|
 |
Foreign languages in the EU | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 25 of 34 25 July 2014 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
35-40 people. So for this sample size the margin of error would rise to 16.57% if you drop the sample size to 35. However I've dropped the french woman and man since they speak French as a 1st language. So that leaves us with 3 out of 35 or 8.5714% Given this sample then I figure 8.6% of the UK population speak French as a 2nd language, +/- 16.57% (0%-25.14%) Because of the small sample size this margin of error is high. If I include all the employees I know inside & outside the building then the numbers increase to a sample size of 90 with French 2nd language speakers rising to 5. This puts the margin of error down to 10.33%. So we now have 5.56% of the population with a margin of error of +/- 10.33% (0%-15.89%) Edit: Looking back at the original numbers given, my "back of the fag packet" calculations jive with the figures given for the UK of 19% of the population able to speak French as a second language. Perhaps slightly inflated, but not far off my figures. Edited by rdearman on 25 July 2014 at 10:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6060 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 26 of 34 26 July 2014 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
|
@rdearman:
Are you telling us that this sample (a French company HQ building and whereabouts) could represent UK population's knowledge of the French language? Edited by Luso on 26 July 2014 at 1:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 27 of 34 26 July 2014 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm saying my estimate based on personal experiences seems to match the figures given in this report from the original post. I estimated ~15% they estimated 19%. I suspect since they asked people to self-evaluate their abilities and my review is based on observation only, this is why their numbers are higher than mine. But to answer your question. Yes, my sample size is statistically significant with a 95% confidence level. To get a 100% confidence level, and 0% margin of error, you'd have to ask all 63.3 million people in the UK. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 28 of 34 26 July 2014 at 11:42am | IP Logged | |||||
|
It occurred to me in my estimate a significant amount of the people who speak conversational French where I work as a 2nd language includes a large number of non-native English speakers. I would be interested to see some figures that show the number of native English speakers in the UK who speak French as a 2nd language.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6060 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 29 of 34 26 July 2014 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Sorry, I tried to be civil and ended up being obscure.
I was not disputing the size of the sample. I was asking about whether it was a good one. Quality, not quantity. I understand the numbers. I'm just saying your sample is (probably) biased. Not as bad as if you were asking outside the French embassy or the Alliance Française, but biased nevertheless. Edited by Luso on 26 July 2014 at 2:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 30 of 34 26 July 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
There are several flaws with all maps and figures like this one
1. What does conversational mean. Lots of people consider themselves as speakers of the language once they can buy a coffee using two words, their hands to point and their bill to undstand the price. 2. Many consider themselves speakers of the languages because they used to study it at school for years, used to speak it and passed an exam at the end of highschool. But most of those haven't used the language for decades 3. A particular one for Czech and Slovak which may or may not apply somewhere else as well: nearly noone or very few actually SPEAK the other language. You know, with a bit of practice, we UNDERSTAND each other perfectly. Normally, when a czech and a slovak meet, each one speaks their own native language and they undrstand 99% of what the other says in theirs. With more exposure, we catch small bits of the other language and use them. When living in the other country, some learn the other language but most don't. You can study for years at a czech university and speak and write Slovak all the time. You can work here and most people won't dare to tell you to finally learn Czech even in situations where it would be appropriate (people working with small children who don't understand Slovak yet or with old people hard of hearing and with dementia etc.) So in reality, 90% or so of the czechs can understand most slovaks nearly perfectly (except for some of the easterners) and even higher % of slovaks can understand most czechs nearly perfectly. But how many speak the other language without mixing them too much and without switching? Very few. In my opinion fewer than those who can speak a totally foreign language. Fewer than English or German. I dare guess even fewer than those who can speak French or Spanish. 1% or 2 in my opinion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 31 of 34 26 July 2014 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't believe so. I removed French natives from the calculations, moreover although the company is owned by the French shareholders, it is a UK PLC and therefore 99.9% of the employees are natives/residents of the UK. Speaking a second language isn't a condition of employment in this company. I could have done a similar exercise with people I know on facebook, but that would be heavily biased toward Italian & French speakers. I asked this question to my wife who works for a English company ~100 employees, and she knows 10 of them speak French, raising to 14 if you count the "International Sales Team". So her company would still run between the 10%-14% range. Although she isn't sure exactly how many employees (range between 90-120) and she only knows for a fact that 14 of them speak French. But the purpose of this exercise wasn't to prove or disprove the original numbers but to refute Serpents argument that our personal experiences aren't sufficient to draw a conclusion about the general population. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 32 of 34 26 July 2014 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I was mostly speaking about Portugal :) I clearly remember someone saying, maybe even on HTLAL, that Romanians are known for learning Portuguese well. And I know a Romanian living in Spain, though he doesn't speak French :-) I guess my point was also that many immigrants are quite well-educated (don't know about those in Portugal of course), or might have picked up conversational skills informally, while working at the market or similar.
And yeah, the part about Czech/Slovak seemed weird to me too. By that logic, Swedish should be better known in Norway than in Finland, for example. I have similar doubts about Slovenia too - those who went to school in Yugoslavia learned BCSM for sure, but by now English must have replaced it, just like it happened with Russian in Poland? I mean of course everyone can interact with Croatians, but isn't it similar to the Scandinavian situation? Edited by Serpent on 26 July 2014 at 5:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
