9 ms·

Whoah, 6.5 million native speakers! That's several orders of magnitude more than I was expecting. It's also significantly larger than the native-speaking popula

Whoah, 6.5 million native speakers! That's several orders of magnitude more than I was expecting. It's also significantly larger than the native-speaking populations of languages like Catalan, Basque, or Romansh, which might be more familiar to North Americans or Europeans.

victorlf 5y ago
Catalan has about 10 million speakers.
- pimterry 5y ago
  In total, yes, but only about 4 million _native_ speakers.
djoldman 5y ago
Or, 20x more than Icelandic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
- hkt 5y ago
  Without wishing to get political, is the difference that Iceland is a country but Guarani speakers don't have a nation-state of their own? Or something else?
  - interactivecode 5y ago
    The difference is completely and inherently political.
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      I think this is overly dismissive of other factors. Whether or not a language is supported by something on the Internet has a lot more to do with financial incentives than politics. If there were a huge consumer market clamoring to give their money to a site and the only barrier were language, it'd get exploited pretty quickly.
      - runarberg 5y ago
        No it has a lot to do with politics as well. A sovereign nation may find it important to have their languages supported widely on the internet so they might use some of the public funds into funding translation efforts and voice recognition/speech synthesizer contributions. I know the Icelandic government spends some money for this and it shows. This tiny language has way more support then other way more spoken languages. If the Norwegian government wanted I bet the Sámi languages could have just as good of a support as Icelandic. Or if the Greenlandic government had more funds available I bet we would see Kalaallisut in more places online.
        necovek 5y ago
        What you are saying is that a small, relatively rich country can invest in supporting their own language: that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial. It's also a good incentive for other big players (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to invest in a language that has prospective customers willing to spend more. Serbian government would certainly support Serbian language voice recognition and synthesis, but probably not with as much money as Iceland would.
        eropple 5y ago
        > that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial The idea that there is a difference between these two things is one of the more pernicious ones of the last hundred years. Money is power. The exercise of power is politics. They can't be separated.
        monocasa 5y ago
        > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. It certainly sounds like this is a political situation to me, almost to a tautology. The fact that these decisions was made on the basis of financial gain doesn't make them any less political.
        5y ago
  - singlow 5y ago
    I'm sure having a nation-state is a major factor, but I bet it also has to do with the average wealth, geographic location, historical alliances. However, I'd put my money on skin color as the biggest factor.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      As an example in favor of your conclusion, I propose Greenlandic. Geographically really close to Iceland, is the sole official language of an autonomous country, significant cultural heritage (with even a famous [possible] dwarf planet named after one of their historic gods). However—unlike Iceland—Greenland is not a wealthy country, and tend to have darker skin color then Icelanders.
      - puchatek 5y ago
        Autonomous territory, not a country.
        runarberg 5y ago
        You are being overly pedantic. Country is not a strictly defined term. Sometimes it is used as you imply here as sovereign states which Greenland is not, but often it is used for other political entities as well. E.g. you often hear people speak of Puerto Rico as a country, and you also hear people from the UK pride them self that they are a country of countries (the former singular “country” meaning sovereign states, and the latter plural “countries” something else). If the UK is a country of countries then Greenland is most certainly an autonomous country. The Wikipedia article for Greenland has the word “country” mentioned 14 times, so I’m certainly not the only using the term this way.
  - chudi 5y ago
    It's an official language of Paraguay
    - rudyfink 5y ago
      In case anyone else wanted to know more, there are, apparently, 2 official languages and the other is Spanish. https://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/pa00000_.html#A140_ https://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/pa00000_.html#A140_
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    Nation-states are political entities, so choosing languages by such a distinction would absolutely be political.
  - air7 5y ago
    Like any feature, perhaps it has to do with the volume of anticpated use vs the effort to support.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Note that Icelandic is currently not well supported either ("In progress" with 384/5000 sentences and 86% Localized). Actually, Guaraní is better supported at the moment, and quite a number of other common smaller-ish languages aren't well supported yet either such as Hebrew, Danish, and even Korean (which is not small or even small-ish at all). Some other smaller languages are, such as Breton or Irish. Overall, it's a bit inconsistent. I suppose that this is because in the end, these things depend on the number of people contributing; there's a reason Esperanto is near the top, as it has a very active community of enthusiasts who love to promote the language.
    - ftyers 5y ago
      It takes about a week to get the interface translated and to start collection, for any language with at least 5000 sentences in the public domain. I helped bootstrap Guarani and Breton and a few other languages spoken by friends of mine, but in the end, it just takes one or two people. I think in general there is a big difference in engagement if STT/ASR already exists for the language (e.g. Hebrew, Danish and Korean) and if it doesn't exist at all.
andrepd 5y ago
>It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual. Wow, I had no idea
kspacewalk2 5y ago
There are a number of Native American languages that have numerous speakers, but until recently have been marginalized, repressed and ignored (and some to this day). Guarani is the most numerous, but also Quechua, Nahuatl, and the various Mayan languages (spoken by around half of Guatemalans, and another 2.5 million Mexicans).
- klipt 5y ago
  I am shocked, shocked to learn that countries identifying as Latin America suppress non-Latin derived languages!
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    This is a very weird statement. The problem is not the Spanish language. The problem is a colonial peasant economy/society that turned into a post-colonial peasant society, with land-owning quasi-nobility ruling over disempowered (in this case, indigenous) laborers and freely exercising their power to steal, rape, kill, etc., without penalty; it is a situation more or less comparable to peasant societies around the world and throughout history, which are always very exploitative and often racist. Working class Spanish speakers living in towns were in many ways also economically exploited, but considered “better than indigenous people” to be a core part of their identities, and also felt free to beat them, steal from them, etc. where they found the opportunity. It’s a situation broadly comparable to race relations in the US south, where poor whites considered “better than blacks” to be a defining part of their identity. Perhaps counterintuitively, the history of exploitation of indigenous communities, and the way indigenous people were shut out of many social and economic activities, led to the preservation of native languages.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

victorlf 5y ago

Catalan has about 10 million speakers.

