List of languages by number of speakers (2011 estimate)

Estimated


1. Mandarin Chinese (1151 million)
2. English (1000 million)
3. Spanish (500 million)
4. Hindi (490 million) (combined with Urdu 594 million)
5. Russian (277 million)
6. Arabic (255 million)
7. Portuguese (240 million)
8. Bengali (215 million)
9. French (200 Million) (some have argued closer to 500million)
10. Malay/Indonesian (175 million)
11. German (166 million) (a large percentage of these can speak english, i am guessing close to 60% can speak english because germany 60%, austria 75%, etc)
12. Japanese (132 million)
13. Farsi (Persian) (110 million)
15. Punjabi (103 million) (indian)


Note: indias are taught english in school, in fact a lot of their schools teach in english, and have a special language class for their chosen indian language)
Spain has of the lowest english speaking percentages in the whole of europe.
germany has one of the highest. (excluding Scandanavia and their 90% English speakers)


from this i would say good forums to put up would be

the best languages to put in would be
French
Spanish
Mandarin (possibly no need for this, as there is effectively no chinese players.)
Portuguese
Russian
German
Turkish is uneeded, (but buthurt will comence if it is removed)
I guess Italian can't hurt either.

There's not loads of French on here, and I'm guessing French Canadians learn English.
Also few Italians.

Написано nonames, 26.11.2012 at 10:38

the best languages to put in would be
...
Mandarin (possibly no need for this, as there is effectively no chinese players.)
...

I beg to differ... as I am at least one of them.

Написано ezzatam, 26.11.2012 at 11:05

Написано nonames, 26.11.2012 at 10:38

the best languages to put in would be
...
Mandarin (possibly no need for this, as there is effectively no chinese players.)
...

I beg to differ... as I am at least one of them.

sorry i didn't mean that, i meant native mandarin speakers. (who don't know english)

Написано Cherse, 26.11.2012 at 10:52

There's not loads of French on here, and I'm guessing French Canadians learn English.
Also few Italians.

wrong, there are less native french speakers that speak enligh than there are native german speakers that can, and there is a german forum.

We were just talking about possibly localizing the game/website today - it might be our next big project, probably some time next year. We will probably start with German (since we have lots of German players and Dave speaks German) and then see how it goes.

The amount of speakers obviously doesn't mean much - the real question is, how many of them we can get to play our game, even with a translation.

French can open to you a decent market due to the low knowledge of english in france and the Maghreb learn french as there secondary language and not english. Same for a big part pf africa bit they dont have any access to internet. Im pretty sure that french would be more useful thanin term of possible numbers of player

Написано nonames, 26.11.2012 at 11:08

Написано Cherse, 26.11.2012 at 10:52

There's not loads of French on here, and I'm guessing French Canadians learn English.
Also few Italians.

wrong, there are less native french speakers that speak enligh than there are native german speakers that can, and there is a german forum.

wrong to what? anways the question would be how many native french who cant vs how many native german who cant, especially given there are more germanic europeans then french on here... but as Ivan said, its also to do with attracting people I guess.

Написано Cherse, 26.11.2012 at 13:29

there are more germanic europeans then french on here

haplogroup thread gogogo

Написано Ivan, 26.11.2012 at 11:48

The amount of speakers obviously doesn't mean much - the real question is, how many of them we can get to play our game, even with a translation.

But it is clear from the list of how to strategize the localisation of interfaces and countries names etc...
It shows that Chinese,Spanish,Russian,Arabic,German and French are what you need.
It isn't difficult to share the workload out to user submission then reward those with most contributions.
You have already polished the game with custom maps... now the outreach has to begin!