The fact is that: 1) there are three scientific languages — English, French and German (that is to say, languages which normally serve to communicate scientific matter to the world and which are read, in point of learning, outside the countries where they are spoken); 2) there are two literary languages — English and Italian; 3) there are three imperial languages — English, Spanish and Portuguese. It is seen that English is the one language that is common to the three types or modes of classification.

It may be said that languages can be classified in three ways: scientific or non-scientific; literary or non-literary; imperial or non-imperial.