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Survey on # of languages spoken by people | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4953 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 5 31 May 2011 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Has there ever been any real scientific survey done anywhere in the world stating the percentages of people that can speak one, two, three or more languages?? Like for example:
Town of Poliglotia, UX can speak one language: 1% can speak two languages: 9% can speak three languages: 23% can speak four languages: 31% can speak five languages: 20% can speak more than five: 16% Something like that... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5134 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 5 31 May 2011 at 7:13am | IP Logged | ||
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The US census gathers and compiles this information down to the state level. I would imagine other censuses do the same.
R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 5 31 May 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the recent Canadian census, they did ask which languages you use at home, but not specifically whether you speak other languages. Even if they had, people's answers would be based on what they *think* they speak, which could be far from reality, even if they had defined the meaning of "speak".
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 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 4 of 5 31 May 2011 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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The European Union has published some reports on the foreign language skills in its member states. In the summary of the 2006 survey you can read this:
"With respect to the goal for every EU citizen to have knowledge of two languages in addition to their mother tongue, 28% of the respondents state that they speak two foreign languages well enough to have a conversation. This is especially the case in Luxembourg (92%), the Netherlands (75%) and Slovenia (71%). 11% of the respondents indicate that they master at least three languages apart from their mother tongue. Still, almost half of the respondents, 44%, admit not knowing any other language than their mother tongue." I have tried to find a clear definition of what it takes to have a conversation in the report itself, but so far without luck. However I found this: "Notwithstanding, a substantial number of Europeans do not use any of the foreign languages they know at all. 53% of respondents who know at least one foreign language do not use their language competence on a daily basis and 52% indicate that they do speak foreign languages on a regular basis but not every day. 1 in 4 respondents indicate that they do not use their language skills even occasionally." As you can see this formulation leaves open the possibility that those who know several languages only use one of them frequently (and in Denmark this is probably English). And one in four doesn't use any of the languages (s)he has learnt. At what level can you expect such a person to perform? Edited by Iversen on 31 May 2011 at 4:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 5 31 May 2011 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, can they "have a conversation" or do they "master" the languages? 11% of Europeans master 4 languages?! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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