------------+------------
LANGUAGES | NUMBER OF PERSONS | PROPORTION
| SPOKEN BY |OF THE WHOLE
+-----------+-----------+------------
| 1801 | 1916 | 1801| 1916
----------+-----------+-----------+-----+------
English | 20,520,000|160,000,000| 12.7| 27.3
French | 20,520,000|160,000,000| 12.7| 27.3
German | 30,320,000|130,000,000| 18.7| 22.2
Italian | 15,070,000| 50,000,000| 9.3| 8.6
Spanish | 26,190,000| 50,000,000| 16.2| 8.6
Portuguese| 7,480,000| 25,000,000| 4.7| 4.3
Russian | 30,770,000|100,000,000| 19.0| 17.1
+-----------+-----------+-----+------
Total |161,800,000|585,000,000|100.0|100.0
----------+-----------+-----------+-----+------