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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 |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 33 of 37 01 November 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
The word of the day is irony. But even irony has a foundation in fact. Most of my study materials for less studied languages is taken from the internet, and even if I did learn a language without a presence on the internet I don't visit Africa and Asia frequently enough to keep such a language alive. There are thousands of languages in the world, but most of them are beyond reach for a sedentary full-time employee with too little free time and too many languages to tend to. I leave those to adventurers and explorers like the guy who studied that Southamerican language without numbers and recursion. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2010 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 34 of 37 01 November 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Different people are drawn to language study by different reasons and interact with their languages in different ways. If Iversen engages with the languages he studies through the internet, it would make no sense for him to learn one that doesn't have a sufficient presence there. I for one care about the internet to the extent that it enables me to order physical books, download and stream audio and audiovisual material, and consult online reference resources like dictionaries, translators and encyclopedias. If all of these were lacking, I wouldn't bother learning a language either. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5532 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 35 of 37 02 November 2010 at 7:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I don’t care about the number of speakers as much as the others do, I needn't make a living as an enviable advanced translator or simultaneous interpreter, I’ve got no intention of going abroad on business or for immigration, and I haven’t got many foreign friends who speak different languages around me, I think the reason why I’ve always wanted to learn new foreign languages is mainly out of strong interest.
There's no doubt that learning materials do play a decisive role when you have to make a hard choice between your favourite languages, for example in China there’re a lot of coursebooks and reference books about mainstream languages such as English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, French, and Spanish, especially the top four, I guess you may find the materials from beginner to advanced level. However if you were quite interested in some minor languages, probably you couldn’t easily get the right books which can satisfy your demand, the year before last I planed to start learning Persian all by myself, unluckily I just found one series of coursebook which is only compiled for those university students of Persian major, finally I reluctantly gave it up considering there’s almost no further learning materials on Amazon bookshop, and later I recognized the materials of Thai, Turkish, and Brazilian Portuguese seem to be in the same situation as that of Persian, not to mention ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit, and Hebrew. Eventually I came to a conclusion that whether a language has rich and reliable sources or not, would be much more important than the number of speakers. By the way, I really can’t get used to using network resources such as PDF documents, learning websites, or related software. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 36 of 37 02 November 2010 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I think and hope you will get used to such things as PDF documents, YoshiYoshi. Ten years ago you couldn't have found many people more contemptuous of computers and the Internet than me. Now I have to admit I am a definite convert - I can find out things that decades ago would have taken me weeks or months or might have been impossible to find out, although I do agree some of the materials for learning "minority" languages aren't very good. There are so many interesting things to know, but I feel I have to stick with stuff that may be an "ace up my sleeve," something that I can enjoy and perhaps even make money from, when I get older. It would be fantastic to know some obscure language, but not very useful - I agree with Iversen as yet another "salariman" as I believe the Japanese would call me, I do not have the time to nurture an interest in some unusual language. Sorry to be so boring, folks!
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| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 37 of 37 04 November 2010 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||
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The number shouldn't be as important as how often you will be using it. If you are going to move to the Arctic circle, Inuktitut will be more useful to you than English or Mandarin.
With that said, there are more English speakers or Mandarin speakers than Inuktitut speakers. So they would probably get to meet and interact more people who speak English or Mandarin. Edited by chucknorrisman on 04 November 2010 at 2:41am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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