Abstract
Academics and policy makers usually organise languages into several distinct categories. English, Chinese, Arabic, German, French or Spanish are easily identified as majority or dominant languages, but a variety of groupings are used to order ‘middle-sized’ languages, which may be characterised as ‘minorised’, ‘lesser-used’, ‘less-widely spoken’ or even the convoluted ‘less-widely taught, less-widely used’ languages. These categories are entirely contextual and the ascription of minority or majority status to a language depends on specific political contexts. French is spoken as a first language by over 50 million speakers and is clearly a world language, yet in the context of Italy, it is considered a ‘minority’ language. German is the majority language in Germany and Austria and is spoken in many countries worldwide but is a minority language in Denmark.
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