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Is number of speakers important? | ||
Tags: Number of speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5226 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 9 of 75 06 August 2013 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's a positive trait in language selection. Given two languages with an equal amount of literature, music, inherent beautyetc., differing only in amount of speakers, I would choose the one with more speakers. For instance, I was relatively indifferent between the different Scandinavian languages, so I picked Swedish because of population numbers.
So of course it's important, and I imagine it's important to most people. How important it is compared to other traits of the language is a personal matter. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 10 of 75 06 August 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's funny, but when I discover a language with very few native speakers (especially an officially endangered language), I feel strangely attracted to it. It often just seems to bring out the hidden parent or nurturer in me.
In the past, I've worked closely with field linguists to preserve around 136 endangered dialects of Neo-Aramaic, and have been keen to raise awareness, or at least stoke the fires, of dying, resurrected, or simply lesser-known languages from time to time here on the Forum too (e.g. Chukchi, Cornish, Manx, and Frisian, to name but a few). At the moment, I'm studying Irish, which Wikipedia claims to have 133,000 native speakers, but which is probably much closer to 20,000 in reality (the last Irish monoglot, I recall, died in the 1970s). I'm also attempting to learn Hawaiian, which has very few true native speakers left on any of the islands, and Ancient Egyptian, which offers no actual "living" native speakers outside of Hollywood and Hammer Horror productions (as far as I'm aware), but eerily, plenty of graffitied dead ones standing up in museums, ever happy to silently greet tourists and passers-by. And although it's far from easy to find good resources and materials for these languages, and I know that they'll probably fail to boost my career prospects and immediate social life anytime soon, I can't help but love the idea of keeping their unique cultures and historical perspectives alive in some small way. Maybe I'm just an oddball in this respect. :) Edited by Teango on 06 August 2013 at 10:07pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 75 06 August 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for some others, to me the amount of material is much more important than the number of speakers. Not only learner aimed things, but as well music, movies, books and so on. And of course the places where it is spoken.
I think people should learn a large language first (most likely English or one of the French/Spanish/German group). But once you've learnt one or two large languages, the significance of number of speakers drops significantly in my opinion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 12 of 75 06 August 2013 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Right now I learn language for only two reasons, to be able to communicate and read/write
with the languages in which are used in such countries, and to be able to have suffient competence to move to such countries. Hence, Dutch, as one of them. I think Dutch is a useful language regardless of the fluency of English of Netherlands and Belgian citizens. There must be a reason why NT2, the Dutch immigration language testing service, require B2 at least to pobtain citizenship. And the fact that, as a native English speaker, people in the Netherlands would probably switch to English if I made excessive mistakes, that adds more appeal because the incentive is higher to obtain such a high level that no Dutch speaker will want to switch because they would be able to converse freely and easily. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 75 07 August 2013 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||
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For me, it does to an extent - my interest is in communication, so I wouldn't learn a rare or dead language, and I'd be quite hesitant to learn the language of a country where almost everyone speaks English very well unless I were to live there.
It's quite relative though. People wonder why I learn Italian, which is "only" spoken by about 80 million people. First of all, that number may be small compared to the most major languages, but it's still a hell of a lot of people! Hardly a waste of time if you ask me. And secondly, in my social life in my city, I meet lots of Italian speakers yet very few speakers of some more major languages like Mandarin, so while the latter has more speakers in absolute terms, the former has more speakers in my life. Also, French may have far more speakers worldwide than Italian, yet I still meet many more Italians than French, and most of the French I do meet are good at English and are quite unwilling to speak French with me. I have to work to create French speaking opportunities, while Italian opportunities often simply come to me. But of course there are other factors. Spanish is the elephant in the room for me: I meet even more Spanish people than Italians, so the relative as well as the absolute number of speakers is higher, and they're even more open, friendly, and helpful towards learners than Italians. So it would be the obvious choice for me if I were to base my decisions entirely on common sense and logic. It will in fact be my next language, but my reasons for choosing Italian first were far less practical ones: I prefer the sound of it, and the country and culture attracted me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 14 of 75 07 August 2013 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't suppose you live anywhere close to Boston, do you? The Boston Public Library has a nice selection (i.e., a number of shelves) of all manner of books in Irish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 15 of 75 07 August 2013 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I wish I did in this respect (or could somehow teleport myself to your library right now for a brief visit)! I hear there's a big active community of Irish speakers in Boston and lots of good bookstores as well (we have just the one in Honolulu, and that mainly sells kids toys and feng shui kits now). Not surprisingly, I've yet to meet any Irish speakers or find any Irish publications so far on the island (apart from the few I smuggled with me...books, not people, that is...which stand proudly on my own bookshelves and catch the occasional visitor's eye). I can't complain too much though, as there are plenty of Japanese resources and even occasional morcels of Hawaiian floating around in the environment to make up for it. :) Edited by Teango on 07 August 2013 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 16 of 75 07 August 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
That's hardly a Belgian/Dutch-specific requirement. In fact, Norway requires foreigners to take Bergenstesten (B2 exam) prior to applying for job positions in Norway (Swedes and Danish are exempted from this thanks to Nordic passport union). 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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