Talk:Linguistic demography

message: One of the most stupid list that I ever saw, the other is the list of countries by date of nationhood.. I occasionaly look at it and this this guy really need some statistical classes! How can you compare a language with one result to another with 6? etc. -Pedro 23:06, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary table

message: If you click on the Hindi link, it says 480 million speakers and ranked 2nd which seems to conflict with this page.
Are these native speakers or all speakers ?
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That depends on how a language is defined. I used the http://www.ethnologue.com as source. I quote from this website : Modern Standard Arabic is a modernized variety of Classical Arabic. In most Arab countries only the well educated have adequate proficiency in Standard Arabic, while over 100,500,000 do not. Donar Reiskoffer 07:32, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: "Stand" here means "as of", i.e. the numbers are current as of 2002. And the table notes that it "is based on ethnic affiliation", i.e. membership in a certain ethnic group, rather than a census of speakers of the language. -- pne 14:12, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: General

message: German Wikipedia seems to have more recent 2002 statistics, though these do suggest that Mandarin has decreased by 90 million speakers in 8 years - this does suggest conflict. I hope English speakers can deduce the meaning, if not ask me for a brief translation. (Stand means Position)
:"Stand" here means "as of", i.e. the numbers are current as of 2002. And the table notes that it "is based on ethnic affiliation", i.e. membership in a certain ethnic group, rather than a census of speakers of the language. -- pne 14:12, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: 2002 Statistics (from German Wiki)

message: Whatever happened to the more than 100 million people who were supposed to speak Arabic? I don't see Arabic on this list.
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Cema: I see Arabic, but in the list of countries, and Israel is not listed, even though more than 18% of Israelis speak Arabic. I will add it to the table. Cema 00:21, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabic

message: The rank given in this page and the one in English language page is totally contradicting (see, Talk:English language). I haven't yet looked at other languages, but it seems people are trying edit war on these pages. Also, it sounds to be bit chauvinistic--which should be avoided here.--Rrjanbiah 05:56, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true. That's why in South America Brazil they shifted to Spanish and Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to Portuguese. But the world is really not so anglicanized. I consider myself as a not good English speaker, but I speak English much better than most Portuguese or Spanish. Pedro 17:41, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work Blackcarr! --Rrjanbiah 06:42, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  its wrong to every data. They also say that there are 170 million mother-tongue Portuguese spekers when Brazil alone as 180 million. I've seen the list of 2000.link
an it as:
1- Chinese- Mandarin
2- Hindi
3- Spanish
4- English
5- Bengali
6- Portuguese
7- Russian
8- Japanese
9- German
10- Chinese - Wu
Speakers as a second language is a very hard thing to see, in every language. At school we (my country) must learn at least 2 languages. I speak 5 and I can work in some other 3. I consider Second and learning language as two different things. Capeverdians for example are bilingual and speak Portuguese as a second language and Crioulo as first. They speak Portuguese has they were natives, and Crioulo much the same. I cant speak English as I were a native. 
Portuguese is the most Popular learning language in: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Senegal. Is the second language of Mozambique (40% speak it, 9% mother-tongue) and Cape Verde (80% speak it, very few as mother-tongue) and it is becoming in East Timor. I estimated as minimum mother-tongue speaks between 200 million to 220 million. As second and learning language is impossible to say.Pedro 17:31, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: English

