I got a delivery in the mail with a new copy of my recent book from my publisher – The Great Fragmentation.
I was really thrilled to see my ideas being made available to the most spoken language in the world – Chinese. Mind you all dialects of Chinese read the same characters, and you need to know around 3000 characters to be able to read most anything fluently. So, I’m incredibly thankful to whoever had that job to translate my 65,000 words. I imagine it would not have been easy given much of the content is nuanced. My book covers the 20 big ideas changing the world, and much of it has only been around a few years. Add to this the complexity of the differentiated digital landscape in China and it is a reminder that our little world in English speaking countries is well, a minority.
Here’s the Top 10 Languages spoken globally:
- Chinese – 1,197,000,000
- Spanish – 414,000,000
- English – 335,000,000 (Just 10% of the top 10 languages spoken)
- Hindi – 260,000,000
- Arabic – 237,000,000
- Portugese – 203,000,000
- Bengali – 193,000,000
- Japanese – 122,000,000
- Javanese – 84,300,000
It’s a great reminder that as our economy truly globalises, we need to remember that we might be the ones who need to adapt. Just check out how many Youtube comments are in Spanish these days. It’s even possible the USA could become a Spanish speaking country sooner than you’d imagine.
If you want to read some reviews of my book – you can do so on Amazon here. If you like my blog I’m sure you’ll enjoy the book – it’s punchy and makes points quickly – I don’t labour on the point. If you’ve read it, firstly thank you, and it would be great if you could write a short review for me. You can also do that here. Thanks for your support.