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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | TikTok content is mostly visual. My YouTube shorts are frequently foreign language with AI subtitles. Also, TikTok is banned in India and—ironically—China [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_TikTok | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | A valid point, but I doubt people are going to notice if “clips of people slipping on ice” suddenly exclude Americans post 2024. | | |
| ▲ | yamazakiwi 6 months ago | parent [-] | | There will be a small category of content that will disappear. For instance, my fyp was full of Chinese fashion content (by choice) so I'm sure there are other categories of content that non-Americans consume that are American. Whether it's Movies or Music or whatever. |
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| ▲ | gkbrk 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | English is literally the most commonly spoken language in the world. No language in the world will fit your criteria if you want more than two thirds of the global population to speak it. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | Why would that criteria matter when what we are discussing is the impact when you remove a country’s creators from a platform? | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent [-] | | > Why would that criteria matter when what we are discussing is the impact when you remove a country’s creators from a platform? That country’s creators belong to the largest native-speaking bloc of the most-commonly spoken language (native or not) in the world. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | Actual numbers of English speakers already captured that info. Saying there’s no other language that comes close doesn’t change anything here. |
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| ▲ | lelanthran 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That doesn't sound accurate. Did you mean as a first language? | | |
| ▲ | coltonweaver 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | A quick search seems to confirm this. A few sites list the number to be around ~1.3 billion people who speak English at all, with around ~360-380 million being native speakers. For example: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-eng.... | |
| ▲ | herval 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/266808/the-most-spoken-l... | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | > first language? 1/3 of the global population is at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers. US, UK, Canada, Australia is where you find the bulk of native speakers. In say Germany or whatever they may become fluent but it’s relatively rare for German parents to be speaking English to each other in casual conversation next to an infant’s crib. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | > there’s only 380 million native English speakers Not how a lingua franca works. There are 1.5 to 2 billion English speakers [1]. By far the largest number of people to speak a single language. Most of them are in America [2]. (If you count English learners, No. 2 is China [3].) [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/articl... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236986651_The_stati... | | |
| ▲ | ANewFormation 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | CIA gives 18.8%, so about 1.5 billion. [1] But this number is dubious as it's largely from self response. Here [2] is a list by country. So 25% of Thais, 50% of Ukrainians, 50% of Poles, and so on "speak English." In the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true. But "my name is Bob" maketh not a common tongue. If we narrowed it down to the percent of people that could hold a basic conversation, the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s... | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent [-] | | > the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top 70% of Chinese speak Mandarin as a first language [1]. > the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true This is English learners. If you count English learners, a third of Chinese speak English and a majority of the internet-connected world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China | | |
| ▲ | ANewFormation 5 months ago | parent [-] | | What I'm saying is that those are people counted as "knowing English" since the typical way such things are measured is self response. Nowhere remotely near the peecents stated for many countries is accurate. China's also been pushing Mandarin lately and claim 85%. |
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| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Being fluent is a different question, you can dream in English without it being your native language. first language = A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent [-] | | Yes, we understand what a first language is. You should understand why that’s irrelevant to this discussion. | | |
| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 6 months ago | parent [-] | | You know, they weren't the one to bring it up and their point seems to have consistently been that the majority of the global population does not speak English. | | |
| ▲ | lelanthran 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | > You know, they weren't the one to bring it up and their point seems to have consistently been that the majority of the global population does not speak English. While that has consistently been their point, it's also wrong. Their bar for "speaking English" is "Native Language". Absolutely no one uses that as a bar when talking about how many people can consume content in $LANGUAGE. | | |
| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 5 months ago | parent [-] | | That is not their bar. Read this more carefully: > 1/3 of the global population is at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers. 1/3 of the population speaks English “at all” (by which they mean speaking fluently, not learning) and 380 million people (roughly 5% of the population) is native. Not trying to throw shade at anyone but it’s really... not hard for a reader to pause a little when one reads something that sounds wrong; it’s possible the reader misread. It’s even in the guidelines under different words: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. There was a lot of failure to follow to this guideline in this comment thread. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Plurality of the world (25%) and a larger plurality of the internet-connected world (37%, [1]) speak English. (Granted, most of TikTok’s market now probably doesn’t speak English.) [1] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/pages/stat/default.a... | | |
| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | > majority of the global population does not speak English > Plurality of the world ... speak English Sorry, what point are you trying to make? | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which was my original comment… |
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| ▲ | lelanthran 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | >>> 2/3 of the global population doesn’t speak English. ... > there’s only 380 million native English speakers. So? Having only 1/3 of the planet speak English natively is not the same as 2/3 of the planet not speaking English at all. |
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| ▲ | shortrounddev2 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | As their first language, perhaps | | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | There are only about 400 million native English speakers. You can't just add up the population of English speaking countries, because that excludes immigrants living in these countries, and people born there who did not learn English as their first language. As for people who learned it later, even in Europe, only about 40% self-identify as being able to speak English. If you visit places like China or Indonesia, you'll soon notice that very few people know more than a few basic words in English once you leave the tourist areas. | | |
| ▲ | whoistraitor 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | IMO first-or-not is moot. It’s estimated that around one billion people speak English to a reasonably fluent level. Included in that is many of the commonwealth countries in which English often holds second spot as a lingua franca (eg. India). It’s an incredibly global language. | | | |
| ▲ | permo-w 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | this is horseshit. Canada, the US and the UK alone have - minimum - 400 million. Australia has 25 million, Ireland 5, New Zealand 5, then there's the Anglophone African nations, plus a lot of the Carribbean. Nigeria on its own likely has 100 million native speakers of English | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Have you been to Nigeria? Not all Nigerians can speak English. But there are a lot who can. It honestly felt about 50/50 to me. And I see some other commenters saying that 60 million Nigerians have some ability to speak it. (But you need to think of that like if I was to say 60 million Americans have some ability to speak Spanish.) However, even for those with some facility with English,I don't know that I'd classify it as their native language. | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | As I've said, you can't just sum up populations. About 20% of the US population are immigrants. A lot of them won't speak English as their native language. Only about 60 million Nigerians speak English. Hausa is the most commonly spoken native language. Just because English is the official language doesn't mean that it's people's native language. I'm not just making stuff up. The 400 million number is from The Ethnologue, a source which linguists generally consider as reliable. | | |
| ▲ | permo-w 6 months ago | parent [-] | | I'd like to see their working for that number. Let's say we subtract 20% from Canada + the UK + the US, we get ~320 million. add Nigeria and Uganda and you have easily 400 million. That's without Australia, Ireland, New Zealand or any of the African or Caribbean countries. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | > You have easily 400 million No you don’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria ~60 million people in Nigeria speak English out of 230 million people, but that 60 million isn’t almost exclusively native speakers. | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | There aren't that many native English speakers in Nigeria and Uganda. To me, it looks like your back-of-the-envelope calculation will come pretty close to 400 million. |
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| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s at all, there are only ~380 million native English speakers. Of that 1/3 (of the global population) a significant percentage have extremely limited skills, though the threshold is above knowing a few random words. | | |
| ▲ | shortrounddev2 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | If they are native English speakers, then how do they have extremely limited skills? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | I added clarification, but “that 1/3” refers to my prior mention of 1/3 as in 1/3 of the global population. | |
| ▲ | edoceo 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | American education. |
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| ▲ | adriancr 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Including people who speak English as a second language, estimates of the total number of Anglophones vary from 1.5 billion to 2 billion wikipedia. You are a bit off... As for native you have US+UK+Canada+Australia+NZ+Ireland. So more then your 380M. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country. | | |
| ▲ | switchbak 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Who cares if they're native English speakers or not, as long as they can converse in the language? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | shortrounddev2 who brought the topic up without knowing the numbers. |
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| ▲ | adriancr 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Source? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_immigration_stat... | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 6 months ago | parent [-] | | > aren’t native English speakers Where does it state this? Do you assume that all immigrants are non-native english speakers? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | By coming from different country their native language (IE what language they heard as infants) more closely resembles that country than America. Note I said 47 million and there are more than 47 million immigrants. There are also some native born Americans to immigrants who also don’t have English as their first language and People born in China whose first language is English, but that’s ever smaller refinements on a specific estimate. | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 6 months ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | Retric 6 months ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 6 months ago | parent [-] | | You made this statement which is wrong: > ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country. Your link says 46M total which includes native speakers. So it does not state how many non-native speakers. (not that it would matter as most would be proficient english speakers, just pointing out you're exagerating and your numbers are wrong) | | |
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