message: ====EU====
EU website - 47% of the EU speak English. Overall, 89% of EU pupils learn English.
EU Eurostat website - Jan 1st 2004 population of EU = 380.8 million.
UK Government - UK population = 58.8 million.
Ireland 2004 EU Presidency - population of Ireland > 3.9 million.
Primary: 58 + 3.9 = 62.7 million.
Secondary: 31% of EU = 118 million.
Total: 180.7 million speak English.
OK so I see these figures, but still I wonder, the table seems to bew data from the 1990s, now if you look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
you will see data frm the 2005 EUROBAROMETER (now probably in EU figures have gone up by 10% since then for English speakers). There is a list of first and second language speakers. In my experience there almost all foreigners will speak English in mixed ethnic groupings in Europe, now a one week tra8ining course is different from moving to permanently live abroad, the mother tongue / native speaker thing is a myth and not useful for actually recording language use.  Wikipedia could better explain this and also cross ref links so that for each language page there is common format for NATIVE SPEAKERS, L2 speakers and L3 speakers. Then each language page is responsible for updating the data, not basing it in bogus criteria such as ethnic Chinese in Thailand must speak Chinese and not Thai, or out of date population extrapolations % of speakers, such as with German. Also it seems stranmge to exclude speakers under the age of 15, the demographics of much of the world mean large numbers of under 15s in some countries and not others. Surely at school enrolment age (7 or 5) its known what language people speak in order to teach them, is this not a better age to take the figures from?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.197.74.75 (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: EU website - 47% of the EU speak English. Overall, 89% of EU pupils learn English.
EU Eurostat website - Jan 1st 2004 population of EU = 380.8 million.
UK Government - UK population = 58.8 million.
Ireland 2004 EU Presidency - population of Ireland > 3.9 million.
Primary: 58 + 3.9 = 62.7 million.
Secondary: 31% of EU = 118 million.
Total: 180.7 million speak English.
OK so I see these figures, but still I wonder, the table seems to bew data from the 1990s, now if you look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
you will see data frm the 2005 EUROBAROMETER (now probably in EU figures have gone up by 10% since then for English speakers). There is a list of first and second language speakers. In my experience there almost all foreigners will speak English in mixed ethnic groupings in Europe, now a one week tra8ining course is different from moving to permanently live abroad, the mother tongue / native speaker thing is a myth and not useful for actually recording language use.  Wikipedia could better explain this and also cross ref links so that for each language page there is common format for NATIVE SPEAKERS, L2 speakers and L3 speakers. Then each language page is responsible for updating the data, not basing it in bogus criteria such as ethnic Chinese in Thailand must speak Chinese and not Thai, or out of date population extrapolations % of speakers, such as with German. Also it seems stranmge to exclude speakers under the age of 15, the demographics of much of the world mean large numbers of under 15s in some countries and not others. Surely at school enrolment age (7 or 5) its known what language people speak in order to teach them, is this not a better age to take the figures from?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.197.74.75 (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: EU

message: This number is vastly different from the one published.
So I think to satisfy all people there should be 2 lists here - one for primary speakers and one for total number of speakers.
Blackcarr 09:21, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work Blackcarr! --Rrjanbiah 06:42, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  its wrong to every data. They also say that there are 170 million mother-tongue Portuguese spekers when Brazil alone as 180 million. I've seen the list of 2000.link
an it as:
1- Chinese- Mandarin
2- Hindi
3- Spanish
4- English
5- Bengali
6- Portuguese
7- Russian
8- Japanese
9- German
10- Chinese - Wu
Speakers as a second language is a very hard thing to see, in every language. At school we (my country) must learn at least 2 languages. I speak 5 and I can work in some other 3. I consider Second and learning language as two different things. Capeverdians for example are bilingual and speak Portuguese as a second language and Crioulo as first. They speak Portuguese has they were natives, and Crioulo much the same. I cant speak English as I were a native. 
Portuguese is the most Popular learning language in: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Senegal. Is the second language of Mozambique (40% speak it, 9% mother-tongue) and Cape Verde (80% speak it, very few as mother-tongue) and it is becoming in East Timor. I estimated as minimum mother-tongue speaks between 200 million to 220 million. As second and learning language is impossible to say.Pedro 17:31, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Conclusion

message: It is not correct to only list speakers of Standard German as speakers of "German". According to http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=GER, this does only include native speakers of standard German. There are many other German dialects. According to most sources, the total number of native speakers of German is currently between 120 and 125 Million. See for instance http://www.goethe.de/uk/chi/werbung/german4U.pdf : A language spoken by 120 million people or a quarter of all Europeans as their mother tongue., http://faculty.fairfield.edu/IBgoldfield/why_german.htm, http://www.aquinas.edu/languages/german/whystudygerman.html : Over 120 million people speak German as their native language. -- Nico 19:16, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: German

message: Why the Greek language is not included in the list? Optim 17:39, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Greek

message: What about Italian? There are about 58 million people in Italy. Blackcarr 10:04, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Italian

