Prediction on the Number of Different Language Speakers

Huaxia Zhang, Jinhui Chen,  Tianyuan Liu

Department of Nuclear Science, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Abstract: As a cultural symbol and the communication tool, language plays an important role in human so-ciety. The prediction of different language speakers has great significance on language protection and re-search. According to the modern theories of difference equations, we establish a discrete model to predict the number of speakers of a language. It consists of endogenous growth (affected mainly by government’s lan-guage policy) and exogenous growth (affected by languages used in schools, assimilation of cultural groups, etc.). We use logistic model to predict the former, and we develop a language influence model to quantify the latter. The prediction results show that top-10 languages in the world will remain unchanged but the order will change slightly.

Keywords: Endogenous growth; Exogenous growth; Language impact factor