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From: miker3@ix.netcom.com (Michael Rubenstein)
Subject: Re: English SUCKS, Chinese is the only language you need!!
Date: 1997/11/20
Message-ID: <3475921d.208410468@nntp.ix.netcom.com>#1/1
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Date: 1997-11-19T17:38:18-08:00
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On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:04:15 -0800, Mark Wilden <Mark@mWilden.com>
wrote:

>Michael Rubenstein wrote:
>> 
>> According to the World Almanac there are almost twice as many speakers
>> of Mandarin (999 million) as of English (487 million).
>
>What year was that? Those figures seem suspect. They mean that over 4.5
>billion people speak neither language.

It's from the 1997 Almanac (from Microsoft Bookshelf) and the figures
are for mid 1996.

There are also 457 million speakers of Hindi and 401 million speakers
of Spanish.

These figures include non-native speaker.

Also, of course, I meant "over", not "almost."

Michael M Rubenstein