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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: ESPERANTO - SPAM SPAM SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM
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Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 02:39:06 GMT
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mam@arlvax.arl.psu.edu (Martin A. Mazur) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3ri092$m78@hearst.cac.psu.edu>:
>
>I don't think you were following my argument. There are roughly 5 to 6 billion 
>(that's American billion, i.e. 10^9) people in the world. Is this in dispute? 
>I had just got done giving a reasonable estimate of the number of English 
>speakers in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and Ireland. of 400 
>million. Is this in dispute? If, for the sake of round numbers, we say 

Something of an overestimate, I think. The total populations of these 
five places (and let's add in New Zealand and a large fraction of the 
population of South Africa) add up to something under 400 million. And 
not all these people speak English -- particularly surprising in this 
regard were the results of the 1990 U.S. census, which would indicate 
that several percent of the U.S. population don't speak the language, at 
least according to the newspaper reports I saw. I would estimate 360-370 
million English speakers in these countries.

>the total number of people in the world is 5.4 billion (the exact figure 
>would't change my argument much), then the difference, 5 billion, is the 

Probably currently around 5.6-5.7 billion ... and counting.

>number of people in the world that I have not yet counted. As I then argued, 
>20 % of these would have to be first or second language English speakers to 
>surpass the number of (Mandarin) Chinese speakers, which I took quite 
>liberally to be 1.4 billion.
>
Assuming 1 billion Mandarin speakers, I get almost exactly 12%. There are 
certain countries in northwestern Europe where you can reach and even 
surpass this percentage, even giving fairly strict criteria for what 
determines an English speaker (the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, 
Germany -- at least prior to reunification -- and the Flemish-speaking 
part of Belgium spring immediately to mind), but their total population 
is only a tiny fraction of the 5.3 billion people in question, and you'd 
have a hard time finding any other part of the world where a figure of 
12% is even approached from below.

>Please. Try this thought experiment. You are watching international TV, say 
>CNN, or some Euro-equivalent. There is a 'man in the street' interview in some 
>odd corner of the world. The man being interviewed, if he is not being 
>translated, is usually speaking in broken ENGLISH. Now granted they probably 
>had to hunt a bit to find this guy. And there is a reason that he is speaking 
>English (he may be not really be a random 'man in the street' but some 
>spokeman who wants to make a political point directed at the West). But, if 
>this guy were speaking Chinese, I'd be willing to bet money that he would BE 
>Chinese. There are Chinese people all over the world, but it is very unlikely 
>that a non-Chinese 'man in the street' knows CHinese, while it is at least 
>somewhat likely that a 'man in the street' anywhere (including urban China) 
>can made himself understood in English.
>
Watching CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS it is certainly true that many "man in the 
street interviews" are given in English; but I doubt whether the same is 
true of your "Euro-equivalent" (Spanish plays the same role in SIN news 
programs, which my wife watches).

Given that, as you suggest, this is the result of seeking out a "biased 
sample" (for good and sufficient reasons which have nothing whatsoever to 
do with attempting to convince a credulous audience that "everybody 
speaks English"), I am rather astonished by the number of "man in the 
street interviews" I see on the networks that are carried on through an 
interpreter. Basically, this _has_ to mean that nobody capable of 
speaking English was available to be interviewed.

Another interesting recent phenomenon: some interviews I've seen, carried 
on in "English", are then subtitled for the viewers. The English used is 
not all that easily decipherable.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
http://www.webcom.com/~donh
