From rlpowell@csclub.uwaterloo.ca Sun Sep 17 20:02:25 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 14591 invoked from network); 18 Sep 2000 03:02:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 18 Sep 2000 03:02:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca) (129.97.134.11) by mta3 with SMTP; 18 Sep 2000 03:02:19 -0000 Received: from calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA27476 for ; Sun, 17 Sep 2000 23:04:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200009180304.XAA27476@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Oblique Strategies In-Reply-To: Message from John Cowan of "Fri, 15 Sep 2000 18:48:24 EDT." Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 23:04:51 -0400 X-eGroups-From: Robin Lee Powell From: Robin Lee Powell John Cowan writes: > After a little research, I discovered that the half- dozen most > widely spoken languages, together, were known to more than half > of the world's population. (It's interesting to try to guess > what these languages are; the mistakes in our guessing tell us a > lot about our cultural and geographic myopia. The top half-dozen > languages: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian > and Arabic. Among people I've talked to, most of their missed > guesses appear in the second half-dozen: Japanese, French, > German, Portuguese, Bengali, and Malay. Score six for Europe, > five for Asia -- including two in India; and Malay which almost > no Westerner would guess -- and one for Arabia. None for highly > balkanized Africa.) > >It seems to me that the source of this listing has to be Lojban, >since the exact order of languages depends on what your source is and how you count 2nd-language speakers (we reckon them as half >a speaker). The grouping into Top Six and Second Six is also >plainly Lojbanic: TLI Loglan has a Top Eight instead. Interesting. I dug a bit myself, and found that the Ethnologue has a _very_ different order: http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html. I can't find the site I used to use, which was much more nicely laid out. -Robin -- http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. Despite not getting very emotional about it, the fact that quantum entanglement doesn't allow transmission of information is probably the most profound dissapointment I've ever experienced. -- RLPowell