Non-equilibrium and irreversible simulation of competition among languages

The bit-string model of Schulze and Stauffer [Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 16 (2005) 781] is applied to non-equilibrium situations and then gives better agreement with the empirical distribution of language sizes. Here the size is the number of people having this language as mother tongue. In contrast, when equilibrium is combined with irreversible mutations of languages, one language always dominates and is spoken by at least 80% of the population.