This is quite an interesting way of looking at language:
“The study was spurred by a conversation about an untranslated book, says Shahar Ronen, a Microsoft program manager whose Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) master’s thesis formed the basis of the new work. A bilingual Hebrew-English speaker from Israel, he told his MIT adviser, César Hidalgo (himself a Spanish-English speaker), about a book written in Hebrew whose translation into English he wasn’t yet aware of. “I was able to bridge a certain culture gap because I was multilingual,” Ronen says. He began thinking about how to create worldwide maps of how multilingual people transmit information and ideas.”
I’ve previously argued that English is the universal language but perhaps what I should have said is that it’s the most influential. You can see the complete MIT study here, which has a nice interactive map you can use to see how languages connect globally.
Want to influence the world? Map reveals the best languages to speak (Science Mag) via Uncornered Market Facebook Page
