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Wikipedia and language choice | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6676 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 1 of 55 27 September 2006 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's difficult to decide which language to learn. I propose as a criterion the number of Wikipedia articles written in the language. Why? A great number of articles shows that
a) the language is widely used b) its speakers value knowledge and education and are therefore potentially interesting people to have a conversation with c) the language is spoken in countries with a high living standard (apparently many people have access to internet and sufficient free time to spend on wikipedia) and freedom of speech, which are possibly nice places to live d) there are lots of reading materials available in that language So here are the Top Ten (with numbers of articles): 1. English (1.400.000) 2. German (470.000) 3. French (370.000) 4. Polish (300.000) 5. Japanese (260.000) 6. Dutch (230.000) 7. Italian (200.000) 8. Portuguese (190.000) 9. Swedish (180.000) 10. Spanish (160.000) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lengua Senior Member United States polyglottery.wordpre Joined 6695 days ago 549 posts - 595 votes Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German | Message 2 of 55 27 September 2006 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmm. I'm not sure if this is necessarily the best way to go about it. For example... as a US citizen, I can think of about 32 million reasons to learn Spanish before learning any language on the list after English.
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| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6836 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 55 27 September 2006 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I used to think about this exact idea, and I like it. I think it is most appropriate for someone that does not have to learn a language for any particular reason but simply wants to communicate to like-minded foreigners, as you suggested. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7216 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 55 27 September 2006 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Those are interesting criterion and a lot of valid reasoning. Spanish in the US is not known as the language of intelectualism. That may be a strike against it for many. Your post and lengua's made me think of other potential criterion, such as GDP/speaker as a measure of influence. Then I made a "Figure of Merit", which is a bad name for the result of a crazy formula. The FoM multiplies the GDP/speaker by the number of countries column from this web site. This is the result: Language GDP/speaker ; FoM English, 22862, 274349 Spanish, 8505, 212632 French, 10436, 177422 Dutch, 23766, 95066 German, 31318, 93956 Italian, 25689, 51379 Norwegian, 44200, 44200 Danish, 42400, 42400 Japanese, 34062, 34062 Swedish, 33333, 33333 Finnish, 32200, 32200 Greek, 15727, 31454 Russian, 3281, 26251 Portuguese, 3280, 19684 Korean, 8642, 17285 Serbo-Croatian, 3176, 1588 2 Czech, 7083, 14166 Slovak, 8333, 8333 Hungarian, 7642, 7642 Romanian, 2142, 6428 Polish, 5500, 5500 Mandarin, 1087, 4351 Farsi, 2081, 4163 Cantonese, 4000, 4000 Turkish, 3291, 3291 Bulgarian, 2500, 2500 Ukrainian, 1219, 2439 Arabic, 2435, 58442 Thai, 2234, 2234 Hindi/Urdu, 566, 1133 Bengali, 246, 492 Esperanto, 0, 0 Latin, 0, 0 Obviously, nothing beats plain old desire to learn a language as the best reason. Edited by luke on 27 September 2006 at 8:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6713 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 55 27 September 2006 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know it's true, and pretty much know why, but it's a pity. There have been many novels that were written in Spanish that are the equal of the great works in any other language.
No joke. After all, looking at the number of entries on Wikipedia is also a reflection of the number of people who speak a given language that have computer access. That doesn't really reflect the language's importance in the world, or in the part of the world you want to live in. Basically, using Wikipedia's page count strikes me as too abstract a reason to learn a language. If that the only reason you're only learning the language, then I don't think you'll actually have the committment to follow through with your studies to the point of being able to use it. I think it's muc more productive to look at your life and your goals, and pick a language that you think will help you enhance you ability to enjoy/reach them. If you find that you get turned on by European literature, or history, study French or German. If you want to travel to exotic place, try something like Chinese or Arabic, because, if you master those, you might find work that sends you over there. If everyone in you area is from Brazil, Portugese. If this Wikipedia thing is just *another* reason for you to study a language, that's one thing. If it's the only reason, I'd think about it some more if I were you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6779 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 55 28 September 2006 at 2:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wikipedia's page count is more a cultural indicator than an indicator of language importance.
Some cultures use the Internet more than others. Some are more literary than others. Some find wiki-style collaboration more useful than others. All Wikipedia's language stats show is that the Wikipedia took off particularly quickly among English-speaking Internet users. There are other online services and phenomena where other languages are more prolific than English: Orkut's friendship network, for example, where Portuguese is #1; and the "blogosphere", where Japanese is #1. Edited by Captain Haddock on 28 September 2006 at 2:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6676 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 7 of 55 28 September 2006 at 5:03am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. However, if one is interested in learning a language that is spoken by people who use the internet, are literary and like wiki-style collaboration, it's a very good indicator :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6797 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 8 of 55 28 September 2006 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can only say Internet usage and, somehow, cultural development are better in the Western world. Among the first 30 Wikipedias, non-European-based languages include Japanese, Chinese, Esperanto, Hebrew, Indonesian, Turkish and Korean. Among them, only the (South)East Asian ones are not so geographically and linguistically related to the West.
Learning one for its cultural value/academic purpose is rather important. As a young man struggling to find a way out in a modern, competitive society, I see no point of picking one not out of these 30 and, practically, I choose only the more popular ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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