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Ethnologue, linguistic science fiction? | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | Internet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6780 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 1 of 6 18 November 2010 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if how-to forumers could help me have some sort of evaluation, informally, of the well-known languages catalog Ethnologue. Because I always had an impression it is, though remarcable, an amusing resource in terms of portraying a degree of linguistic diversity that really doesnt hold water on the field, so to speak.
At least in my case, I had good giggles reading the reports of the countries I know. It can really be very funny. Not that is a complete lie, it just seems supereager to capture the faintest resemblance of a language. Which is not necessarily bad, just amusing. So if you are kind enough, simply go to http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp clic on the map your country or countries you know well, read the reports and let us know here if it is realistic. Just for entertainment :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 5132 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 2 of 6 18 November 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I clicked through several countries. There are enough odds, like for Germany they refer in some places to the data from 1990 or even 1986. Another example, they found 808'000 Belorussian speakers in Russia, I would wonder if there are so much Belorussian speakers in Belorus itself.
However, we should take into account that Ethnologue was made by a non-profit organization and that they processed 6000+ languages. Even though their information is sometimes far from reality, it's still the best one can afford. Edited by litovec on 18 November 2010 at 10:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 3 of 6 18 November 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Ethnologue has a tendency to see languages everywhere and to overestimate the actual use of dialects or 'local' languages, and as noted above some of their sources are quite old. For instance they use a book dating back to 1987 to estimate the numbers of speakers of immigrant languages in Denmark, and these data are simply not relevant any more. However it is difficult to point to any better source if you want to get an overview over different languages (and language groups) and their distribution, and I think we should be grateful for the great amount of work this voluntary organization has put in teaching the rest of us about overlooked and/or rare languages. For single countries or single languages I would however trust Wikipedia more because it can't get away with using sources that are 23 years old. Edited by Iversen on 18 November 2010 at 11:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| michau Tetraglot Groupie Norway lang-8.com/member/49 Joined 6227 days ago 86 posts - 135 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, NorwegianC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, Sign Language Studies: Burmese, Toki Pona, Greenlandic | Message 4 of 6 19 November 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I hadn't thought the entry about Poland would surprise me, but it did.
I've just learned about Vilamovian (Wymysiöeryś), which seems to be the most endangered Germanic language right now. The Wikipedia article about it confirms that the Ethnologue data are accurate here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6780 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 5 of 6 19 November 2010 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for that. You clearly are right.
The problem that I see, if they know they are using a 20, 30 years old source, they dont seem to often say "In 1980 were reported X speakers" (probably at the time was another vast overestimation as well); and so, overestimation over estimation we have simply a catalog filled with ghosts, linguistic ghosts, but they dont present it like that, they present it as a catalog of living languages. Some occasional reader can worry about getting a traveler conversation guide for Belarussian when in fact there's nothing of the sort in real life. It must be terrific though for a researcher of endangered languages. I wouldnt trust Wikipedia neither when it comes to minority languages. I don't know what it is with this tendency to overestimation. They are not going to be saved by virtue of lying. You see the lie when you are a "speaker" yourself. Edited by sigiloso on 19 November 2010 at 3:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5210 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 6 20 November 2010 at 6:21am | IP Logged | ||
Sigiloso, I recently stumbled upon these two articles which you (and others) may find of interest. They're from The Economist: God-loving linguists , on the role that the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Ethnologue have had to play in conserving endangered languages. And an older (2004) article on language death , with a smaller reference to Ethnologue. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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