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Is number of speakers important? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6359 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes  Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 57 of 75 14 August 2013 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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uh no, it's not akin to that at all. All I'm saying is that it depends on where you live which languages make sense to learn
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| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 58 of 75 14 August 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Sorry, I sourced the wrong comment to you. It should be "tarvos." I will change my prior comment accordingly. Regardless, nobody is denying that it matters where you live. Lichtrausch certainly isn't. "Your location" is one of many factors involved in picking a language to learn. "Amount of speakers" is another factor. Lichtrausch's point, which is entirely correct, is that "amount of speakers" is generally positive since it correlates well with other positive aspects of a language: cultural imprint, ease with which can find another speaker. etc. Saying "location matters, too!" isn't to disagree. It's as if you and he were having a debate: he says, "If you eat healthier food, you'll be healthier." You respond, "You should exercise, too!" That's true, you should, but that doesn't counter anything he's said. Edited by ScottScheule on 14 August 2013 at 8:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 59 of 75 15 August 2013 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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My point was actually that it is the size of
the community you are in contact with that matters. If there are 2 billion speakers of Martian but they all live on Mars and I have no spaceship or phone lines to the planet then it matters. When you give an example the context is what determines whether the analogy works. This is aside from the numbers dickfight. I know more French than Mandarin speakers. I have Serbian speakers as acquaintances. Makes more sense to learn them when they are the community I am in touch with. Return on investment is bigger. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 60 of 75 15 August 2013 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Respectfully, I don't think that's the natural reading of your comment, but if that's what you meant to convey, I'll take your word for it. Notice we can widdle it down further. I could say it's not the size of the community you are in contact with that matters, it's the size of the group of those who want to talk to me. Wait!, it's not the size of the group of those who want to talk to me, it's the size of the group who want to talk to me who have schedules that line up with mine. Wait! it's not the size of the group who want to talk to me who have schedules that line up with mine, it's the size of the group of those who want to talk to me who have schedules that line up with mine who I find interesting enough to talk to. Who don't have terrible breath. Who won't distract me with sexy accents and revealing blouses. And so on. The point is, when one asks "Does the amount of speakers matter?" one is by necessity abstracting away from various other details and ignoring them for the time being. One is, in effect, asking "Say we know nothing else about a language you possibly want to learn: does it matter how many speakers there are?" To which, the answer seems to me obviously yes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 61 of 75 15 August 2013 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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That hypothetical situation doesn't exist.
Communities exist in context. What increasing number of speakers does is increase your chances to encounter a speaker of that language on this globe. Theoretically. Practically that is not relevant. Because who I talk to is not dependent on rolling the dice. It is dependent on mood, existing network, current location, internet presence of the language etc. Not taking this into account means you gain an incomplete picture that doesn't describe reality. Of course you can tack on more search filters. The question is whether they actually describe your current situation. Only in those cases do they matter. You cannot isolate single phenomena that easily. Edited by tarvos on 15 August 2013 at 1:35am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 62 of 75 15 August 2013 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Hence "hypothetical."
Of course it's relevant. If your claim is that you're no more likely to encounter a speaker of a language spoken by 1 person than likely to encounter a speaker of a language spoken by 1 billion people, then your claim is-- respectfully--ridiculous.
But of course it's dependent on the dice! How many random events conspired to determine your current "location," for example? To determine the location of every speaker of your target language? Do you know how many sperm you beat to become you?
You always gain an incomplete picture of reality. Any description by necessity leaves something out. This applies as surely to a person who says "The global number of speakers matters" as to you, when you said "It depends on the size of the community of speakers you have exposure to." Both of those statements leave something out. In fact, both of those statements leave a lot of things out. Actually both of those statements leave most things out. The difference between them is not that one is complete and one is not--the difference is one is responsive to the question, "Does the amount of speakers matter?" and one is not.
I've heard it's quite difficult to remove friction from a physical system. And yet physics professors quite easily isolate say, momentum, in a system. They simply assume a frictionless system (with various other simplifying assumptions). Now that leaves something out--and yet it's an eminently useful approach to understanding the world. I simply follow their example. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 63 of 75 15 August 2013 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Nice of you to choose a physics example. Yes,
friction cannot be eliminated from a physical system, but the reason physics is often neglected in preliminary back of the envelope calculations is because loss of accuracy is minimal. The model you produce to approximate reality isn't noticeably affected by a few percent points difference. There is a difference between 1 and 1 billion. But the range of speakers that we are talking about is in the millions. Sometimes somewhat less. Then your statistical analysis becomes prone to other secondary effects which aren't negligible in the larger view. My comment about community means that in essence you only ever meet a small sub fraction of target language speakers especially with a population of over a few million. Then the minor probability margins can be reliably ignored. Factors such as accessibility, motivation, dispersion play a much bigger role in the numbers game. This doesn't go for Ojibwe but that's only a small percentage of people on the planet who are addressed. That's a boring theoretical discussion for which I have no patience. Usually the discussion is between Italian and Chinese in which case the distinction isn't relevant. It is easy enough to influence both to be sufficient to meet desired criteria for target language practice. Lastly, there is a stochastic basis for many phenomena. But that doesn't mean they are 100% random, illogical or unpredictable. So that argument doesn't mean anything. Stochastics leads to predictable mathematical trends you can use, the key is to identify the correct causes and draw the appropriate conclusions. Edited by tarvos on 15 August 2013 at 4:17am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 64 of 75 15 August 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The physics example isn't about the loss of accuracy, it's about simplification for the purposes of understanding. Let friction be as important as you like (woe be unto the NASA astronaut neglecting friction returning to Earth), we can still remove it when focusing on other issues.
So your claim is that, after some critical mass, apparently a few millions, the amount of speakers is no longer significant? There's no difference between .06 billion and 1 billion people (the difference between Italian and Mandarin)? That claim seems just as wrong. I am, ceteris paribus, more likely to have access to a speaker of a language spoken by more people. And this is just a single aspect of the language correlated with number of speakers--we're not getting into cultural impact, amount of learning materials, quality thereof, amount of literature, etc. Of course if I'm really choosing a language, I'll look at other factors, too. How much I like the language, if the sounds are pleasing, what works are available in it, amount of speakers near me, learning materials available, what time Beginner's Cantonese meets Saturday morning... the list is surely very long indeed. But nobody asked, what matters when choosing a language? Someone did ask, does the amount of speakers matter?
You claimed "... who I talk to is not dependent on rolling the dice." I merely pointed out that it IS dependent on a roll of the dice. That's not to say it's 100% random; of course you have some control. You also have control over which number you choose at a roulette wheel--that doesn't mean the outcome isn't random. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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