Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers

English — 1,340 million speakers?

English is spoken by over 1,340 million tongues worldwide. It is the language of science and entertainment. Please include it in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.99.14.165 (talk) 12:49, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

This article is about native speakers. Certainly many people around the world can and do speak English, but most do not fall into the category of "native speaker". Kidigus (talk) 04:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The number of native English speakers in this article is absurdly low, given the collective populations of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. The definition of "native speaker" must also be unrealistically narrow and, thus, result in a very low number for, say, India. To define fluent English as nonetheless non-native may be interesting academically, but it is impractical for multilingual societies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.112.1.251 (talk) 20:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Defining "native speaker" could be problematic. For example, English is a third language for me, although I was born in a country where English is the official language. I learned two other languages at home before venturing outside and learning English from my young playmates. My command of the language is better than that of 97% of the "native speakers". Am I a "native speaker"? Many children of immigrants fall into this category. Taken to the extreme, none of us are "native" speakers, since we don't speak any language at the moment we emerge from the womb; we all learn languages after birth. — Quicksilver^{T @} 15:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Exuse me but "The number of native English speakers in this article is absurdly low" is false this number is very hight beaucause : USA 300 + england 60 + Kanada 20 + australia 20 + 10% population of india =401 milion

For kwon the true masterie of english  : http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenfrancais/orban.htm

and find in other documents in language french :

Selon le service de la recherche pédagogique de Hanovre, il existe un décalage important dans l'apprentissage de l'anglais comme seconde langue entre le niveau qu'estiment posséder les utilisateurs et leur véritable maîtrise. Ainsi, il a été demandé à des élèves qui pratiquaient depuis 8 à 10 ans d'estimer leur niveau de compétence : 34 % ont répondu « très bien », 38 % ont répondu « bien » ; en revanche, à la suite d'un test d'évaluation on s'est rendu compte que seulement 1 % des étudiants maîtrisaient très bien l'anglais, et seulement 4 % le maîtrisaient bien

Dans le cadre d’une étude réalisée en 2000 et publiée dans le numéro 26-27, 2002, de Läkartidningen, revue spécialisée destinée aux médecins suédois, 111 médecins généralistes danois, suédois et norvégiens ont lu le même article synoptique pendant 10 minutes. La moitié l’a lu dans sa langue maternelle, l’autre moitié en anglais. Des questions étaient posées tout de suite après la lecture. En général, tous les médecins danois, norvégiens et suédois sont relativement à l’aise avec la langue anglaise grâce à l’enseignement reçu à l’école et grâce également à la télévision, au cinéma et aux chansons. De plus, leur langue est apparentée à l’anglais. Ils lisent également des ouvrages d’études en anglais, sont abonnés à des revues médicales en anglais. Dans le cadre de cette étude, les médecins avaient indiqué qu’ils comprenaient tous l’anglais. 42 % d’entre eux avaient même signalé qu’ils lisaient chaque semaine des communiqués en anglais. Cette étude a révélé que les médecins qui avaient lu le texte en anglais avaient perdu 25 % des informations par rapport au même texte lu dans leur langue maternelle

A gross error resulting in a low number of Enlish native speakers is using 2000 US census data that does not count childen under five. But that data for Spanish countries seems to count little kids. Either count little kids as English speakers or deduct kids under five in Spanish speaking countries.

Anouther grosss error is assumeing that all Hispanics in the US speak Spanish. Not true. Even the census data cited showed that only about half of Hispanics speak Spanish very well but count 35 million as native speakers.

In summary 215 million US native speakers (out of 207 million Americans) is low since my two year old nice can speak English. OK, the US census would not include her but use similar criteria for Spanish speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.171.181.95 (talk) 15:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

--Wxkq (talk) 11:06, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

A problem of precise definitions more than accurate numbers

Throughout this article there is confusion as to which columns or numbers refer to native speakers, which to secondary speakers (but those for whom a given language, in this case English, has become their primary language), and others. With English, to continue that example, there are in the UK, USA, etc. large numbers of immigrants, and in countries like India and Ghana, for whom English is the national language, there are large numbers for whom the "second language" has become their primary mode of communication. And then, of course, there are those for whom it is only an "international language" that they speak in order to do business, science, or communication with English-speaking foreigners, both native and non-native.

