In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country.
For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Or just color coded from white to 100% of that color based on the number of speakers in that country. A language being one of the official languages of the country doesn't guarantee that it will be useful in traveling that country, only that it will be useful when interacting with the government.
Agree and think the use of data on what languages are spoken and by how many people would help. This app would be vastly improved by the incorporation of more data in general. At least language differences in the administrative divisions of countries should be reflected. Entering Punjabi gets you all of India, which I am doubtful of. I wanted to see if Malayalam does as well, but it is not in the list. Entering French also gets you all of Canada rather than just Quebec and maybe pockets in New Brunswick and Manitoba. Cantonese is not in the list. It is good though and I don't mean to knock it, only to suggest how it could be extended.
Can confirm, here it'll be problematic for one to speak in English with anyone younger than 16 / older than 40 and/or outside major population centers. (though in my experience, its the same situation with English in Austria and Russian in Latvia/Lithuania).
Been to Russia a few times the last 2 years, for a total of a few months, and my English was useless. My German was decidedly more useful, even if just to understand Rucksack, Butterbrot and Schlagbaum.
I'm from the US and I've traveled to ~10 countries which I didn't speak the native language.
In some countries the locals are able to communicate in English/Spanish, and in others, not so much. What would be interesting to see is what % (or an estimate) of the locals can communicate in one of the languages you know (that's probably a hard problem to solve and not sure if the data is readily available) vs whether it's the official language.
Highlighting proportions via color intensity would help.
But this information is buried deep down in Google and Facebook and is sometimes outright illegal to disseminate (like in French vs Dutch at the level of Belgian municipalities).
Before Cambridge Analytica scandal Facebook business accounts had access to numbers down to a few thousand with regards to the interface language.
I remember that some 80% of Ukrainians used Russian as interface language in their Facebook, and in Brussels, Dutch was on par with English.
Interface language != spoken language. If you are Ukrainian you might choose an interface in Russian or English for many reasons, familiarity, quality, etc. Maybe they don’t want to context-switch.
For most Ukrainians, Russian is (was?) a happy medium between being a language that they understand, and a language that is well supported in localizations.
I speak en-GB but I prefer an interface in en-US. Yet if you asked me to speak en-US with all its grammatical, lexical and phonological differences intact I would fail because my understanding is read-only.
en_GB vs en_US is largely a locale choice. Many developers in EU choose en_IE to have English translations, €, Monday 1st day of the week and comma as fractional separator.
Ukrainian vs Russian is a cultural choice. I sm sure that 80/20 ratio is old news by now, anyway.
The problem with using official languages and only going country-level is it excludes minority languages that still have tens of millions of speakers across multiple countries.
india has many languages and many state languages are unique to the state...
if i speak my state's language - highly likely i don't speak language of the neighboring state, but OP painted india with one broad brush
Seems to be based on official languages, which does not always reflect ease of communication. Entering "French" highlights all of Canada (rather than just Quebec). Good luck speaking French in British Columbia. Nice looking site tho
Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus.
Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several regions have no overlap (script could be same between them). I can understand some Mandarin but Cantonese is alien. That is true for their own people too. Chinese don't speak 'Macau'. I am not even getting into India at this point. That's completely chaotic.
This kind of infographic in broad strokes can sometimes be hurtful to some of the people. Not that I have any strong opinions but OP should know this.
Eh. That isn't what the comment you replied to is saying. It's enough that it easily puts it with some of the other places that are highlighted as English.
The site says "enter the languages you speak below to see with how many parts of the world you can communicate". Quite misleading.
This is exactly what I came in to come in about. English is a second language is learned in many places, whether from school, business, movies, or song,
This is higher than Canada and a number of Anglophone Caribbean islands. Admittedly Finland is lagging at 75%, but we can also consider Iceland at 98%.
I'm confused by how this data is being generated. For example, India is tagged with Punjabi, but somehow not Bengali, even though the latter is the second most widely spoken language in India, with about three times as many speakers.
Ironically, Punjabi would be way more useful in Pakistan, where it's actually the most common first language, but Pakistan is tagged only with Urdu (and no other language).
I'm also skeptical of the "physical safety" tags; they seem inconsistent as well in a way that's difficult to reconcile.
OP does not list all the major languages either. I have a feeling that, just the four main southern languages & its dialects will outrank all northern European languages combined (except English technically)
> Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus.
Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both parts, Scandinavians can usually communicate with other Scandinavians in different languages. I am Norwegian, and if I meet a Swede, we can just talk with each other. I can't talk Swedish fluently, but I can understand Swedish to such a degree that it's no problem to speak with a Swede who is speaking Swedish.
