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Is number of speakers important? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4261 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes  Studies: Portuguese | Message 65 of 75 15 August 2013 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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So both you and Tarvos have talked about the fact that the diaspora of a the language is important, right? There are roughly 1 billion or so first and second language Mandarin speakers in China but the world-wide diaspora for Mandarin speakers is relatively small, last time I heard or checked. If memory serves, most Chinese outside China speak Cantonese. I know that Cantonese is the main Chinese dialect in the US and that my family language, the humble Toisan dialect with 1 million speakers in China, was by far the overwhelming type of Chinese spoken in the US up until about the end of the 19th century. Or maybe up until WW2.
So even though there are a LOT of Mandarin speakers, a US person will have a relatively tough time randomly bumping into one in the US. However, the size of the Mandarin speaking group in China is so strong that the gravity of that metaphorical body pulling on us in the US is so great that it makes it more economically useful to learn Mandarin. If everything about China were the same EXCEPT that there were 100 million Mandarin speakers in China except for the roughly billion or so, then the financial and professional benefits that we get from learning Mandarin in the US would undoubtedly be much smaller. US companies wouldn't be so keen to devote so many resources on a much smaller nation for trade. As an example of the influence of speaker size: I have a Spanish skype friend that recently moved to South Korea to teach Spanish. If Spanish had...say, 100 million native speakers instead of the 350 or 400 million or so that exist, he may not have been able to find a job teaching Spanish because South Koreans possibly wouldn't want to learn it due to the relatively smaller economic utility. (Keeping all other variables the same like number of countries that speak Spanish and GDP per capita the same) Speaker size is probably not the most important factor in the influence of a language, as there are a lot of languages with a lot of speakers but few people learn them. Conversely, languages such as French have an influence out of proportion to their native (and controversial number of) and non-native figures. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 66 of 75 16 August 2013 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
We agree that one's immediate access to speakers of a foreign language is an important factor. The disagreement seems to be whether or not this swamps the importance of the global number of speakers.
Relative to Spanish speakers, yes.
I agree that the size of the speaker pool does not have a great correlation with its influence, but nonetheless, I think the sign of that correlation is positive. There are, as you point out, enough exceptions to make the matching problematic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4261 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 67 of 75 17 August 2013 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't know how any logical person could say that in most cases, increasing speaker size doesn't lead to greater social and economic utility. :) Spanish has a LOT LOT speakers than Mandarin in the US, and much more than French, German, Russian, everything. There are roughly 35 million native Spanish speakers (probably more due to undocumented immigrants), roughly 2 million French speakers at home, and 2.6 million Chinese speakers, though the vast majority are not Mandarin speakers last time I checked. If you lived in a city with a lot of French or Chinese speakers, obviously, it may be more useful to learn. Most linguists or researchers say that some of the best indicators of language influence are the number of second language speakers and the number of foreign language speakers. English doesn't have the most number of native speakers, but in almost every country there are a lot of people learning it since it is so important in the modern age. "A 2009 American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, showed that Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by over 35 million people aged 5 or older" " but only 2 million speak French or French Creole at home." "Over 2.6 million Americans speak some variety of Chinese, with the Mandarin variety becoming increasingly more prevalent due to the opening up of the PRC.[32] In New York City at least, although Mandarin is spoken as a native language among only 10% of Chinese speakers, it is used as a secondary dialect among the greatest number of them and is on its way to replace Cantonese as their lingua franca.[33]" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 68 of 75 17 August 2013 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It probably depends on where one is located. In the UK, as other parts of Europe, the