The problem here is less one of accurate numbers than of more precise definitions of the categories of entities being counted,explicitly laid out and consistently applied across languages, as well as possible. Fair estimates might be made of each, and that could be useful to someone seeking information on this page

Distinction between Languages and Dialects is not addressed properly

Chattisgarhi, Rajasthani, Marwari, Awadhi and those are still considered as dialects of Hindi. Urdu is a separate language, but it is clubbed as Hindi-Urdu. Can someone cite the sources for the classification mentioned in the article - Why are Hindi and Urdu clubbed, why are dialects of Hindi shown as separate languages, especially when they are not used anywhere outside India and inside India, no one officially or unofficially treats them as separate languages? Same applies to Chittagongian(Bengali) as well. Especially, this doesn't make sense when all the Arabic dialects, even they are not mutually intelligible, are treated as a same language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.175.99.164 (talk) 23:11, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Chattisgarhi, Rajasthani, Marwari, and Awadhi are considered distinct languages by our source. Standard Hindi is Urdu: native speakers can't tell them apart. — kwami (talk) 00:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Standard Hindi is not Urdu, and native speakers can easily tell them apart. Also, the primary source does not list any language called 'Hindi-Urdu'. So by your definition, it should not be listed as a single language in your article (as it would be original research). The primary source is (wrongly) listing dialects as languages. e.g. it lists Western Panjabi as a dialect of Lahnda, while listing Eastern Panjabi as a separate language, which is clearly wrong. In the article, Lahnda, Seraiki, Hindko, Mirpur are all (correctly) listed as dialects of Panjabi. Btw, does listing only the POV of the primary source not a violation of the WP:NPOV guideline? Tinpisa (talk) 12:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Dispute tag

How could the number of Persian-speakers worldwide be 39 million when CIA fact-book has the number of native Persian speakers in Iran alone at 61% of Iran's 75 million population? And there are at least another 30 million native Persian-speakers in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan? The article uses Ethnologue's outdated/inaccurately-categorized numbers for Persian, yet for 34 million Azerbaijani language speakers (which is an exaggerated number), the main source used is some random webpage called www.azstat.org, which does not meet the requirements of WP:RS. I'm adding a disputed tag, until these obvious inaccuracies are corrected. Kurdo777 (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

You're correct. I apologize: I don't know how that slipped by me. Both figures attributed to E16 now match what E16 says, and non-E16 figures have been moved to the 'other sources' column. — kwami (talk) 09:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

It was here. I must not have checked my watch list that day. I've further protected the article, as almost all edits are similar examples of population inflation and reference falsification. — kwami (talk) 09:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 20 November 2011

number of native speakers for Hindi should be 600 million. Number of native speakers of Bengali should be 300 million.

Nishant ram2007 (talk) 17:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

If you have reliable sounces, we can add those to the 'other' column. But I doubt your 'Hindi' is the same as Hindi-Urdu. — kwami (talk) 18:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese is spoken by more than 200 million people

The idea that the Portuguese language has only 193 million speakers is absurd.

Brazil alone has 190 million people according to the 2010 Census. Virtually all of the population of Brazil speaks Portuguese.

Portugal alone has 10 million people. Virtually all of the population of Portugal speaks Portuguese.

Angola has a population of 18 million people. A large portion of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese as first language.

Mozambique has a population of 22 million people. A large portion of the population of Mozambique speaks Portuguese as first language.

Add to that number the other smaller Portuguese speaking countries, plus the Brazilian, Portuguese, Angolan and Mozambican diasporas around the world, and anyone can see that the Portuguese language is spoken by way more than 200 million people. Siaraman (talk) 12:27, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Fine. Let us have your sources. — kwami (talk) 16:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no better source than the following articles from Wikipedia: Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique. Just read each one, in the "Language" section, and do the Math. Siaraman (talk) 19:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

You'd have to change the Mozambique part to "small" portion of the population at least. Part of the problem here is that the population of these countries, like most, have increased since the publication of the figures. I mean, if you do the same for Bengali, for example, you come out with 91 million (West Bengal) + 142 million (Bangladesh) + 3 million (70% of Tripura) + 6 million (20% of Assam) and then some = 242 million+. Munci (talk) 15:45, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

68 million French native speakers ?

