Good point: Mandarin is clearly more spoken, and further from English, than Portuguese.
About Hindi: keep in mind that English is still an official Indian language, especially since the English Language Amendment Bill.
About Arabic: there are several kinds of Arabic, and not all are mutually intelligible. As a result, the number of people speaking it is a controversial figure... you can then compare the 200 million of native Portuguese speakers with the 280 million of native Modern Standard Arabic speakers.
Comments
Good point: Mandarin is clearly more spoken, and further from English, than Portuguese.
About Hindi: keep in mind that English is still an official Indian language, especially since the English Language Amendment Bill.
About Arabic: there are several kinds of Arabic, and not all are mutually intelligible. As a result, the number of people speaking it is a controversial figure... you can then compare the 200 million of native Portuguese speakers with the 280 million of native Modern Standard Arabic speakers.