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Is number of speakers important? | ||
Tags: Number of speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4101 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 17 of 75 08 August 2013 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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True, I would extend it to all of Scandinavia as well. Several years ago I went on
holiday to Norway, and spent several months to achieve at least A1 in Norwegian, regardless that I speak English. Sometimes people switched to English, but I had enough opportunities to try my Norwegian back then. I have some books I bought from the NT2 to try to get to B2, and the effort required does not seem so difficult as I thought previously. Probably similar to Norway or Sweden. But I meant that these countries have probably the highest fluency of English for non-native speakers. Even if one did not want to sit the exam, it would be nice to communicate with them in their language instead of English. Their high level means that to avoid language switching, there is more incentive to obtain a high level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 18 of 75 08 August 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Garyb, that made me laugh. Italian with only 80 million people being useless :-D
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 75 08 August 2013 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Not for me at all. I find frequent reference to the size of the speech community to be quite tiresome (especially from some less experienced learners). It's like a puerile đï¢ķ-swinging contest where the worthiness of what one studies is proportional to the number of people who by biological and geographical accident became part of the community of native speakers. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 75 08 August 2013 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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True. But I find most of the common "this language is useless" prejudices flawed. As long as the language isn't among the endangered ones or the ones whose speakers are all bilingual (catalan, welsh and so on which are studied only for love, obsession, just because and other such reasons we cherish on this forum), there is always a number of speakers, an amount of interesting culture or travel opportunities and as well job opportunities. Either you need to find them or sometimes they unexpectedly find you. So, why do people consider it so wrong if you choose your third or fourth language to be something other than the usual German/French/Spanish/Russian?
The funny thing is that the size is among the most mentioned reasons for uselessness no matter what nationality is the person speaking it seems. In the Czech Republic, people often cannot imagine why would you learn another useless small language when you have already got Czech. In the USA, people consider 10 millions people to be a dying community. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 21 of 75 09 August 2013 at 7:13am | IP Logged | ||
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If I like what I am studying I will learn it.
No matter how many people speak the language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6171 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 22 of 75 09 August 2013 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||
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People that consider 10 million speakers a small number are off their rocker. If you meet 5 new people every
day from you're 15 until you're 80 you will still not cram in more than 118 625 people in total. For me there has to be a lot of interesting content and/or a social context to speak the language where you live. Social context probably comes first 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5771 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 23 of 75 09 August 2013 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
You're missing the point. Number of speakers is just a proxy for other things like amount of media and cultural output, chance of meeting a speaker in a big city, etc.. If I'm in a city like Boston and want to meet and perhaps befriend a Swedish speaker, I have to really go out of my way. And the few people I do meet might not have personalities or life situations that match mine, so a friendship would be rather forced. Now consider Mandarin speakers in Boston. There are thousands of them. In fact most people probably know a Mandarin speaker without having made any effort to meet one. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 24 of 75 09 August 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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See the thread "Why care about the number of speakers" for similar discussion.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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