There are 65 million of french people (in France). According of Ethnologue, there would be only 68 million french native speakers in the world.... There are only 3 million french-speaking native people out of France ?!?!

Where are the french-speaking Belgians ? Where are the french-speaking Swiss ? Where are the french-speaking Canadians ? And where are the french-speaking native people around the world ? Please Ethnologue recount seriously for your credibility. Busway (talk) 16:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Not everyone is a native speaker of French, even in Metropolitan France. There is Breton, Basque, Arabic, German and many more to account for. Munci (talk) 07:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Gross undercount of US native English speakers

There seems to be a gross undercount of US native English speakers relative to native Spanish speakers. According to the citations they only count people over five years as native Engish speaker (because that is the wording on the census form) but seem to count people of all ages as native Spanish speakers in other countries. How can one compare the number of native English and native Spanish speakers when using different age criteria?

If you add the population of the Enlish speaking countries - US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand you get arround 430 million but this article would have one belive that over 100 million are not native English speakers. I don't think so.

In addition to undercounting US English speakers the Spanish speaker page (which I presume was used for the Spanish native speaker total) inclues ALL Hispanics as Spanish spekers. This is not true. The native language most second and third generation Mexicans I know is English. I think that at least half of Hispanics probably speek better English than Spanish. There are a lot of Hispanics with Spanish as their native or second language but the Spanish spearker page assumes 100% which is a big error.

The result of these errors is that Spanish would probably not be the second language in the number of native speakers if the data were correctly interpreted. Maybe some time in the future, but not with the census data cited.

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.239.133.132 (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2011 (UTC) 

Tagalog

If the total number of Tagalog speakers in the country is around 90%, then given the current population statistic of the Philippines (94,013,200), that's definitely way more than 25 million (in that case it would be 84,611,880), in which case it should be moved way further up, somewhere near the top section. So now we see some discrepancies with how things are being displayed here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.239.113.179 (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Chinese Sign Language

The entry clearly states that the number of speakers is unknown. So why is it even included on this page? Looks to me like Chinese Sign Language is somebody's pet topic and they simply needed to see it listed here when, in fact, if we don't know the number of speakers then it deserves no mention at all. Attempting to justify the inclusion by pointing out that there are "perhaps" more speakers than any other sign language is interesting in a trivial way, but still not useful and certainly not justification for inclusion. However, I will cede the point that this is Wikipedia (which is not an encyclopedia) and ultimately any drivel or swill can be included and accepted as long as it is packaged the right way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.220.193.142 (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

It is suspected that the number of speakers is over 3M. More than IPSL, for example, which is in the range of 3M. But there isn't any actual figure in E16 that can be cited. — kwami (talk) 04:03, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

ARTICLE NEEDS UPDATE

The article is based on the Ethnologue 15th edition. There is already the 16th edition out. It should be updated, Pook. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.202.64 (talk) 22:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Here you can find a link that uses the 16th edition:

http://www.top10stop.com/social/top-10-spoken-languages-in-the-world

Pook. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.202.64 (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

It is based on the 16th. I've verified all figures. Is there something I've missed? — kwami (talk) 04:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Changing Catalan (Valencian) for only Catalan because Valencian is a dialect also called South-Western Catalan

Please change | Catalan
(Valencian) ||Indo-European,

for

| Catalan ||Indo-European,

because Valencian is only one of the 6 dialects of the Catalan Language as the website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language (check the maps of this page and the classification)

If you put Valencian that is also called "South-Western Catalan" , you should put the other dialects of Catalan. If not, It is more correct to write only Catalan because the page is about Languages and not dialects.

Grego79 (talk) 20:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It is known under both names, so both are listed. If they weren't dialects, they wouldn't be listed together. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 30 January 2012 (UTC)