Even in countries with a powerful home language, the weight of English can be strong. Is this good for the world? Not only is English the most powerful language, it is more than twice as powerful as its closest rival, Mandarin Image: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin 02 Nov 2018 Kai Chan Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Innovation and Policy Initiative In 2016 I published the “Power Language Index”, a research note on the efficacy of languages. It was a systematic data-driven analysis using 20 indicators to compare the clout of the world’s languages. It tried to answer the question: which language best serves a person to engage in life from a global perspective? The index was designed as a cardinal measure, meaning that the output -- a number that ranges from zero (least powerful) to one (most powerful) -- not only ranks the languages, but also indicates the magnitude with which they are more or less influential vis-à-vis another. Not surprisingly, the index showed that English, with a score of 0.889, is most powerful. It is the world’s lingua franca. In second place is Mandarin at 0.411. So not only is English the most powerful language, it is more than twice as powerful as its…
