If you want to know what the most widely spoken language in the world is at any given instant, follow the sun. When the sun rises over the western Pacific, the laurel goes to the Chinese. When the sun rises over the Atlantic, however, and China is asleep, the most widely spoken language in the world is English.
The sense of wonder seeps through even the dry statistics on the website of the Summer Institute of Languages (SIL), one of the world
