Language power history
Which languages the world's governments used, weighted by how much power those governments held, year by year.
1900 to 2026 · Government layer · Power Atlas shares, Unicode CLDR, curated language eras
Layer shown: government. The language a state used to govern. The court or elite layer and the majority spoken layer are not built yet.
Share of world power by year
One line per language. Lines can sum past 100% because a state's power counts in full for every language it governs in. Tap or click to set the year below.
- English
- Russian
- French
- German
- Mandarin Chinese
- Japanese
Leading language, 1950
English, 49.7%
Runner-up
Russian, 17.7%
Biggest gain in 25 years
Russian, +8.3 pts
Power with a language on record
100.0%
Who spoke for the world's governments in 1950
Each country is shaded by the government language that leads its entry.
Today's borders. A past state is painted on the country that holds its core now, and colonies are not painted: a ruling state carries their power. Germany and Austria are absent from the power series from 1945 to 1955, so they are blank in those years.
Languages by government power, 1950
Every polity's share of world power, credited in full to each language its government used.
How this is measured
A bilingual state counts in full for both its languages, so shares overlap and add to more than 100%. Change compares with 25 years earlier; the first column that can show it is 1925.
Rank by decade
Where each language stood at the start of every decade, and today.
- English
- Russian
- French
- German
- Mandarin Chinese
- Japanese
- Other languages
Germany and Austria are absent from the power series from 1945 to 1955, so German drops out of the 1950 column.
How the history is built
One rule: a state's power goes in full to every language it governs in.
How this is measured
Each polity's share of world power comes from the Power Atlas. Its whole share is credited to each government language, so Switzerland, Belgium and Canada reward every language, and language shares overlap.
Where no curated era applies, a polity takes today's official and de facto official languages for its whole span. Curated eras replace that where history differed: empires, unions, partitions, mandates and language laws.
Maps use today's borders. Colonies have no slug of their own before independence, so a ruling power carries their power and its language.
Curated eras and their sources
Where these numbers come from
- Power series: Hegemony-aware CINC v6 with Maddison 2023 and a recognition layer (this site's Power Atlas)
- Today's official languages: Unicode CLDR territory data (this site's Languages hub)
- Curated government-language eras: cited per row in data/languages/gov_language_eras.json
A language is on record for 100.0% of world power, because the default rule fills any year a curated era does not cover. The share resting on a hand-set era runs from 52% in the 1900s to 9% in the 2020s; the rest is the default rule.
Today's version of this board is on Language Power; definitions are on the Method page. This board is also in the Time Machine.