Majority of the world speaks a single language or two at most. Shit half the people I see online can’t even speak one.
It makes sense you when you look at it like that. most people in ESL programs only speak a single language, if you speak more than two you probably don’t need ESL classes and can learn on your own.
Languages come in tiers. English is the global lingua franca. People use it to speak to anyone, no matter whether English native speaker or not. If someone from Norway wants to talk to someone from Japan, they’ll most likely use English since both of them likely speak it.
Then there’s regional lingua francas, languages like Spanish, Russian or Mandarin. These languages are popular in specific parts of the world and often used to get around there. Someone from Ukraine can speak to someone from Belarus using Russian.
Lastly, there’s local languages that are spoken only in a country (or even only a part of a country). People speak them because that’s what they were grown up with.
So in general, there’s 4 “language slots” of languages people speak:
The global lingua franca
The regional lingua franca
The language of the country they live in
The language they grew up with
One language can fill multiple slots.
So for example, if you grew up in Ukraine and moved to Germany, you might speak the following languages, according to the slots above:
English
Russian
German
Ukranian
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
English
English
English
Welsh
If you spent your life in the US, it would be like this:
English
English
English
English
This is the reason why people living in countries with lower-tier languages frequently speak 3-4 languages, while English native speakers really struggle to even learn the basics of one additional language. Because the former group has an actual use for more than one language, while the latter one don’t.
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
English
English
English
Welsh
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
English
English
Welsh
Welsh
Welsh is an official language of the UK and most things in Wales are in Welsh first and English second.
Away from the south and the more touristy areas, you’re likely to find people speaking Welsh in everyday life (education, shopping, workplace), rather than just at home.
Oh, and Wales, England and Scotland are countries. The UK is a state made up of 3 countries and a region, whereas the USA is a country made up of 50 states and some territories and districts etc.
I lived in Wales for a year and I managed to learn some very basic Welsh myself. It’s been about 15 years now, but at least back then it was mainly old and very young people who spoke Welsh. Most people aged 20-60 didn’t speak Welsh at all, with the younger ones learning it at school.
But I guess with that generation being up to maybe 35 now, speaking Welsh is likely much more common than it was back then. So yeah, my chart above is likely outdated.
My central point is just that Welsh is one of the languages of Wales and so can be third on your bullet points.
I think it’s at the very least rather undiplomatic to argue that it shouldn’t be called a national language of Wales.
I’ve had people swear blind to me that they visited Wales on holiday and Welsh people are rude because they speak English in the shop until an English person turns up and then they switch to Welsh to exclude the English. I think they were mistaken that English was being spoken before they went in (how would they know?) and just assumed they were speaking English until they started paying attention, when they realised it was Welsh. I’m willing to bet £10 that any such people cannot accurately tell me the content of the English that was being spoken until they “switched to Welsh”.
Culturally, ignoring Welsh or downplaying its relevance to real people’s lives is similar in offence to telling British people that they don’t speak American properly, that they spell words like colour incorrectly, and that they should stop putting on their absurd British accent and just speak normally.
Source? I think speaking one language is pretty rare. Most Europeans speak at least two, most Africans I’ve met speak 3, lots of Indians speak 3 as well…
I think anyone in India and Africa speaks 4 languages easily.
their regional language (i.e. Masaai, Yoruba, Xhosa)
the over-regional language (Arabic, Swahili)
a coloniser language (English, French)
and possibly just enough of a neighbouring regional language
I think many Chinese people are also bilingual (i.e. Wu+ always mandarin). They often learn another language in school (English or something geographically closer, like Korean).
Yes… some are even tri-lingual because of village dialect (eg: Taishanese) + province dialect (eg: Cantonese) + national dialect (Mandarin)
Unfortunately, the PRC government is heavily pushing Mandarin and some of the local variants (aka: “dialects”) are slowly dying… some kids in Guangzhou don’t even speak Cantonese anymore…
(i.e. Wu+ always mandarin)
Shanghaiese is semi-dead… from what I heard
Cantonese is slowly limping its way forward only because they have Hong Kong TV, I don’t think there are many TV shows in Shanghaiese.
If Hong Kong falls… Cantonese is gonna die… :(
Parents also never spoke Taishanese to me… so yea I unfortunately cannot pass on that language… no Taishanese media… hard to find motivation to learn more about it.
So I only have Cantonese and Mandarin…
I doubt my kids (if I ever have any) would be able to learn it… most 2nd generation overseas Chinese kinda just English-Only with bare minimum in ancestor’s language.
Well, if you add up the number of speakers of second languages according to this page, and assume anybody speaks at least one language as their first one, you’ll end up with almost exactly 1.4 as the average number of languages any given human speaks.
