[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[phoebe ayers]

On Jan 26, 2008 3:25 AM, Michael Noda <michael.noda at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

These are all very good and interesting questions, as is Greg's
original question.

However, I suspect answering any of them will take some pretty serious
research, using off-line resources like the ones I suggested above;
data like this may or may not be easily accessible online (I could
think of some places to start -- UN programs, perhaps -- but one
doesn't know for sure what's out there to find without looking
closely.) Thus talking about how people "can not support their
positions with data like I've asked for" as Greg does above is a
little counterproductive, since this isn't likely to be the sort of
thing that anyone could instantly come up with, and there aren't
likely to be simple answers.

This would make a fantastic collaborative research project, though;
maybe a quick wiki page on meta with questions, possible sources, and
any data found would be helpful if people are interested in pursuing
it.

-- phoebe