By Popular Demand

Round 6

a word game in ten rounds

Every turn I give you five categories.   Send me one entry in each category.   In each category, you score one point for every person sending the same entry as you.   If you submit the only occurrence of your entry, you score one point.   Please work alone.   There will be ten rounds.

Anyone may join at any time.   Anyone joining after the first round will start with the lowest score as of the prior round.   Anyone missing a round will be given the lowest score of the missed round.  

Round 6 ( Popular Languages ):

1	Language 1		Chinese 13,   English 10.
2	Language 2		English 8,   Chinese 7,   Spanish 3,   Hindi 2,   French 1,   Indie 1,   Russian 1.
3	Language 3		Spanish 10,   English 4,   Hindi 4,   Arabic 2,   Chinese 1,   Japanese 1,   Portuguese 1.
4	Language 4		Spanish 7,   French 3,   Hindi 3,   Bengali 2,   Russian 2,   English 1,   German 1,   Hindi & Urdu 1,   Indian 1,   Latin 1,   Mandarin 1.
5	Language 5		French 7,   Arabic 5,   Russian 5,   Hindi 2,   Spanish 2,   Chinese 1,   Portuguese 1.

Name	Language 1	Language 2	Language 3	Language 4	Language 5	score	total	position
Ward Narhi	English	Chinese	Spanish	Hindi	Arabic	35	245	1
Tim Snyder	Chinese	English	Spanish	Hindi	Portuguese	35	223	2
David Partridge	Chinese	English	Hindi	Spanish	Russian	37	213	3
Brendan Whyte	Chinese	English	Hindi	Spanish	Russian	37	207	4=
Fred Wiedemeyer	Chinese	Spanish	English	Bengali	Hindi	24	207	4=
Jim Burgess	Chinese	Spanish	English	Bengali	Hindi	24	205	6
Martin Burgdorf	Chinese	English	Hindi	Spanish	Arabic	37	198	7
Kevin Wilson	Chinese	English	Hindi	Spanish	Russian	37	195	8
David McCrumb	Chinese	English	Spanish	Russian	Arabic	38	192	9
Jon Fetter	English	Chinese	Arabic	Hindi	French	29	183	10
Andrew York	English	Chinese	Spanish	Latin	French	35	182	11=
Brent McKee	Chinese	Hindi	English	Russian	Spanish	23	182	11=
Bart Denny	Chinese	Indie	English	Spanish	Arabic	30	178	13
Elissa Narhi	English	Chinese	Spanish	Indian	French	35	172	14
Mom	English	French	Spanish	German	Chinese	23	171	15
Bill Scharf	Chinese	Hindi	Spanish	English	French	33	168	16
Mark Stretch	Chinese	English	Portuguese	Spanish	French	36	157	17
David Charlton	English	Chinese	Spanish	Hindi & Urdu	Arabic	33	152	18
Peter Boyum	English	Russian	Chinese	French	Spanish	17	137	19
Jim Reader	English	Spanish	Japanese	Mandarin	French	22	136	20
John Wilman	English	Chinese	Spanish	French	Russian	35	133	21
Keith Evans	NMR!					17	120	22
Don Williams	NMR!					17	108	23
Brad Martin	Chinese	English	Spanish	French	Russian	39	81	24
Douglas Kent	English	Chinese	Arabic	Spanish	French	33	75	25
Deborah Denny	NMR!					17	64	26

The theoretical maximum possible score was 115.  This round's actual maximum possible score was 45.  Actual maximum score was 39, achieved by Brad Martin.

This seems more like battle of the references than everyone referring to the same one.
Chinese and English clearly lead the pack. However, there does seem to be a bit of confusion in our minds over which one is more 'popular'. Spanish would seem to be the next most popular, at least among you all, being the most frequently mentioned for both third and fourth places! Even the folks who looked up the "true" answers didn't agree...
Tim Snyder reports, "Hindi suffers from being only one language among many in India. English benefits from being a second language of many people."
David Partridge: I'm guessing that most people won't do it this way, but what the heck, I'll go with the facts for once (<:
Brendan: "another list given is Mandarin, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese It comes down to counting only mother tongue, or counting fluent or understandable speakers of it, in which case English would probably race past Chinese, and Hindi past Bengali. French is surprisingly low on the list despite the number of countries with it as an official language. I'm confident of the first 2, and i think the next 4 will be all over the place."
Jim Burgess: "This time, of course, we have the battle of Europe and the battle of India. Without even looking things up, I remembered that Spanish still wins the battle of Europe (worldwide, of course) over English but couldn't recall which of Bengali or Hindi had the most adherents. Looking things up, Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, and Hindi is the generally accepted TRUE answer. This time I'm going with that."
Brent McKee complains, "A bit unfair this. Chinese (in its various dialects) is the most popular language because it is spoken by more people than any other as a first language, but I would argue that English is more important because it has become the "lingua franca" of our times -- the essential language for business and diplomacy. Of course the term "lingua franca" reminds us that such things are transitory. The term is Latin and literally tanslated means the Frankish tongue or the French Language, thereby combining the two previous contenders for the most important language."
Kevin: "Since you didn't specify the languages in question as "first" languages, I figured I'd use a language whether it was a first language or not. Probably a bit Anglo-centric of me since that pushes up English in the list but so be it. The number in ( ) is the number given by the site I found as the speakers of that language, not just primary speakers, in millions. If it were as primary speakers, then English would drop to at least 4th with Hindi and Spanish moving up. Interestingly, I check French since the French are so particular about their language and it might not make the top 10!"
Peter Boyum says, "Do you mean as a first language or simply as a language spoken? A great number of Algerians speak French although it's their second language. Most of Africa speaks French--again as a second language. Most of the world is required to speak at least a modicum of English if they fly airplanes or do repairwork on computers or American equipment of any kind. I'll assume you mean that they speak a language well enough to conduct business in it whether on the phone, in person, or thru correspondence."
Dave Charlton: "An interesting topic."
Language 1	Andy York: "the defacto language of the Internet and e-Commerce"
	Jim Reader: "back in 1995, I went to the China Paint Show in Beijing where at one point, I noticed a Filipina and Japanese doing business - in English"
Language 2	Andy: "spoken by the "largest" number of folks in the world. You didn't indicate how to handle dialects, so I'm grouping into "main" language groups - otherwise this would be Mandarin"
	Jim Reader: "this is probably not going to be popular, but most of Latin America still speaks Spanish or variants, as well as part of Europe - Italian and Porutguese are also quite similar"
Language 3	Andy: "a wide swath of folks from Europe to the Americas speak this"
	Jim Reader: "sadly, you can tell my thinking is influenced by working for an American corporation" Is that what it is? The language you give here is not spoken by nearly as many folks the language you give as fourth...
Language 4	Andy: "the original defacto language of the world"
Language 5	Dave McCrumb: "actually, my reference indicates a tie with Hindi"
	Andy: "the former defacto language of diplomacy and world commerce"
	Jim Reader: "still the main European language in most of Africa"

Categories for Round 7 ( Babies ):    (Seem to be popular these days!)

Many of us have children, but before that they were babies. So, dig into your memories, folks, and tell me what you find!

1	Baby is	Something most of us would want our baby to be.
2	Color	A popular color scheme in baby's nursery.
3	Furniture	Furniture found in the nursery.
4	Food	Ya gotta feed these critters. What are you going to give your baby so it'll grow well.
5	Missing	Tell us something you lost when your baby arrived.