Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/398

French	51,200,000
Spanish	42,800,000
Italian	33,400,000
Portuguese	13,000,000[1]

The next estimates, for the year 1900, I take from Jespersen. The statisticians responsible for them I do not know:

English	from	116,000,000	to	123,000,000
German	from	75,000,000	to	80,000,000
Russian	from	70,000,000	to	85,000,000
French	from	45,000,000	to	52,000,000
Spanish	from	44,000,000	to	58,000,000
Italian	from	34,000,000	to	54,000,000

Now comes an estimate as of 1911:^[2]

English	160,000,000
German	130,000,000
Russian	100,000,000
French	70,000,000
Spanish	50,000,000
Italian	50,000,000
Portuguese	25,000,000

And now one, somewhat more moderate, as of 1912:

English	150,000,000
German	90,000,000
Russian	106,000,000
French	47,000,000
Spanish	52,000,000
Italian	37,000,000[3]

If we accept the 1911 estimate, we find English spoken by two and a half times as many persons as spoke it at the close of the Civil War and by nearly eight times as many as spoke it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. No other language spread to any such extent during the century. German made a fourfold gain, but that was just half the gain made by English. Russian, despite the vast extension of the Russian Empire during the century, scarcely

1. I take these figures from A Modern English Grammar, by H. G. Buehler; New York, 1900, p. 3.
2. World Almanac, 1914, p. 63. See also English, March, 1919, p. 20.
3. Hickmann's Geographisch-Statistischer Universal-Atlas.