Hello everybody,
What do you think about introducing your mother tongue to us? For example, you could tell us what family your native language belongs to. How many speakers does your language have in total? What countries is your language spoken in? What about the history of your mother tongue - how did it emerge? What do you like about your language, can you think of any reasons why other people should learn it?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: Pulling a net[YSaerTTEW443543]
OK. I’ll go first. My mother tongue has almost 300 million native speakers. It’s mainly spoken by people in Europe and Asia. Some speakers of that language also live in North America because they emigrated and settled there. I understand almost a dozen other languages which are similar to my mother tongue and now I’m curious if you can guess where I’m from 
[color=blue]My mother tongue is the one rising up in the world, in my opinion will be the univesal tongue in the long run. Every day more and more people are interested in learning it.
As for you my friend openmind my guess is China.
Rich, there are at least 1 billion people in the world who speak Chinese as their mother tongue and most of them live in Asia, don’t you think? Regarding your native language since you are from the Venezuela you speak Spanish. I know that Spanish is spoken in so many countries and I wonder if you can tell what country a person is from when you hear them speak? For example if you hear a Spaniard speak, can you determine that he is from Spain?
Hello Rich! Why do you think Spanish will become the universal language of the world? My father works for a large telecom company and he has to travel a lot. Every time he returns home he calls my brother and me and then he tells us how important it is for us to learn English. He has been to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe and also to North America. He says as soons as he leaves South America English is the most important language for him to use. Do you really think this will change any time soon? We leave here in South America which is a Spanish speaking world and maybe there are a few Spanish speakers in the US and Europe. But why would Spanish be the universal language as you call it?
HI,
My language is spoken by about 40 mln ppl.
It belongs to indo-european family same as german, french, russian, english…
Why do I like it?? Cos it’s very complex and… i just don’t know what to write :d
Openminded, your language is Russian, right?
Mosteque you guessed my mother tongue correctly. I understand and speak a little Polish too. The language sounds pleasant to me. I like the intonation. What languages do you know apart from Polish and English?
I think there are about 100 million who speak my language. Most of them live in Europe, in three countries actually. What else can I say about my native language? I could say a lot but then it would be way to easy for you to guess
Hi Openmind,
I speak only Polish and English as for now. But in two weeks I’m going to take up German. I’ve already downloaded Primsleur and Rosetta Stone programms. Let’s check what they’re worth 
I’ll keep you all up to date with my progress 
[color=blue]Yes, you’re right openmind I do speak spanish and can tell different spanish apart in seconds but there are a few accents that could take longer to distiguish them like “uruguayo” and “paraguayo” pretty much alike.
As for your native language, it was my off hand guess so I dicided to do some research and would like you to check it out:
Taken from other forum:
Most Widely Spoken Languages
in the World
Language Approx. number
of speakers
Source: Ethnologue, 13th Edition, and other sources
Do you see spanish’s place? that indicates that the number of spanish speakers has been increasing through the years taking into account that those 425 millions are not all
natives in comparison with the probably 1.075 of the chinese population.
On a related matter what criterions are most important to you?
Hello Rich! Thank you for posting those language statistics. You said that Spanish will be the universal language in the long run and I have shown our conversation to my father because he is the one in our family who is urging every one to learn English. We had a discussion about this. I mean about the question which language will be the leading one in the next years and I think our mother tongue will not be able to displace English. Think about this: How many books in English are published and sold every year throughtout the world? What is the language of science and entertainment? What is the language of communication technology? What is the language of international business?
Hello Mosteque. How can you download Pimsleur programs? I thought Pimsleur are language courses on cassettes (tapes?)
use your brain and use the internet
[color=blue]Yes, Andreana your progenitor is absolutely right, what I mean by “in the long run” is many years ahead and of course that books are written in English, most of the film industry is English spoken and technology speaks the same language but, and I insist Spanish is the rising sun.
Mosteque, I agree with you. We should use our brains and the internet as this can be a powerful combination. So I did some research on Pimsleur download and what came up was Pimsleur torrent. Is that what you mean?
My mother tongue is one type of Chinese cause we have so many regions that every region has its own dialect.Of course ,nowadays,young ppl can all speak mandarin Chinese.we begin learn english from middle school,but now even from elementary school.The number of chinese mandarin speakers are more than the amount in aboved statistics and near 1.4billion.More and more students from abroad come to learn Chinese.I belive Chinese will be the universal language along with the high speed of chinese economic development and 2008 Beijing Olympic.Do you agree with me?
indeed
I can’t see why English would lose its leadership. USA is still the most powerful country in the world; many people speak English as their mother tongue; many people speak English as a second language; English is the language of science, technology and business.
I’d love Spanish to become the leading language in the world, as it’s the language I speak best, but I think that one of the reasons for its growing importance is that Spanish speaking countries are in America: Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the continent, and so, people from the USA are willing to learn it. USA spreads it’s customs all around the world, for example Coca Cola, Hip Hop and the trend of learning Spanish
As for Chinese, it would be a terrible waste of money if we had to change all the scientific and technological things that are written in English, and in latin alphabet.
But I’ve studied History, and they say that historians are completely unable to foresee the future. And I agree with it; anything could happen: Polish will be the next leading language in the world!
Karlos, you’ve hit the nail here 
This is an interesting discussion. The initial question was what is your mother tongue and now we are talking about what language will be number one in a few years. Did you know that there exist about 6000 different languages in the world and many of them are dying out every year. Rich says that in the long run Spanish will be the universal language. But what does that mean? Will I be able to travel around the world speaking Spanish? Our Chinese friend is suggesting that in a few years the world will speak Chinese. So I have to start learning Chinese then? Actually this might makes sense. I live in a city which has a little China town. I once was there with my friends and we noticed that many people didn’t understand much English. My English is far from perfect too because I moved here only recently. Anyway, this discussion is about our mother tongue, isn’t it?