----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I ran into the following statistics and I think that they might be useful to individuals as well as film lists in which "foreign" (i.e. non-English language films) are being discussed. =========================================================================== The full list follows (minus the 1980 figures) Language Total speakers Percentage Change used at home over age 5 between 1980 and 1990 in 1990 Spanish 17,339,000 UP 50.1 % SUPER-CHAMPION IN SHEER NUMBERS French 1,703,000 UP 8.3 % SEE ALSO FRENCH CREOLE German 1,547,000 down 3.7 % Italian 1,309,000 down 19.9 % Chinese 1,249,000 UP 97.7 % Tagalog 843,000 UP 86.6 % Polish 723,000 down 12.4 % Korean 626,000 UP 172.2 % Vietnamese 507,000 UP 127.2 % Portuguese 430,000 UP 19.0 % Japanese 428,000 UP 25.o % Greek 388,000 down 5.4 % Arabic 355,000 UP 57.4 % Hindi,Urdu and related 331.000 UP 155.1 % Russian 242,000 UP 38.5 % Yiddish 213,000 down 33.5 % CHAMPION LOSER;BUT SEE HEBREW Thai 206,00 UP 131.6 % Persian 202,000 UP 84.7 % French Creole 188,000 UP 654.1 % THE RUNNER-UP;SEE ALSO FRENCH Armenian 150,000 UP 46.3 % Navajo 149,000 UP 20.6 % Hungarian 148,000 down 17.9 % Hebrew 144,000 UP 45.5% SEE YIDDISH Dutch 143,000 down 2.6 % Mon-Khmer 127,000 UP 676.3 % THE CHAMP IN GAINS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL 31,845,000 (from 23,446,000 in 1980) UP almost 38 % ------------------------------------------------------------------------