January 31, 2006

• [insta-derail] Mandarin is # 1 and Cantonese is #18? I didn't realize the split was so one-sided. Can any Chinese monkeys tell me how common it is to know both? Is English as a second (or third) language more common?
• Also, nifty post - thanks bashi
• 296 million people live in the US. Are there really only 322 million people speaking the language?
• I remember reading in Maxim that there were more English speakers in China than in the US. Did Maxim tell a lie?
• I think that the idea here is the first or dominant language of the speaker. Bi-linguists -- like bi-sexuals -- always get fucked.
• Canada - 32,455,000 Australia - 20,000,000 New Zealand - 4,123,000 UK - 59,834,000 I guess they must be counting that as the first or native language in this count otherwise someone needs to get the calculator out again.
• I'm not sure how accurate that page is It says that English speakers number 322 million, but the population figures (from the last census in each case) for the major English speaking nations were USA: 281,421,906 UK: 58,789,194 Canada: 30,007,094 Australia: 18,972,350 New Zealand: 3,737,277 Ireland: 4,130,000 (all totals from wikipedia) which adds up to 400 million or so. Which would mena 20% of the people in those countries don't speak English, if that 320 million figure is correct. Which is possible, but unlikely, I would have thought. And I haven't even counted countries like South Africa and Nigeria yet, where English speaking is pretty widespread. Those two countries have a combined population of almost 200 million people, although I'm not sure what percentage of that number would speak English And then there's... and so on
• I got my totals from the various official country statistic pages which means I'm cooler than dng.
• But points should be given for the reference to South Africa which I totally forgot about.
• Everyone is cooler than me, unfortunately
• I made my figures up, and now I will revise them. Yes, there are 296 million people living in the US, but I left out US TERRITORIES. There are 1.3 billion people living in US territories.
• Australia - English 79.1%, Chinese 2.1%, Italian 1.9%, other 11.1%, unspecified 5.8% New Zealand - English (official), Maori (official) UK - English, Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales), Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in Scotland) US - English 82.1%, Spanish 10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7% (2000 census) Canada - English (official) 59.3%, French (official) 23.2%, other 17.5% South Africa - IsiZulu 23.8%, IsiXhosa 17.6%, Afrikaans 13.3%, Sepedi 9.4%, English 8.2%, Setswana 8.2%, Sesotho 7.9%, Xitsonga 4.4%, other 7.2% (2001 census) Chinese, Mandarin 13.69%, Spanish 5.05%, English 4.84%, Hindi 2.82%, Portuguese 2.77%, Bengali 2.68%, Russian 2.27%, Japanese 1.99%, German, Standard 1.49%, Chinese, Wu 1.21% (2004 est.) note: percents are for "first language" speakers only From the CIA World Factbook So the ranking seems to be correct although the numbers might be a bit squiffy. Also all the stats are based on Census readings from different years for the different countries. Some smarty-bum Math head can check that if they are keen (^^)
• But as much fun as all these statistics are - is it surprising that English is only at #3? Perhaps not as the Brits long ago gave up on landing on the shores of other countries and saying "Mine, mine, mine".
• Wow. Those figures for South Africa that gomichild cites are really interesting. It seems like you only hear from the English-speaking contingent when South Africa is in the news.
• Maybe we can go to war with #1 and #2. Venezuela and Mexico have oil, and China has all of our future household goods!
• Yeah, but isn't the important thing the total number of fluent speakers regardless of whether it's first, second or nth learned language? Would that make English #1? Actually it may only bring it up one spot to #2...
• Yeah, but isn't the important thing the total number of fluent speakers regardless of whether it's first, second or nth learned language? Yeah, I would have thought so.
• Interesting post. My oldest brother, unilingually English until his mid forties, took up Spanish and is now fluent. Last year he started Mandarin, at age 56, and I have no doubt that he'll do well with that. (Lots of travel helps.) He is utterly hopeless with Canada's other official language, though.
• What about Shyriiwook?
• Did Maxim tell a lie? I only read it for the pictures.
• Yeah, but isn't the important thing the total number of fluent speakers regardless of whether it's first, second or nth learned language? Would that make English #1? Actually it may only bring it up one spot to #2... I'd guess that the number of people who speak English as a second language would be about equal to the number that speak it natively, which would bring it up to around 650 million and still far less than Mandarin, which I'd also guess is spoken as a second language by proportionally many fewer people. I can't think of any place other than the US, Phillipines, and maybe Brazil where there'd be a lot of people speaking Spanish as a second language so its numbers should change much.
• There isn't a lot of agreement about these figures. The Wikipedia here lists Hindi at second, but in the chart here, combined with Urdu, at fourth. The CIA omits Arabic from their list of top ten native languages here, although most other sources have it at 4th-6th. And the Wikipedia claims here that there are "150–1,000 million" people who speak English as a second language, which isn't a lot of help.
• And apparently, nobody speaks Spanish in the Phillipines. I don't know where I got the idea that it was widely spoken there, other than it was a Spanish colony for hundreds of years, although not since more than a century ago.
• I maybe I should get my own fucking blog.
• And maybe I should preview before posting.
• Which would mena 20% of the people in those countries don't speak English In the US, this figure wouldn't surprise me at all.
• Note to self: Enclose quotes in em tags or quote marks, you inattentive goatfucker.
