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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: English as the European language (not) (Re: Languages in the EC)
Message-ID: <donhD44Ev2.Dsz@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <3ha0n3INNmq5@SUNED.ZOO.CS.YALE.EDU> <HINSENK.95Feb13151018@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA> <792815519snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 01:30:37 GMT
Lines: 32
Sender: donh@netcom5.netcom.com

philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk skribis en lastatempa afisxo <792815519snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk>:
>In article <HINSENK.95Feb13151018@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
>           hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA "Hinsen Konrad" writes:
>> In article <792547038snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
>>  (Phil Hunt) writes:
>> 
>>    OTOH, an estimated 1500 million people speak English now. It's quite 
>> 
>> How was this number obtained?
>
>I read it in a book recently. I can't give you a citation as I have
>forgotten which book it is.
>
If the figure you quoted had been 1400 million, I would have attributed 
it to Crystal's _Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_.

Interestingly, this figure (which is often quoted as the number of 
speakers of English in the world) is actually the total population of 
all countries that use English as an official language, plus the USA. 
Approximately half of that 1400 million is in India, where by no stretch 
of the imagination can more than a small percentage of the population 
(the highest figure I've seen is 10%) be said to speak English at all. 
Why Crystal included it is beyond me, but you wouldn't be the first to 
quote it as the number of actual speakers of English -- Peter Stalker 
did the same in an article on language in _The New Internationalist_ 
several years ago.

-- 
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
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html 
