Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus.
Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several regions have no overlap (script could be same between them). I can understand some Mandarin but Cantonese is alien. That is true for their own people too. Chinese don't speak 'Macau'. I am not even getting into India at this point. That's completely chaotic.
This kind of infographic in broad strokes can sometimes be hurtful to some of the people. Not that I have any strong opinions but OP should know this.
> Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus.
Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both parts, Scandinavians can usually communicate with other Scandinavians in different languages. I am Norwegian, and if I meet a Swede, we can just talk with each other. I can't talk Swedish fluently, but I can understand Swedish to such a degree that it's no problem to speak with a Swede who is speaking Swedish.
However, this relationship of understanding languages can be asymmetric, and it's not always as easy for a Swede to understand a Norwegian as it is for a Norwegian to understand a Swede.
This is interesting & its factually true from personal experience. I feel Norwegian is a sister language but bit more complicated than Swedish. Since they have similar roots, the grammar structure is same & it is easy to follow some degree of either. However, the foreign influence on Swedish over ages, has made it phonetically simpler.
The asymmetry exists, but ideas interchange easy enough because of common roots (except Finnish which sounds like Hungarian surprisingly).
I'm confused by how this data is being generated. For example, India is tagged with Punjabi, but somehow not Bengali, even though the latter is the second most widely spoken language in India, with about three times as many speakers.
Ironically, Punjabi would be way more useful in Pakistan, where it's actually the most common first language, but Pakistan is tagged only with Urdu (and no other language).
I'm also skeptical of the "physical safety" tags; they seem inconsistent as well in a way that's difficult to reconcile.
OP does not list all the major languages either. I have a feeling that, just the four main southern languages & its dialects will outrank all northern European languages combined (except English technically)
I wonder how the native language correlates with proper English as a learned language.
All of the Scandinavians I spoke about had a wonderful pronunciation of English. They may have had an accent, but the English words were not distorted by their language, and not was the grammar.
On contrast, French often speak what I call a "lazy English". We tend to pronounce words as if they were in French and the structure of the sentence is very similar to French. This really looks like the Latin translations we did at school: translate the sentence word by word and stick the beth eat the end :)
It may be that the Scandinavian languages are more "compatible" with English (wildly guessing, with a lot of hand waving :))
It makes sense when you think about how much of English history is influenced by the presence of Danish raiders and kingdoms. I live near a place called Dane Hill for example.
In the Northern dialects and Scotland there are even more influences. For example in Scots dialect a kirk is a church, etc.
I’ve read that there are at least 900 English words that come from Danish and several hundred more that are suspected to be.[1]
Datter, arm, hus in Danish is daughter, arm and house in English, etc. it’s also why we have often two words with the same meaning (ie. anger and wrath or ill and sick).
Eh. That isn't what the comment you replied to is saying. It's enough that it easily puts it with some of the other places that are highlighted as English.
The site says "enter the languages you speak below to see with how many parts of the world you can communicate". Quite misleading.
This is higher than Canada and a number of Anglophone Caribbean islands. Admittedly Finland is lagging at 75%, but we can also consider Iceland at 98%.
Today is the day that florianwueest learns that "spoken language" is actually a really controversial topic lol
Seriously though, I bet finishing up this project felt great, then posting it to HackerNews was a huge dopamine rush, and now... everybody's just pointing out issues left and right because they accidentally stepped on a dozen
landmines that are irrelevant in day-to-day life for 99% of us but entirely relevant when you post to an audience of millions.
In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country.
For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Agree and think the use of data on what languages are spoken and by how many people would help. This app would be vastly improved by the incorporation of more data in general. At least language differences in the administrative divisions of countries should be reflected. Entering Punjabi gets you all of India, which I am doubtful of. I wanted to see if Malayalam does as well, but it is not in the list. Entering French also gets you all of Canada rather than just Quebec and maybe pockets in New Brunswick and Manitoba. Cantonese is not in the list. It is good though and I don't mean to knock it, only to suggest how it could be extended.
Or just color coded from white to 100% of that color based on the number of speakers in that country. A language being one of the official languages of the country doesn't guarantee that it will be useful in traveling that country, only that it will be useful when interacting with the government.
Can confirm, here it'll be problematic for one to speak in English with anyone younger than 16 / older than 40 and/or outside major population centers. (though in my experience, its the same situation with English in Austria and Russian in Latvia/Lithuania).
Been to Russia a few times the last 2 years, for a total of a few months, and my English was useless. My German was decidedly more useful, even if just to understand Rucksack, Butterbrot and Schlagbaum.
Traditionally the area northeast of the Pyrenees, or around Perpignan to name a city. I'm not sure there are many people that speak it though, I've only ever heard it on regional radio and television channels.
