| ▲ | Retric 13 hours ago |
| 2/3 of the global population doesn’t speak English. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 13 hours 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 |
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| ▲ | Retric 12 hours 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 11 hours 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 13 hours 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. |
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| ▲ | Retric 12 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That doesn't sound accurate. Did you mean as a first language? |
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| ▲ | coltonweaver 13 hours 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 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/266808/the-most-spoken-l... | |
| ▲ | Retric 13 hours 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 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | > 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 12 hours 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 11 hours 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 |
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| ▲ | Retric 13 hours 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 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, we understand what a first language is. You should understand why that’s irrelevant to this discussion. | | |
| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 12 hours 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. | | |
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| ▲ | shortrounddev2 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| As their first language, perhaps |
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| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 13 hours 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 12 hours 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 12 hours 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 | | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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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| ▲ | bilbo0s 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | Retric 13 hours 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. | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country. | | |
| ▲ | switchbak 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Who cares if they're native English speakers or not, as long as they can converse in the language? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | shortrounddev2 who brought the topic up without knowing the numbers. |
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| ▲ | adriancr 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Source? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_immigration_stat... | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | > aren’t native English speakers Where does it state this? Do you assume that all immigrants are non-native english speakers? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 12 hours 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 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | Retric 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | adriancr 11 hours 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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| ▲ | shortrounddev2 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If they are native English speakers, then how do they have extremely limited skills? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 12 hours 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 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | American education. |
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