message: A list of Spanish speaking countries with associated numbers. Blackcarr 09:44, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spanish

message: Portuguese has at minimum 190 million first language speakers. I calculated base on Statistics (real ones) that there are 199 millions. If counted Galician 202 million. While Russian is decreasing, many of them are not first language, but second. If counting bilingual people, Portuguese has 207 million - 210 million (counting Galician) using the population of CIA. but using linguistics statistics of each country. -Pedro 23:22, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You may be correct. CIA - The World Factbook -- World lists 'Portuguese 2.63%, Russian 2.75%', but maybe it should read 'Portuguese 2.75%, Russian 2.63%'. Pædia 17:11, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  These data are undoubtedly out-of-date. Boraczek 10:38, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Portuguese is more spoken than Russian

message: Actually, the latest Ethnologue figures indicate that Bengali has 207 million native speakers.  Of course, I don't know how this affects Bengali's ranking overall, but we could cross-reference Ethnologue's updated figures for the other languages with the CIA FactBook and other sources, I suppose.
...
for bengali: A language of Bangladesh
ISO/DIS 639-3: ben
Population 	100,000,000 in Bangladesh (1994 UBS). 211,000,000 including second-language speakers (1999 WA). Population total all countries: 171,070,202.
171 Mi - 211 Mi
But we need a better source for that. At least for the case of Portuguese the numbers are laughable. It does not even include the number of Speakers in Brazil. -Pedro 19:16, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bengali 

message: About Portuguese, the table ranks it 7th with 170 million speakers. Just in Brazil are 180 million people and they all speak Portuguese, plus Portugal (10 million) and Portuguese living abroad (estimated another million at least), Angola and Mozambique and other former Portuguese colonies, makes at least 200 million. muriel@pt 11:59, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: This table is incorrect

message: What do you guys think about removing the "Countries with more than 1% as native speakers" column, or breaking it onto its own page? Right now it seems inconsistent. --Arcadian 12:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Simplifying Ethnologue table

message: If you visit Ethnologue for Spanish and English, you'll find:
English: 341 million native speakers
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ENG
Spanish: 322-358 million native speakers
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ENG
According to other sources, English should go before Spanish in this Table, putting correct numbers
*The figures in the table are based on Ethnologue's 1999 listing of the top 100. The numbers published on the site may be different now. If you change the table please add a footnote. --Cam 18:21, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
*There's confusion about every language and with very difference numbers. -Pedro 21:49, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnologue Table: Confusion between Spanish and English 

message: I don't have access to the book right now, but those figures can't be for native speakers. The high figures for Mandarin, Russian, and Malay-Indonesian show that this must be a matter of total speakers. --Cam 06:37, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
*lets face it, the data from that sources are incorrect. I think we should make our own data, because there are people in each language that know, in a very good extent the numbers of the language. 
*I think we can use the table of Ethnologue and update with the info we have. I really want to update it, it has gross information, but the table is cool. We delete the rest, and keep the layout, and edit it with what we have on the articles. -Pedro 21:17, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  World Almanac 2005 

message: case of German:
Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Poland, Switzerland, United States, Uruguay (18 countries)
I dont believe that in some of these countries there is more than 1 % of speakers, in some i believe it is close to 0% not even reaching the 0,1%. It surely states ancient German emigration.-Pedro 19:25, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I actually went through the new online Ethnologue and confirmed these. For all of these countries, Ethnologue gives a number of native speakers of a German dialect (including Alemannisch, Schwyzerdutsch, etc) that is about 1% or greater than the total population of the country. --Cam 21:36, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
*Ethnologue for Angola states of about 56,000 first lang. Portuguese speakers, when there are millions. Some can only say a "couple" of words in tribal languages (most of that words are now even part of Portuguese). They base their linguistic clames mainly on ethnicity... there is less than 1% of other languages than Portuguese in Brazil for instance, the Italian being the main, with at least a third of that value distributed to Amerindians. Well at least the source I saw some time ago. Surely the same occurs in the rest of South America. The best, is for you to search info of that countries rather than basing it in Ethnologue. They deal with to much languages, you can deal only with German for instance.  The listed countries in Ethnologue are the ones with more than 1% of speakers? for sure? I'm not saying their data is incorrect, I also use it, but mostly for comparison. Hugs, cam. -Pedro 23:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Pedro, are you saying there are millions of people in Angola whose native language is Portuguese? They were speaking Portuguese when they were two years old? I think we may be dealing with different definitions of "native speaker". --Cam 06:11, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
*yups, it is their native language. Including their parents'. Younger people can't speak other languages. Often their parents do. Some also don't. This occurs in the costal areas, while in the interior, people are often bilingual or monolingual (tribal languages). But I also considering native people who used another language while kids and adults they dont speak it anymore (it is also very common) - it occurs with children that lost their parents and moved to Luanda. "I" unserstand has native has the main language used at home and outside. -Pedro 13:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Countries 

