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Proportion of polyglots | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| sirgregory Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6744 days ago 35 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 41 of 51 19 July 2006 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been wondering for some time now what percentage of Americans(excluding immigrants who learned English as a second language) speak a second language-and by speak I mean to point where you could live comfortably in a country where that language is spoken, work, have friends, make phone calls, etc. I would imagine that in most of the country("middle America"), it wouldn't even be 10%. Of course, it's pretty much impossible to get good data on this since all you can really do is take a poll. Another problem is singling out Americans whose families have been here for at least 3 generations. With immigrants mixed in, the data would be skewed as I imagine that 30% figure someone quoted for the UK is. It would also be very hard to know if people were lying or had an inflated view of their abilities.
If anyone does know of any polls that have been done in the US, I would be interested. I did a google search and didn't find a thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 42 of 51 20 July 2006 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||
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You might take a look at this US census data on language use.
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| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6890 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 43 of 51 05 August 2006 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
For the UK and the US I'd expect the figure to be 1 or 2 per cent. That is for the US - 1 or 2 per cent of the 'native' population (third, forth etc. generation immigrants) with English as their first language speaks a foreign language. For the UK I'd say the number is the same. edit: in 2004 a British survey showed that only one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language. Less than 5% could count to 20 in a second language, for example. 80% said they could work abroad anyway, because "everyone speaks English." In 2001, a European Commission survey found that 65.9% of people in the UK spoke only their native tongue. Source Edited by Skandinav on 05 August 2006 at 6:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6747 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 51 05 August 2006 at 7:06am | IP Logged | ||
Odd that 10% say they could speak a 2nd language, but less than 5% could count to 20 in that language...makes you wonder what they mean by 'speak'... My guess is that almost all bilinguals in the UK are either ethnic Asians or Welsh. The rest are shamefully hopeless. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6890 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 45 of 51 05 August 2006 at 7:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I noticed that one too. "I speak XXX pretty good... what was 'three' again?"
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| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6747 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 46 of 51 05 August 2006 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, a lot of English speakers, particularly in the UK and US, do seem pretty good at speaking XXX, if you see what I mean :-/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 47 of 51 08 October 2006 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have just read a short article in the Danish magazine "Illustreret Videnskab" about the research of a Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall. According to him the most polyglot society in the world should be an area somewhere in the Amazonas where every village has its own language and everybody is expected to marry somebody with another language (!). I would sure like to see some documentation for that kind of statement, but his book "Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Language and Languages" is not too easy to get hold of.
On a more serious note, this is his list of 'polyglot' countries (with mean number of languages spoken by an ordinary mean citizen): Mauritius: 3,78 Luxembourg: 3,24 Denmark: 2,35 Sweden: 2,20 Finland: 1,85 Latvia: 1,78 Germany: 1,65 France: 1,57 Greece: 1,49 UK: 1,34 USA: 1,27 Australia: 1,12 Edited by Iversen on 08 October 2006 at 4:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6662 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 48 of 51 09 October 2006 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I found the list of polyglot countries fascinating. I'm sure that a high rate of literacy is one component, but I'd also venture that countries where the primary language is not commonly studied in many other countries are more likely to have lots of people studying other languages. That would explain Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Latvia. I'm not sure what the explanation is for Mauritius.
The fact that those countries are small and reasonably prosperous also means that people in those countries have a greater likelihood of traveling outside their countries' borders. Australia is fairly large and remote and English is a very international language. The USA is in a similar situation, but borders Francophone areas of Canada and Spanish-speaking Mexico. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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