Power Language Index

Power Language Index

There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, but some 2,000 of them count fewer than a thousand speakers. Moreover, just 15 of them account for half of the languages spoken in the world. Which are the world’s most influential languages? The Power Language Index is a measure of a language’s efficacy by measuring its influence in 5 domains (“opportunities”): (1) geography, (2) economy, (3) communication, (4) knowledge & media, and (5) diplomacy. Within each of these opportunities is a set of indicators, totalling 20 in entirety for the index. The index is a cardinal measure with a range [0,1].

Below are the ten most powerful languages:

1. 1. English (0.889)
   2. Mandarin Chinese (0.411)
   3. French (0.337)
   4. Spanish (0.329)
   5. Arabic (0.273)
   6. Russian (0.244)
   7. German (0.191)
   8. Japanese (0.133)
   9. Portuguese (0.119)
   10. Hindi (0.117)

English is by far the most powerful language, and is over twice as strong as its closest rival (Mandarin Chinese) and eight times as effective as the tenth most dominant language (Hindi).There are many interesting consequences and insights from the index. For example, in spite of being the second largest contributor to both the IMF and UN budgets, Japanese are highly under-represented in senior positions in either institution, and Japanese is not even an official language of the UN. (UN budget contributions by German-, Italian- and Portuguese-speaking countries also surpass contributions of Arabic- and Russian-speaking nations (which are official UN languages).) On the other hand, French, which counts just 80 million speakers is the third most powerful language and an official language of all of the world’s major supranational organisations. And the global elite (e.g. Davos attendees) does not mirror the world either by population or economy or even the number of billionaires. Rather, the global elite is an English-speaking group to the detriment of countries where English proficiency is low.

The full report can be found by clicking here.

Below are links to the presentation shared at INSEAD as well as a summary of the presentation on INSEAD’s webpage.

The Power Language Index
The Most Influential Languages in the World

There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, but a third of them have fewer than 1,000 speakers; 15 languages are spoken by half of the world’s population. At the May Policy breakfast seminar, Dr. Kai L. Chan examined the efficacy of language in geography (travel), economy, communication and diplomacy.