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Languages to cover 50%, 90% of all humans | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4252 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 24 21 May 2014 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not necessarily. And even if that were the case, that has very little to do with national cultures, of which I at least tried to talk about, but I'm sure you understood me full well and decided to be a smartass. It's okay, I do it sometimes too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 24 21 May 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Wasn't trying to be a smartass at all. I truly believe that language conveys culture, whether you call it "national" or otherwise. To say that culture doesn't play into language learning, particularly when mentioning literature and different viewpoints is, well, myopic. R. == 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slowlanglearner Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 3886 days ago 6 posts - 15 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 24 22 May 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Being smartass is the proper name, when I clearly asked about being able to talk to most humans and people answer 'ooh you can't talk to all people on earth, it will take too long'.
My question is a classical objective for panglotism. Some indeed learn languages to understand/speak with a diverse group of people 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 24 23 May 2014 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
I would tend to agree with you. The way I interpret your question is how many languages would I need in order to be able to speak to a large portion of humanity? Not every individual within that language group, just a random few. If I go to an Arabic country, I may only speak to 50 people, but I will still need to learn Arabic, to speak to them - or to any other random 20 or 30 people that I come across. I am no good with numbers and percentages, but my "most wanted list" in order to speak to as many as possible, would be: English Spanish Mandarin Russian French Arabic Hindi Portuguese So all I need to do now, is to learn Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi and Portuguese plus improve my Russan, and I am all set. Piece of cake, basically :-) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 13 of 24 23 May 2014 at 1:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's a fun question. Doing some quick math using wikipedia numbes on native speakers,
I got: 25%: Mandarin, Spanish, English 40%: plus Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, 50%: plus Japanese, Punjabi, German, Japanese, Wu, Indonesian/Malay 80%: requires learning 80 languages* 94%: 305 languages* * source: Ethnologue I would love to find a way to adjust this to include second language speakers, but it gets complicated as you'd end up double and triple counting individuals if you simply add up, say, English+English second language+Spanish+Spanish second language. (French came in right after I hit the 50% mark ... I was surprised it was so low. I think it would be closer to the top if I included second-language speakers, so obviously this list isn't super scientific) Edited by kanewai on 23 May 2014 at 1:35am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5082 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 14 of 24 27 May 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
And they're right. It's not that I'm being a smartass, I just disagree with the implied values behind your question. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slowlanglearner Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 3886 days ago 6 posts - 15 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 24 27 May 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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" just disagree with the implied values behind your question. "
Well, that's being a smart alec. The question was not about my 'implied values'. Entering into this discussion, and not answering the question, nor contributing to the answer is not very helpful. And why would someone be against some weaker or stronger form of panglotism is beyond my understanding. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5082 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 16 of 24 29 May 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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No, my values and ideology are just different to yours. I simply don't agree at all with
how the question is framed. I think your understanding of "panglotism" is misguided and, dare I say it, imperialistic. I am a lover of language in general - I'm not going to tell you much about what the best, most important, most panglottically useful is other than to tell you that I don't accept those categories. I'm perfectly willing to accept that my posts are "unhelpful", I just want you to contemplate the possibility that there's more to this than just "smart assedness" and that it's more of an ideological divide. Obviously the question is not about your implied values, that's precisely why I called them implied - they're a set of values that are not explicitly stated but have to be accepted to answer the question without being a "smart alec". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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