Sprachen und ihr ökonomisches Gewicht
Taking up an idea put forward by Joshua A. Fishman and the coauthors of The Spread of English (1977), this article gives an up-to-date ranking of languages according to their economic power. Figures are calculated based on GDP and number of native speakers. For example, in the case of French the ranking is the sum of the GDP of France, 0.45 of the GDP Belgium, and 0.26 of the GDP Canada. The five economically most powerful languages are – in decreasing order – English, Japanese, German, French, and Spanish.