Second Most Popular Language in Every Country (with a map)
Think naming the most spoken language in every country is too easy? Try to fill in the map of the world by naming the second most popular language in each country.
Focusing on L1 languages (people's native language) if there is data (if there is no data for the L1, we would look at L2 languages), for the more thorough methodology, see the comment section
For the creole/patois languages, please be specific and answer either "parent language + creole" or "origin + creole"
The data (as of 2019) mainly focus on L1 languages, i.e., people’s primary languages to make sure we were only including languages that were actually used on a daily basis.
We started out by gathering data from the CIA World Factbook and listed the second most commonly used languages in all the countries we could, and then filled in any gaps and double-checked the information with the world language website, Ethnologue.
Whenever any data from Ethnologue didn’t match up with the CIA’s data (as it includes L2 languages as well), we swapped it for the Ethnologue data.
In some rare cases, there is no data for the second commonly used languages in a country for the two website mentioned above, I would check it with the Wikipedia page and other websites, which might include the L2 languages.
It is very likely that some answers are not correct, please feel free to correct me in the comment section!
Nice quiz idea. If Malagasy is the second most spoken language in Madagascar, then what is the first? I'm also sceptical about Turkey/Arabic, (I'd expect Kurdish)
For Turkey, I'm not sure why the resource would consider Arabic but not Kurdish as the second most spoken language in Turkey, a statistical issue perhaps?
The data (as of 2019) mainly focus on L1 languages, i.e., people’s primary languages to make sure we were only including languages that were actually used on a daily basis.
We started out by gathering data from the CIA World Factbook and listed the second most commonly used languages in all the countries we could, and then filled in any gaps and double-checked the information with the world language website, Ethnologue.
Whenever any data from Ethnologue didn’t match up with the CIA’s data (as it includes L2 languages as well), we swapped it for the Ethnologue data.
In some rare cases, there is no data for the second commonly used languages in a country for the two website mentioned above, I would check it with the Wikipedia page and other websites, which might include the L2 languages.
It is very likely that some answers are not correct, please feel free to correct me in the comment section!
Most spoken language in Madagascar is French.
For Turkey, I'm not sure why the resource would consider Arabic but not Kurdish as the second most spoken language in Turkey, a statistical issue perhaps?