World Canonical Texts
There is a question on LitNet forum about language balance. I put up the following criteria:
1) Start date of the literary tradition
2) Current population literate in that lanuage
3) Language prestige
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1076692&postcount=33
What I didn't post is my rough ranking ... hard to make this as a rule for balance I think. But as a general rule the need to include top 8: the 3 big modern languages (English, Chinese, Spanish), plus 1-2 key languages from key historical literate regions (Chinese for East Asia; Sanskrit, Pali for South Asia; Greek and Latin for Europe; and Arabic for CWANA). What surprises me is Persian really fell out the list - something unexpected to me. I guess in reality, a long representative list probably should include all the 20 languges listed here!
| Weight | 40% | 40% | 20% | ||
| Start Date | Current Pop | Prestige | Wt. Avg. | Rank Order | |
| Chinese | 10 | 10 | 8 | 9.6 | 1 |
| English | 3 | 10 | 10 | 7.2 | 2 |
| Sanskrit | 10 | 1 | 8 | 6.0 | 3 |
| Greek | 10 | 1 | 8 | 6.0 | 3 |
| Spanish | 3 | 8 | 6 | 5.6 | 5 |
| Latin | 8 | 1 | 8 | 5.2 | 6 |
| Pali | 10 | 0 | 5 | 5.0 | 7 |
| Arabic | 6 | 2 | 8 | 4.8 | 8 |
| Japanese | 6 | 1 | 6 | 4.0 | 9 |
| Hindi/Urdu | 1 | 6 | 4 | 3.6 | 10 |
| Tamil | 6 | 1 | 3 | 3.4 | 11 |
| Portuguese | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3.4 | 11 |
| French | 3 | 1 | 8 | 3.2 | 13 |
| German | 3 | 1 | 8 | 3.2 | 13 |
| Russian | 1 | 4 | 6 | 3.2 | 13 |
| Persian | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3.0 | 16 |
| Turkish | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2.2 | 17 |
| Bengali | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2.2 | 17 |
| Tibetan | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1.6 | 19 |
| Bahasa | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1.4 | 20 |
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