W HAT COUNTRY does French belong to? The answer seems obvious: France, as it says on the label. But there are roughly four times as many speakers of French outside France as there are within it. Who does Portuguese belong to? You might now hesitate to blurt out “Portugal”, remembering that Brazil’s population is about 20 times bigger than Portugal’s. Maybe Portuguese belongs jointly to them both. But then 70m people live in African countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to them, too.
法国属于国家？答案似乎很明显：法国，正如标签上所说的那样。但是，法国境外法国人的说话者大约是其中的四倍。葡萄牙人属于谁？现在，您可能会犹豫脱口而出“葡萄牙”，记得巴西的人口大约是葡萄牙的20倍。也许葡萄牙共同属于他们。但是随后有7000万人居住在葡萄牙人是一种官方语言的非洲国家。也许它也属于他们。
