[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[Michael Noda]

On Jan 26, 2008 4:57 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The answer that I gave you is clear. There are currently over 7000 languages
> supported in ISO-639-3. Most are eligible according to the policy for new
> languages.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

The reply you gave may be clear, but it does not answer Mr Maxwell's question.

That being said, I think the question as asked is insidiously
difficult to answer as asked.  So I will propose two derivative
questions of my own (one with subquestions), which hopefully may be
easier to answer:

1) How many languages have a monolingual literate or speaking
population of 2,000 or more speakers or writers?

2a) What proportion of the world's literate population can read one of
the six official languages of the United Nations (ar, en, es, fr, ru,
zh)?
2b) What proportion of the world's literate population can read one of
ar, de, en, es, fr, pt, ru, zh?
2c-f) What proportion of the world's literate population can read one
of a list of [15, 30, 100, 200] languages chosen so as to maximize the
answer to this question?


These seem like even simpler questions (except the last part of 2,
which has a difficult optimization problem contained in it).  I hope
someone can answer them.