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Why care about the number of speakers? | ||
Tags: Number of speakers | Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5648 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 37 24 October 2010 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do know that with numbers that other perks arise, but some people learn just because of the number of speakers, and I was wondering why.
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| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6658 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 19 of 37 29 October 2010 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps it isn't just a matter of the sheer number of speakers of a language but the number of speakers who are close to where you live or travel.
For the number of speakers of Portuguese, there don't seem to be as many resources available in my area for learning Portuguese as some other languages. Mandarin is spoken by more people than any other language, but there are many more resources available for French and Spanish. There aren't many more resources for Mandarin than there are for German and Italian. It's not just how many speakers a language has, but who they are and where they live. 1 person has 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 20 of 37 30 October 2010 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I am totally unconvinced that the number of speakers should make any difference to your choice of languages to learn.
I know there are an enourmous amount of people who speak Mandarin - but I never meet any of them, so why should I learn that language when I have so little incentive to do so? And from my corner of the world, learning Korean makes no sense. Now of course if I suddenly developed an overwhelming interest in Korean culture or fell in love with a Chinese, that would dramatically change my outlook, but generally I tend to learn the languages I need or have exposure to. I took English, German and French, because they were taught in shool, and I assume those three languages were chosen because they are the most useful ones, seen from a Norwegian perspective. I took Spanish because I was sent to Spain for 6 months (my mother figured the Spanish were the kindest people in Europe, and as far as I am concerned, she was absolutely right). I learned Italian because I wanted to travel in Italy as I absolutely adore the Italians, and because I felt it would be an easy language to pick up. I am now learning Russian because I need it for work purposes, to talk to friends, and because it gives me acces to other Slavic languages. If I where to pick up a couple of new languages based on my general criteriae right now, I should probably go for Polish and Urdu. Polish because we have a lot of very good Poles workers here now so I hear Polish several times a week, and Urdu because at the eastern part of Oslo that is the majority language. If I were to learn any Asian language, it would probably make most sense to learn Vietnameese or Filipino, since they are small minorities here. On the other hand most of them speak Norwegian very well, so there wouldn't be much point in that either. You learn a language in order to communicate, after all.:-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| NotKeepingTrack Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5166 days ago 19 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, German | Message 21 of 37 30 October 2010 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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When it comes down to it, I think one's choice in studying a second (third, fourth..) language comes down to what they want to do with it. For example, if someone wants to travel, they would obviously pick a language which would be useful where they go. If one wanted to travel extensively and didn't have specific places in mind, it would make sense to pick a language with the most speakers.
My choices were made for me by my chosen academic path. As someone wanting to study Latin American history, Spanish and Portuguese are it. As for French and German, I began them when I was going to do European history, and have chosen not to completely drop them. If I was going to choose languages all on my own I would have probably done French and either ancient Greek or Latin, because I enjoy reading the old classics, and would love to approach them not in translation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 37 30 October 2010 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I suspect that in some cases people like to be associated with something that is used by some impressively (relatively speaking) big or small number. It seems a bit like a way to validate choice or maybe even satisfy some insecurity, along the lines of "See? I'm not that much of freak. I'm learning a language that's used by x millions of people, and so I must be smart or "thinking big"). This can also work in the opposite direction but it occurs less frequently. The thinking here would be: "See? I'm so rebellious / so enlightened / so "culturally sensitive" that I'm a learning a language that's practically not spoken anywhere or on the verge of extinction. I'm so cool because I'm "thinking outside the box"). Number of speakers don't impress me when studying foreign languages. Quantity of high-quality resources, personal/academic/intellectual interest and perceived need to learn that language for my situation do. In any case, numbers are not the most reliable indicator of whether a language will have a sufficient number of useful resources or present lots of opportunities for live practice. For example, both Finnish and Slovak are spoken by roughly 5 million people worldwide yet almost all native-speakers are confined to their respective nation-states in Europe. However the quality and quantity of learning-materials for Finnish meant for native-speakers of English handly outweigh what is available for Slovak meant for those same native-speakers of English. With the internet, getting a hold of media in these languages is a cinch though. If anyone wants practice in or exposure to current norms in these languages, it's relatively easy to get. Languages that strictly by virtue of their numbers should attract potential learners and publishers of language-courses just don't. Probably the most egregious example of this apparent inconsistency is Bengali which is spoken fluently (native + second-language-speakers) by 211 million people. In fact it exceeds French in number of fluent (i.e. native + second-language-speakers) speakers by about 11 million speakers Japanese at roughly 130 million fluent speakrs also counts fewer speakers than Bengali. However no one could honestly say that the support, "visibility" and perceived prestige of Bengali outstrips what we see for French or Japanese. Other examples of "surprisingly big" languages (perhaps surprising only to people who focus on a certain subset of "European" languages) may include Punjabi (88 million speakers), Wu (approx. 90 million), Javanese (approx. 80 million), Ukrainian (approx. 40 million) or Maithili (estimated at 35 million). Ranking below these five examples are better-known (and better-supported) languages such as Dutch (approx. 22 million), Thai (approx. 20 million), Greek (approx. 13 million), Zulu (approx. 10 million) or Hebrew (approx. 9 million). Don't tell me that people are "banging down the door" to learn Punjabi, Wu, Javanese, Ukrainian or Maithili just because they are each used by more people than those "smaller" languages that I've listed. Even Esperanto which is used by up to 2 million people (if we believe the most optimistic accounting from Esperantists) has more learning-material than some of the "bigger" languages that I've mentioned above. Certainly a prospective learner of Wu or Maithili faces a more daunting task finding native speakers (especially if he or she doesn't live in China or India respectively) as well as getting suitable learning material compared to doing the same for Esperanto (again the internet can be a wonderful thing). 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JuĞ°n Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 23 of 37 30 October 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Widely-spoken languages can be very rewarding, given their correspondingly rich and abundant cultural output. Furthermore, the societies of which they are a voice oftentimes exert significant cultural, economic and political influence, enabling someone who has learned some of these languages to get a better feel of where the world has been and where it is going.
On the other hand, particular "small" languages can be the recipients of fabulous literary and cultural traditions that have not transcended their language community and so remain the privilege of a few. Thus gaining access to these treasures by learning their languages can also be tremendously rewarding. I think a choice combination of big and small languages can produce the most satisfaction for a language learner. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 24 of 37 30 October 2010 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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When choosing a foreign language there are a number of factors to consider. The number of speakers is one such
factor, but far from the only one. I've once faced a situation where I made my choice based on the number of speakers. When living in Barcelona, should learning Spanish or learning Catalan be my priority? I chose Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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