Schengen free movement of entry between international borders allows EU and EEC members to move more easily than those who are not. In Newcastle, for example, most of my acquaintances were from Scandinavia. Thus, learning Scandinavian languages makes more sense. In Manchester, it is similar, although I have met immigrants from both from and outside of Europe. If I had to list the countries of people outside of the UK from 1 to 10 the amount of people whom I have either met or with whom I have acquainted myself, a very approximate would be: 1. Norway 2. Spain 3. Netherlands 4. Sweden 5. Portugal 6. France 7. Poland 8. Romania 9. Germany 10. Belgium I have met approximately 40 Norwegians, about 20 Swedes, and about 25 from the Netherlands. In Manchester, there is a fairly large Chinese community (probably 25000), but still, compared to French, Norwegian, or Dutch, I found it rare to have an opportunity to speak Mandarin, despite having spend four years in secondary school learning it. True, that Spanish is quite useful in the UK, since there are many Spaniards here (especially in Manchester), and also true that I always have opportunities to speak Spanish in the UK due to this. But in this situation, I have as many opportunities to speak either Dutch or Portuguese as Spanish, since many emigrate here. I had a friend from the Netherlands who moved to the UK several years ago, and she often was happy to speak to me (and correct me) in Dutch. I also had a group of friends from Norway that would let me try to practise Norwegian, as well as a woman from Oporto with whom I could try to practise speaking Portuguese. I am not sure if others in the UK had this experience with the "not as frequently spoken" languages, but in my locations, I had the chance to practise the "small" languages as much the "bigger" languages. Edited by 1e4e6 on 17 August 2013 at 1:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 69 of 75 17 August 2013 at 11:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I practiced Romanian in Vladivostok, Hebrew and Portuguese in Novosibirsk, and had
opportunities to speak Finnish in Irkutsk (though I can't). I spoke about six or seven in Moscow, including hearing both Romanian (through a non-native) and speaking French, German, and Swedish. I also improvised Spanish and Italian and heard Chinese. Last night I spoke Swedish in Rotterdam. To a Norwegian. My Icelandic teacher speaks Icelandic, English, Danish and Dutch fluently. When I went to the alliance Française, my co-students were a Filipino with an Italian passport, a German woman who had studied in the Netherlands and learned English and Indonesian abroad, a Dutch girl grown up abroad in Switzerland, Portuguese who was born in South Africa, Spanish, Americans, and so forth. My best friend is half Greek and half Flemish. While in Brussels, I had the opportunity to hear, Greek, Turkish, Danish, French, Romanian and Hebrew being spoken alongside Dutch and English. I have found Slovene here in the Netherlands, Croatians, I have learned words of Dari and Farsi to use with a shopkeeper in a village from Afghanistan. You just need to look better. Diasporas are EVERYWHERE. Edited by tarvos on 17 August 2013 at 11:11am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4261 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 70 of 75 17 August 2013 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's not easy finding all language speakers. In the small city where I am currently living the latino population is 2.9%, which is a very small percentage for Hispanics in the US. In the few months that I've lived in this city, I've met one native (fluent) Spanish speaker in my daily life circle. The closest Spanish club meetings are about 30 minutes away but I'm not willing to spend an hour driving since a lot of times there are pure beginners in those meetups and I don't want to waste time saying the basics with people that just started. Thus, I've done skype paid chats or exchanges the last few years. However, though it is much harder finding Spanish speakers in my state (~4 or 5% of the population is Hispanic and not all will speak Spanish) compared to California where 30% or so of the population is Hispanic, it is much easier than...Slovene. My good friend speaks very good Slovene apparently but there are apparently only a few thousand speakers in the ENTIRE US, a country with 315 million people. He can't find people to practice with. Conversely, there are 40 million or more native Spanish speakers here in the US. Diasporas are everywhere, yes, but if there are 10 German speakers in your city, for example, you are going to be a lot less likely to bump into them than if you have 50 times more Spanish speakers in the same city, for instance. A diaspora of 1 or 2 people is hard to find. Similary, let's say you want to meet a Spanish person in my college town. In the latino association at my university there are literally two Spanish people. Aside from Spanish teachers in college, I've literally never met a Spanish person in the US in person. They are VERY rare. On the other hand, there are a ton of Mexicans. So unless I find the handful of Spaniards in my state, I will have to speak with Mexicans. Edit: Keep in mind that the US is the third largest (Russia and Canada are larger) country in terms of geographical area and by population. (China and India beat us for population). A lot of cities literally have only a few speakers of some languages. Thus if you live in those cities, it is going to be almost impossible to have a face to face chat with that Romanian or Estonian speaker that you want to chat with. And you may have to drive hours and hours to reach a city that actually has a tiny language community. It's not like Europe where you drive two hours and you're in another country. (in some cases) You can travel 4,000 km and still be in the US. Edited by casamata on 17 August 2013 at 12:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5831 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 71 of 75 17 August 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The UK is not part of the Schengen area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6864 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 72 of 75 17 August 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Depends. Lets suppose you have a job in Prague. There are only 11 million Czech speakers, but speaking Czech is more useful to you than speaking German, which has ten times as many speakers. Having said that, there is an issue around very small languages. For example, if you became fluent in a rare tribal language, who can you speak to? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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