However, this relationship of understanding languages can be asymmetric, and it's not always as easy for a Swede to understand a Norwegian as it is for a Norwegian to understand a Swede.
This is interesting & its factually true from personal experience. I feel Norwegian is a sister language but bit more complicated than Swedish. Since they have similar roots, the grammar structure is same & it is easy to follow some degree of either. However, the foreign influence on Swedish over ages, has made it phonetically simpler.
The asymmetry exists, but ideas interchange easy enough because of common roots (except Finnish which sounds like Hungarian surprisingly).
I wonder how the native language correlates with proper English as a learned language.
All of the Scandinavians I spoke about had a wonderful pronunciation of English. They may have had an accent, but the English words were not distorted by their language, and not was the grammar.
On contrast, French often speak what I call a "lazy English". We tend to pronounce words as if they were in French and the structure of the sentence is very similar to French. This really looks like the Latin translations we did at school: translate the sentence word by word and stick the beth eat the end :)
It may be that the Scandinavian languages are more "compatible" with English (wildly guessing, with a lot of hand waving :))
It makes sense when you think about how much of English history is influenced by the presence of Danish raiders and kingdoms. I live near a place called Dane Hill for example.
In the Northern dialects and Scotland there are even more influences. For example in Scots dialect a kirk is a church, etc.
I’ve read that there are at least 900 English words that come from Danish and several hundred more that are suspected to be.[1]
Datter, arm, hus in Danish is daughter, arm and house in English, etc. it’s also why we have often two words with the same meaning (ie. anger and wrath or ill and sick).
It's so much more nuanced than this. I spent much time in Turkey and met people from Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and other Central Asian countries. All the Turkic languages are all mutually intelligible.
By knowing English, you can communicate with most of the world, because almost every country teaches English as a foreign language. For example, more than half of the popuation of Europe can easily communicate in English. I've seen that in Netherlands they already prefer English to Dutch when they talk to each other.
I know 3 foreign languages and I think it's a waste of time to learn more, because if a person is not literate enough to communicate in English, I have nothing to talk to them about.
While it's true that most people in the Netherlands speak English (at some level), it's really not true that Dutch people prefer to speak to each other in English when everyone present speaks Dutch.
The "Celebrities That Speak The Same Number Of Languages As You" is a little bit cringe since it doesn't show you the "celebrities" that show the same exact languages that you speak, which also makes it a little meaningless in my opinion.
1. the US isn't included for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 41 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about six million students. Estimates range from 41 million to over 50 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers.
2. Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
3. the combination of these two makes me unclear on what you mean by "parts of the world you can communicate". Is this just a coloring of what countries legally recognize the language you entered? That's.... not really very useful or reflective of what the user of a site like this wants to know.
Your Esperanto claim is flatly ridiculous. I will happily put money on the claim that there are exactly 0 countries with more Esperanto speakers than English speakers.
> Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
Are there places in the world where you'd start a sentence with "Pardonu, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?
First thing I checked for was Equatorial Guinea with Spanish selected. It's there! The official languages make that easy. What's trickier is places where a lot of people speak English but it's not an official language.
I'd like to go to Equatorial Guinea. It isn't heavily touristed and requires a visa. Nevertheless I searched it on YouTube and watched some videos and it sounds like an interesting place, and I liked the accent.
English - in China there is more English speakers than in rest of the world so not sure what is criteria (100% of people must speak?)
Serbia - missing Croatia / missing Montenegro it is the same language (officially it is called Serbo-Croatian).
Slovenia can understand and Macedonia as well ...
Crazy how physical safety in the United States is so low, makes sense these days as cars are ubiquitous and frequently in accidents, and people might kill you for economic or mental health reasons.
114 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] threadFor example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Can confirm, here it'll be problematic for one to speak in English with anyone younger than 16 / older than 40 and/or outside major population centers. (though in my experience, its the same situation with English in Austria and Russian in Latvia/Lithuania).
I'm from the US and I've traveled to ~10 countries which I didn't speak the native language.
In some countries the locals are able to communicate in English/Spanish, and in others, not so much. What would be interesting to see is what % (or an estimate) of the locals can communicate in one of the languages you know (that's probably a hard problem to solve and not sure if the data is readily available) vs whether it's the official language.
But this information is buried deep down in Google and Facebook and is sometimes outright illegal to disseminate (like in French vs Dutch at the level of Belgian municipalities).