The problem with using official languages and only going country-level is it excludes minority languages that still have tens of millions of speakers across multiple countries.
india has many languages and many state languages are unique to the state...
if i speak my state's language - highly likely i don't speak language of the neighboring state, but OP painted india with one broad brush
1. the US isn't included for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 41 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about six million students. Estimates range from 41 million to over 50 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers.
2. Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
3. the combination of these two makes me unclear on what you mean by "parts of the world you can communicate". Is this just a coloring of what countries legally recognize the language you entered? That's.... not really very useful or reflective of what the user of a site like this wants to know.
> Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
Are there places in the world where you'd start a sentence with "Pardonu, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?
Your Esperanto claim is flatly ridiculous. I will happily put money on the claim that there are exactly 0 countries with more Esperanto speakers than English speakers.
English - in China there is more English speakers than in rest of the world so not sure what is criteria (100% of people must speak?)
Serbia - missing Croatia / missing Montenegro it is the same language (officially it is called Serbo-Croatian).
Slovenia can understand and Macedonia as well ...
Readit News
Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several regions have no overlap (script could be same between them). I can understand some Mandarin but Cantonese is alien. That is true for their own people too. Chinese don't speak 'Macau'. I am not even getting into India at this point. That's completely chaotic.
This kind of infographic in broad strokes can sometimes be hurtful to some of the people. Not that I have any strong opinions but OP should know this.
Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both parts, Scandinavians can usually communicate with other Scandinavians in different languages. I am Norwegian, and if I meet a Swede, we can just talk with each other. I can't talk Swedish fluently, but I can understand Swedish to such a degree that it's no problem to speak with a Swede who is speaking Swedish.
However, this relationship of understanding languages can be asymmetric, and it's not always as easy for a Swede to understand a Norwegian as it is for a Norwegian to understand a Swede.
Check out this video on asymmetric language understanding from NativLang for more about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E042GHlUgoQ
The asymmetry exists, but ideas interchange easy enough because of common roots (except Finnish which sounds like Hungarian surprisingly).
I'm confused by how this data is being generated. For example, India is tagged with Punjabi, but somehow not Bengali, even though the latter is the second most widely spoken language in India, with about three times as many speakers.
Ironically, Punjabi would be way more useful in Pakistan, where it's actually the most common first language, but Pakistan is tagged only with Urdu (and no other language).
I'm also skeptical of the "physical safety" tags; they seem inconsistent as well in a way that's difficult to reconcile.
All of the Scandinavians I spoke about had a wonderful pronunciation of English. They may have had an accent, but the English words were not distorted by their language, and not was the grammar.
On contrast, French often speak what I call a "lazy English". We tend to pronounce words as if they were in French and the structure of the sentence is very similar to French. This really looks like the Latin translations we did at school: translate the sentence word by word and stick the beth eat the end :)
It may be that the Scandinavian languages are more "compatible" with English (wildly guessing, with a lot of hand waving :))
In the Northern dialects and Scotland there are even more influences. For example in Scots dialect a kirk is a church, etc.
I’ve read that there are at least 900 English words that come from Danish and several hundred more that are suspected to be.[1]
Datter, arm, hus in Danish is daughter, arm and house in English, etc. it’s also why we have often two words with the same meaning (ie. anger and wrath or ill and sick).
The site says "enter the languages you speak below to see with how many parts of the world you can communicate". Quite misleading.
Norway: 90%; Sweden: 90%; Denmark 86%.
This is higher than Canada and a number of Anglophone Caribbean islands. Admittedly Finland is lagging at 75%, but we can also consider Iceland at 98%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
Seriously though, I bet finishing up this project felt great, then posting it to HackerNews was a huge dopamine rush, and now... everybody's just pointing out issues left and right because they accidentally stepped on a dozen landmines that are irrelevant in day-to-day life for 99% of us but entirely relevant when you post to an audience of millions.
For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Can confirm, here it'll be problematic for one to speak in English with anyone younger than 16 / older than 40 and/or outside major population centers. (though in my experience, its the same situation with English in Austria and Russian in Latvia/Lithuania).
Deleted Comment
- it highlighted all of Spain, even though Catalan is only spoken in some areas
- it didn't highlight Andorra, an country where the only official language is Catalan
- it didn't highlight parts of France and Sardinia where Catalan is also spoken (albeit not officially or with limited recognition)
I happened to run into Viggo Mortensen's card, which claims he speaks 4 languages. He is slow, but I'd say his Catalan is pretty functional! https://www.ccma.cat/catradio/alacarta/el-mati-de-catalunya-...
1. the US isn't included for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 41 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about six million students. Estimates range from 41 million to over 50 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers.
2. Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
3. the combination of these two makes me unclear on what you mean by "parts of the world you can communicate". Is this just a coloring of what countries legally recognize the language you entered? That's.... not really very useful or reflective of what the user of a site like this wants to know.
Are there places in the world where you'd start a sentence with "Pardonu, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?