message: Many of the Ethnologue estimates for the varieties of Chinese are based on 1984 data. I crudely projected those forward to 1999 based on the U.S. Census Bureau's estimates of China's population for 1984 (1042.8 mln) and 1999 (1260.1 mln), that is, I multiplied by 1.21. I will add footnotes eventually (though maybe we should drop the notes? It could get pretty cluttered there). --Cam 06:17, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
:I thought Wikipedia is not about original research?  A-giau 05:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese 

message: As the estimates in the table are getting (and will get) increasingly different from Ethnologue, I changed the title. I also split Arabic. As discussed above, this brings it in line with the treatment of Chinese. Further, I removed footnotes that only related to number of speakers, not language definitions. (Ethnologue now counts 61.5 million native Italian speakers; speakers of Sicilian, Venetian, etc. are "native bilinguals".) Removed Dutch which has 17.4 million in latest Ethnologue. --Cam 02:37, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
* I think we should have the 50 most spoken, that is if that is not a problem. Dutch is an important language, official language in more than one country, and if it in TOP 50, we should manage to write about it. BTW, the problem of Arabic and Chinese: do most linguists agree these spoken forms are in fact different languages? I've heard that some Chinese communicate "drawing" Chinese characters in the hand with a finger. How Arabs from different countries communicate? And what about countries that share a border? I'm not talking about TV or newspapers. It is possible for a Maroccan to talk with an Egyptian? What happens with a Maroccan living 3 months in Egypt? Overall, I agree with your changes.  Especially the name of the table. I'll only update the number of speakers of port. when the others with similar number: hindi and Bengali is updated. -Pedro 16:59, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table changes 

message: it seems that dutch was added not with numbers of speakers in the Netherlands and Belgium but the population, both the netherlands and Belgium have a lot of inmigrants, I believe...-Pedro 19:01, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dutch

message: Bengali seems overestimated, Hindi and Portuguese underestimated, what to do? The value for Portuguese doesnt even comprehends the native speakers in Brazil. And out of Brazil there are more than 20 million who use it has first language. It would be useful if there would be an Indian estimative on native speakers of Hindi on India. In a country with more than a thousand of million inhabitants... I would except more than 182 mi. What are the states in India that use Hindi has a native language? And what's their population? -Pedro 13:58, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem of Hindi, Portuguese and Bengali 

message: I'd like to move the summary table to the top of the page, since that seems to be the most objective synthesis of information we're likely to have (having Ethnologue at the top is leading to unnecessary fights). I'll make that move in a few days, unless I hear some objections. --Arcadian 15:03, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary table

message: Someone had decided that this should be a redirect to List of languages by number of native speakers. But the information is not the same. So I restored it. --Alvestrand 16:11, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restored page 

message: This article is compeltely flawed. It should be a referenced discussion of linguistic demographics. Instead it inexpertly cobbles together flawed averages. 
What is the point of calculating the median of various estimates of speakers of Khariboli, Hindi as defined by the India census and Hindustani in general? Worthless. The article also contained self-references that would make the page appropriate in Talk: namespace. At present, this should be merged somewhere.  dab (𒁳) 15:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:SYN]]

message: I have nominated :File:World Economy languages.png, the chart of "influential languages" by population and GDP, for deletion at Wikimedia Commons. The deletion discussion is here. Cnilep (talk) 02:35, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Languages don't have economies, which is basically what the chart is saying.  — kwami (talk) 05:48, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Influential languages" chart 

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