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Is number of speakers important? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4434 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 75 06 August 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I often see people citing the number of native speakers as a reason for choosing a language to learn. Oh, it
will give me access to x million of people spread across y countries. Obviously, if you opt for a language that is dying out, or one that has precious few learning resources, then you may have problems acquiring and actually using the language. But if you study a language which is firmly established as an official tongue and is spoken all over a country, does it really matter if there are 10 million native speakers or 100 million? Most of use like to use our languages with natives but you're never going to interact with all of them. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 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 2 of 75 06 August 2013 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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The availability of grammars and dictionaries and the number of texts about interesting subjects on the internet are more important to me than the total number of speakers somewhere in the world. Otherwise I should study Hindi and not Irish. OK, Bahasa Indonesia is also one of my current projects, and it has lots of speakers (if you include second language users within Indonesia), but even if I went Indonesia for a couple of weeks my total conversation time there might just be a couple of hours - less than I have spent on reading the language this week here in Denmark. I still want to learn to speak these languages though, but mostly for use within my own head. Edited by Iversen on 06 August 2013 at 4:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4065 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 75 06 August 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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It really isn't all that important for me, but there are languages that I would like to learn because it would sort of "unlock" huge parts of the world for me.
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| Mad Max Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 4863 days ago 79 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Russian Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 4 of 75 06 August 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that number of speakers is only one factor, but this factor is almost always
related to others. For example: the most spoken languages: Chinese, English, Spanish top internet languages: English, Chinese, Spanish Economic languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2008/12/roughly-t op-20-languages-by-gdp.html 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nonneb Pentaglot Groupie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4563 days ago 80 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French | Message 5 of 75 06 August 2013 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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The number of speakers is important, but my estimation of its importance has decreased over time. Hungarian has really helped me see this, because despite the small number of speakers (some 14 million or so), there seem to be huge amounts of books in Hungarian, which is important to me. Compare to, say, Wu with some 80 million native speakers and no books (maybe some, but certainly not nearly as many as Hungarian). Honestly, I'm not having much more trouble finding Hungarian books than Spanish (~500 million), and in Hungary itself (at least Budapest), there're far more bookstores.
The number of speakers can be an indicator of the cultural output in the language (the film industries of China, the US, and India say yes). It can also be an indicator of economic output. For me, the cultural (and to a lesser extent economic) output is what is important. The number of speakers has little value in and of itself.
Very true. Sometimes the speakers of smaller languages are harder to find, but if you can get to the place where it's spoken, then no problem. With some smaller languages, the internet alleviates the need to even go there, so from a learner's perspective, it's irrelevant. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 3985 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 6 of 75 06 August 2013 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I guess technically a language becomes more useful the more people speak it. But the usefulness of a language is a very personal thing. If you go on holiday to Turkey every year, then Turkish is going to be more important to you than most people.
From a business perspective, I think the real measure is the size of the market and how much your home country trades with it. Bangladesh might have 150 million people, but Bengali is nowhere near as useful to most UK businesses as German, because they're not likely to make as much money in Bangladesh. Another factor for English speakers might be the English proficiency of the natives. Dutch is often seen as not a particularly useful language because so many people in the Netherlands speak English to near fluent levels, and I guess you could say the same about the Scandinavian languages. Incidentally, here's a list of languages seen as most useful by a survey of UK businesses: 10. Portuguese 9. Japanese 8. Russian 7. Cantonese 6. Arabic 5. Polish 4. Mandarin 3. Spanish 2. French 1. German Obviously this list is specific to the UK and every country would have different lists. But it certainly seems like the number of speakers is a factor, but only to the extent that it affects the size of the market. There's no place for Hindi on the list, for example. This list might also reflect shortages in particular languages in the UK. Perhaps we already have enough Hindi speakers? Although I did read a while back that despite the historical ties, trade between India and the UK isn't very high. From a tourism perspective, I'd say the spread of a language is probably more important than the number of speakers. Learning Spanish or French will probably come in useful in more different countries than Chinese, for example (unless you have a particular fondness for Chinatown). And the final level of usefulness would be whether the language acts as a gateway to other languages. Learn Spanish and you make learning Portuguese and Italian much easier. Learn Hungarian, and it's pretty much a dead end (I've heard Finnish is from the same language group, but my Hungarian flatmate said they're nothing like each other in reality). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5461 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 75 06 August 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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The number of speakers doesn't matter to me. I already speak English, so theoretically I can already communicate with a good number of people. There are other criteria that I find much more important when deciding to learn a language.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5074 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 75 06 August 2013 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haitian Creole has 10 million speakers but a paucity of media available. Still, that being said, I spoke it with two people in person yesterday. On the other hand, there are almost no Portuguese-speakers here on the island but I speak online and enjoy films, literature and TV in Portuguese everyday.
Don't get me wrong, I love the language and I enjoy speaking it when I get the opportunity. Still, this situation of a paucity of media (literature, cinema, internet content) influenced my decision not to take Haitian Creole past lower intermediate level. I don't need to spend a couple of years to perfect it in order to do what I want and can do in the language, which is to talk to people. Perhaps that may change if I make better friends with a Creole-speaker. I once read here that it doesn't matter how many people speak a language, because even if it's just a few thousand, that's plenty of people to speak with. The reality is that a language with just a few thousand speakers is unlikely to be a population with very many monolinguals, as is the case with Native American and Aboriginal languages. Ladino (Judeo español), is a language with about 100,000 native-speakers, but with almost no monolingual speakers left (I hesitate to say none, but if there are any I'd be shocked). A vibrant music scene in Ladino exists today. There are some short daily radio broadcasts in the language and an active online community of speakers. The language has a rich literary tradition as well dating back over 500 years, however; learning the language to a high level means little interaction with native-speakers. There is little to no opportunity for a language exchange. There is virtually no cinema, modern novels or media other than music to consume. Depending on your language-learning goals it may not justify the time and effort involved in learning the language (Hebrew Rashi script and Solitreo cursive writing for older writing) when knowledge of Spanish and another Romance language will serve to give you 90% transparency in reading with the Latin alphabet. So, what ends up happening is that such a language with few resources, media and native-speakers becomes the effective equivalent of a dead language for learners because the opportunities to use the language are so rare. That doesn't mean that such a language isn't worthy of being learned, far from it. There is still value there if it fits into your goals. If I were fascinated by Jewish history and religious commentary, If I had Jewish heritage or family from the Sephardic tradition, Ladino would be a great language to know. So would Yiddish for that matter. A language is as useful or as useless as you want it to be. One can always find something of interest in any language. For the majority of casual learners who have more conventional goals, the amount of effort involved may not justify the return on the investment. I'm not one who enjoys language learning for its own sake. There has to be something in it for me besides the language aspects. Edited by iguanamon on 06 August 2013 at 7:05pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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