Before Cambridge Analytica scandal Facebook business accounts had access to numbers down to a few thousand with regards to the interface language.
I remember that some 80% of Ukrainians used Russian as interface language in their Facebook, and in Brussels, Dutch was on par with English.
For most Ukrainians, Russian is (was?) a happy medium between being a language that they understand, and a language that is well supported in localizations.
I speak en-GB but I prefer an interface in en-US. Yet if you asked me to speak en-US with all its grammatical, lexical and phonological differences intact I would fail because my understanding is read-only.
Ukrainian vs Russian is a cultural choice. I sm sure that 80/20 ratio is old news by now, anyway.
> Pirahã is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers.
Perhaps it’s there on the map, but we don’t see it, because the dot is so small and hard to find.
Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several regions have no overlap (script could be same between them). I can understand some Mandarin but Cantonese is alien. That is true for their own people too. Chinese don't speak 'Macau'. I am not even getting into India at this point. That's completely chaotic.
This kind of infographic in broad strokes can sometimes be hurtful to some of the people. Not that I have any strong opinions but OP should know this.
The site says "enter the languages you speak below to see with how many parts of the world you can communicate". Quite misleading.
Norway: 90%; Sweden: 90%; Denmark 86%.
This is higher than Canada and a number of Anglophone Caribbean islands. Admittedly Finland is lagging at 75%, but we can also consider Iceland at 98%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
I'd say maybe 50% are fluent, and that's heavily slanted toward the younger side of the population curve.
I'm confused by how this data is being generated. For example, India is tagged with Punjabi, but somehow not Bengali, even though the latter is the second most widely spoken language in India, with about three times as many speakers.
Ironically, Punjabi would be way more useful in Pakistan, where it's actually the most common first language, but Pakistan is tagged only with Urdu (and no other language).
I'm also skeptical of the "physical safety" tags; they seem inconsistent as well in a way that's difficult to reconcile.
Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both parts, Scandinavians can usually communicate with other Scandinavians in different languages. I am Norwegian, and if I meet a Swede, we can just talk with each other. I can't talk Swedish fluently, but I can understand Swedish to such a degree that it's no problem to speak with a Swede who is speaking Swedish.
However, this relationship of understanding languages can be asymmetric, and it's not always as easy for a Swede to understand a Norwegian as it is for a Norwegian to understand a Swede.
Check out this video on asymmetric language understanding from NativLang for more about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E042GHlUgoQ
The asymmetry exists, but ideas interchange easy enough because of common roots (except Finnish which sounds like Hungarian surprisingly).
All of the Scandinavians I spoke about had a wonderful pronunciation of English. They may have had an accent, but the English words were not distorted by their language, and not was the grammar.
On contrast, French often speak what I call a "lazy English". We tend to pronounce words as if they were in French and the structure of the sentence is very similar to French. This really looks like the Latin translations we did at school: translate the sentence word by word and stick the beth eat the end :)
It may be that the Scandinavian languages are more "compatible" with English (wildly guessing, with a lot of hand waving :))
In the Northern dialects and Scotland there are even more influences. For example in Scots dialect a kirk is a church, etc.
I’ve read that there are at least 900 English words that come from Danish and several hundred more that are suspected to be.[1]
Datter, arm, hus in Danish is daughter, arm and house in English, etc. it’s also why we have often two words with the same meaning (ie. anger and wrath or ill and sick).
It's so much more nuanced than this. I spent much time in Turkey and met people from Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and other Central Asian countries. All the Turkic languages are all mutually intelligible.
I know 3 foreign languages and I think it's a waste of time to learn more, because if a person is not literate enough to communicate in English, I have nothing to talk to them about.
I agree, I have the same with quantum physics and Middle-Age French.
I mean, duh, Kim Kardashian does speak English.
1. the US isn't included for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 41 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about six million students. Estimates range from 41 million to over 50 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers.
2. Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.
3. the combination of these two makes me unclear on what you mean by "parts of the world you can communicate". Is this just a coloring of what countries legally recognize the language you entered? That's.... not really very useful or reflective of what the user of a site like this wants to know.
Are there places in the world where you'd start a sentence with "Pardonu, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?
I'd like to go to Equatorial Guinea. It isn't heavily touristed and requires a visa. Nevertheless I searched it on YouTube and watched some videos and it sounds like an interesting place, and I liked the accent.
In Florida, I came across spanish speaking people who did not know English. That experience was surreal.
For example, Sindhi is a language spoken in just one province. Punjabi is a language native to two provinces in two countries.