• you inattentive goatfucker Yodelayi Yodelayi Yodelay Hi Hoo
• You know, if they'd categorized it properly - English and Furrin - English'd jump up to #2.
• Not really surprising at all. These are primary languages. English is the most popular second language. The linked list sounds old and I think this one seems more recent: http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/toptens/languages/languages4.html
• I think it makes sense to only count primary languages, because it's much more abstract to count secondary languages. Would my half a year of Japanese raise the count for the number of Japanese speaker? What about one year of A grades in the language, vs two years of D grades, vs 3 months of living there? (at my school, 6 weeks of living there will give me credits for one year of the language) Which one counts in the tally, or do all three, or none of them? Also, what's so wrong with Spanish speakers?
• We've been adopting a new standard for testing Japanese fluency here. You have to make it through an entire dinner with my Mother in law and her sister, who like to talk very fast and on completely different topics at the same time. Topics range from the latest popular Korean actor to video games to the latest diet fad and what all their neighbours are up to. For extra credit do this with a Japanese variety show on the telly blaring in the background. So far very few have made it through this test - myself only because of the thorough training of weekly family dinners. I'm sure this test could easily be set up in other countries as well. The "Gossiping Middle Aged Ladies Standard Fluency Test". Then once this standard testing is in place could secondary languages perhaps be included in such statistics.
• *Weeps for Esperanto*
• tracicle: the figures for south africa are for presumably for first language only. english is spoken by most people, even if only as a 2nd or 3rd language.
• Come on, America! We're only 20 million behind the Latinos!! Hell, can't the Cathlics'n'fundies'n'mormons pump out 20 mill new babies in a week? Can't our gays adopt a few million Chinese baby girls and raise 'em Amurkin like God intended? Jesus is pulling for us - go get impregnated! Go git them commie babies and gay 'em up good jus' sos long as they speak normal! Jesus spoke English, it's the language of God, otherwise why would the words in the Bible be in English? HEATHENS REPENT NOW AAARRRGGHHHLE I need to take some kind of medication I think
• I think it makes sense to only count primary languages I'd agree, though it seems the different sites are taking radically different bits of information in coming up with the humber. Indonesia has a population of just over 240 million and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), a very close relative of Malay is the official language. Most people speak both that and their local language (Javanese, Balinese, Torajan, etc.), so it really depends on what their primary language is. According to Wikipedia, that's only 23 million. For the Krysstal link, it's 76 million. How did they come up with these totals? No idea. Still, it's nice to see that, at least according to Krysstal, I can fumble through 3 of the top 12 languages of the world. I also wonder if the French are irritated that German is more widely spoken then their beloved tongue. My oldest brother, unilingually English until his mid forties, took up Spanish and is now fluent. Last year he started Mandarin, at age 56 That rocks. I may be working on Spanish myself this year...and possibly some conversational Italian.
• Unilingual sounds like a naughty word.
• There may be countries such as Singapore, where officially the first language is not English. My mother tongue would be Mandarin (even though I'm Teochew), and if you go by country, Singapore lists Malay as the first language. So even though most of the 4 million or so Singaporeans, actually speak English as a first language, they may be categorised as using Mandarin, Malay or Tamil as their first language. This may sound like quibbling, but it does have some impact on our lives. For instance, to gain entry into US universities, I had to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language, for Pete's sakes!). It was like going back to secondary (middle/junior high) school.
• There may be countries such as Singapore, where officially the first language is not English. My mother tongue would be Mandarin (even though I'm Teochew), and if you go by country, Singapore lists Malay as the first language. So even though most of the 4 million or so Singaporeans, actually speak English as a first language, they may be categorised as using Mandarin, Malay or Tamil as their first language. Other countries in a similar situation would include, for example, South Africa and Malaysia. Most of the population probably speak Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Malay, Hakka, Tamil etc. as a first language, but English is a language of communication common across the different ethnic groups. So the number of 'English speakers' is really dependent on the methodology used. Hindi fulfills a similar role as a common language in linguistically diverse India, so the counting the number of Hindi speakers is subject to a similar kind of dynamic.
• *Weeps for Esperanto* While no one wants to mention it, Esperanto may well have been surpassed by Klingon. The Esperanta-boosters aren't going down without a fight, however.
• All these numbers are freaking me out. I can think of the world having billions of people and not sweat, but thinking of adding up all the hundreds of millions of people in each country gets me very worried. I think that I can't really imagine a billion, but I can imagine the number of people in the US many times over in many different places. Makes me want to hoard bottled water and toilet paper.
• *hands yentruoc some duct tape*
• New figure just in - over 6.598 billion people in the world speak complete shite.
• "Unilingual sounds like a naughty word." -- Lara Analingual is a much naughtier word.
• Actually, Plep, English is more popular aong many Indians for lingua franca than Hindi. That's why India had to reverse its plans to drop it as an official language post-independance.
• This may sound like quibbling, but it does have some impact on our lives. For instance, to gain entry into US universities, I had to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language, for Pete's sakes!). It was like going back to secondary (middle/junior high) school. posted by Alnedra at 04:28PM UTC on January 31, 2006 You think that's bad? A friend of mine was told that before he could enroll at MIT he would have to do Toefl - and he's from the UK! (Albeit from Wales - but an anglo-Welsh family). I was not required to do the tests to enroll at grad school (my uni judges based on the language of your undergrad degree and mine was an English-language university), but I was offered English lessons in the summer before I enrolled.