That’s the lower bound, though, as I only added up second languages where the number of speakers is at least one million, and Wikipedia doesn’t list many more anyway.
Majority of the world speaks a single language or two at most. Shit half the people I see online can’t even speak one.
It makes sense you when you look at it like that. most people in ESL programs only speak a single language, if you speak more than two you probably don’t need ESL classes and can learn on your own.
Languages come in tiers. English is the global lingua franca. People use it to speak to anyone, no matter whether English native speaker or not. If someone from Norway wants to talk to someone from Japan, they’ll most likely use English since both of them likely speak it.
Then there’s regional lingua francas, languages like Spanish, Russian or Mandarin. These languages are popular in specific parts of the world and often used to get around there. Someone from Ukraine can speak to someone from Belarus using Russian.
Lastly, there’s local languages that are spoken only in a country (or even only a part of a country). People speak them because that’s what they were grown up with.
So in general, there’s 4 “language slots” of languages people speak:
One language can fill multiple slots.
So for example, if you grew up in Ukraine and moved to Germany, you might speak the following languages, according to the slots above:
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
If you spent your life in the US, it would be like this:
This is the reason why people living in countries with lower-tier languages frequently speak 3-4 languages, while English native speakers really struggle to even learn the basics of one additional language. Because the former group has an actual use for more than one language, while the latter one don’t.
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
Welsh is an official language of the UK and most things in Wales are in Welsh first and English second.
Away from the south and the more touristy areas, you’re likely to find people speaking Welsh in everyday life (education, shopping, workplace), rather than just at home.
Oh, and Wales, England and Scotland are countries. The UK is a state made up of 3 countries and a region, whereas the USA is a country made up of 50 states and some territories and districts etc.
I lived in Wales for a year and I managed to learn some very basic Welsh myself. It’s been about 15 years now, but at least back then it was mainly old and very young people who spoke Welsh. Most people aged 20-60 didn’t speak Welsh at all, with the younger ones learning it at school.
But I guess with that generation being up to maybe 35 now, speaking Welsh is likely much more common than it was back then. So yeah, my chart above is likely outdated.
My central point is just that Welsh is one of the languages of Wales and so can be third on your bullet points.
I think it’s at the very least rather undiplomatic to argue that it shouldn’t be called a national language of Wales.
I’ve had people swear blind to me that they visited Wales on holiday and Welsh people are rude because they speak English in the shop until an English person turns up and then they switch to Welsh to exclude the English. I think they were mistaken that English was being spoken before they went in (how would they know?) and just assumed they were speaking English until they started paying attention, when they realised it was Welsh. I’m willing to bet £10 that any such people cannot accurately tell me the content of the English that was being spoken until they “switched to Welsh”.
Culturally, ignoring Welsh or downplaying its relevance to real people’s lives is similar in offence to telling British people that they don’t speak American properly, that they spell words like colour incorrectly, and that they should stop putting on their absurd British accent and just speak normally.
Or maybe french is the lingua franca…?
Not any more. It used to be, which is where the term comes from, but it hasn’t been for a long time.
Proving your own point, nice.
Source? I think speaking one language is pretty rare. Most Europeans speak at least two, most Africans I’ve met speak 3, lots of Indians speak 3 as well…
sorry I was wrong, it’s not a majority. It’s roughly 40% of the world’s population.
Fair enough.
Bit of confirmation bias in that, no?
Very possible, that’s why I would love to have a source.
I think anyone in India and Africa speaks 4 languages easily.
I think many Chinese people are also bilingual (i.e. Wu+ always mandarin). They often learn another language in school (English or something geographically closer, like Korean).
Yes… some are even tri-lingual because of village dialect (eg: Taishanese) + province dialect (eg: Cantonese) + national dialect (Mandarin)
Unfortunately, the PRC government is heavily pushing Mandarin and some of the local variants (aka: “dialects”) are slowly dying… some kids in Guangzhou don’t even speak Cantonese anymore…
Shanghaiese is semi-dead… from what I heard
Cantonese is slowly limping its way forward only because they have Hong Kong TV, I don’t think there are many TV shows in Shanghaiese.
If Hong Kong falls… Cantonese is gonna die… :(
Parents also never spoke Taishanese to me… so yea I unfortunately cannot pass on that language… no Taishanese media… hard to find motivation to learn more about it.
So I only have Cantonese and Mandarin…
I doubt my kids (if I ever have any) would be able to learn it… most 2nd generation overseas Chinese kinda just English-Only with bare minimum in ancestor’s language.
Well, if you add up the number of speakers of second languages according to this page, and assume anybody speaks at least one language as their first one, you’ll end up with almost exactly 1.4 as the average number of languages any given human speaks.
That’s the lower bound, though, as I only added up second languages where the number of speakers is at least one million, and Wikipedia doesn’t list many more anyway.