pimterry 5y ago
In total, yes, but only about 4 million _native_ speakers.

djoldman 5y ago

Or, 20x more than Icelandic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language

hkt 5y ago
Without wishing to get political, is the difference that Iceland is a country but Guarani speakers don't have a nation-state of their own? Or something else?
- interactivecode 5y ago
  The difference is completely and inherently political.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    I think this is overly dismissive of other factors. Whether or not a language is supported by something on the Internet has a lot more to do with financial incentives than politics. If there were a huge consumer market clamoring to give their money to a site and the only barrier were language, it'd get exploited pretty quickly.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      No it has a lot to do with politics as well. A sovereign nation may find it important to have their languages supported widely on the internet so they might use some of the public funds into funding translation efforts and voice recognition/speech synthesizer contributions. I know the Icelandic government spends some money for this and it shows. This tiny language has way more support then other way more spoken languages. If the Norwegian government wanted I bet the Sámi languages could have just as good of a support as Icelandic. Or if the Greenlandic government had more funds available I bet we would see Kalaallisut in more places online.
      - necovek 5y ago
        What you are saying is that a small, relatively rich country can invest in supporting their own language: that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial. It's also a good incentive for other big players (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to invest in a language that has prospective customers willing to spend more. Serbian government would certainly support Serbian language voice recognition and synthesis, but probably not with as much money as Iceland would.
        eropple 5y ago
        > that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial The idea that there is a difference between these two things is one of the more pernicious ones of the last hundred years. Money is power. The exercise of power is politics. They can't be separated.
        monocasa 5y ago
        > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. It certainly sounds like this is a political situation to me, almost to a tautology. The fact that these decisions was made on the basis of financial gain doesn't make them any less political.
      - 5y ago
- singlow 5y ago
  I'm sure having a nation-state is a major factor, but I bet it also has to do with the average wealth, geographic location, historical alliances. However, I'd put my money on skin color as the biggest factor.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    As an example in favor of your conclusion, I propose Greenlandic. Geographically really close to Iceland, is the sole official language of an autonomous country, significant cultural heritage (with even a famous [possible] dwarf planet named after one of their historic gods). However—unlike Iceland—Greenland is not a wealthy country, and tend to have darker skin color then Icelanders.
    - puchatek 5y ago
      Autonomous territory, not a country.
      - runarberg 5y ago
        You are being overly pedantic. Country is not a strictly defined term. Sometimes it is used as you imply here as sovereign states which Greenland is not, but often it is used for other political entities as well. E.g. you often hear people speak of Puerto Rico as a country, and you also hear people from the UK pride them self that they are a country of countries (the former singular “country” meaning sovereign states, and the latter plural “countries” something else). If the UK is a country of countries then Greenland is most certainly an autonomous country. The Wikipedia article for Greenland has the word “country” mentioned 14 times, so I’m certainly not the only using the term this way.
- chudi 5y ago
  It's an official language of Paraguay
  - rudyfink 5y ago
    In case anyone else wanted to know more, there are, apparently, 2 official languages and the other is Spanish. https://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/pa00000_.html#A140_ https://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/pa00000_.html#A140_
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Nation-states are political entities, so choosing languages by such a distinction would absolutely be political.
- air7 5y ago
  Like any feature, perhaps it has to do with the volume of anticpated use vs the effort to support.
- arp242 5y ago
  Note that Icelandic is currently not well supported either ("In progress" with 384/5000 sentences and 86% Localized). Actually, Guaraní is better supported at the moment, and quite a number of other common smaller-ish languages aren't well supported yet either such as Hebrew, Danish, and even Korean (which is not small or even small-ish at all). Some other smaller languages are, such as Breton or Irish. Overall, it's a bit inconsistent. I suppose that this is because in the end, these things depend on the number of people contributing; there's a reason Esperanto is near the top, as it has a very active community of enthusiasts who love to promote the language.
  - ftyers 5y ago
    It takes about a week to get the interface translated and to start collection, for any language with at least 5000 sentences in the public domain. I helped bootstrap Guarani and Breton and a few other languages spoken by friends of mine, but in the end, it just takes one or two people. I think in general there is a big difference in engagement if STT/ASR already exists for the language (e.g. Hebrew, Danish and Korean) and if it doesn't exist at all.

andrepd 5y ago

>It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual. Wow, I had no idea

kspacewalk2 5y ago

There are a number of Native American languages that have numerous speakers, but until recently have been marginalized, repressed and ignored (and some to this day). Guarani is the most numerous, but also Quechua, Nahuatl, and the various Mayan languages (spoken by around half of Guatemalans, and another 2.5 million Mexicans).

klipt 5y ago
I am shocked, shocked to learn that countries identifying as Latin America suppress non-Latin derived languages!
- jacobolus 5y ago
  This is a very weird statement. The problem is not the Spanish language. The problem is a colonial peasant economy/society that turned into a post-colonial peasant society, with land-owning quasi-nobility ruling over disempowered (in this case, indigenous) laborers and freely exercising their power to steal, rape, kill, etc., without penalty; it is a situation more or less comparable to peasant societies around the world and throughout history, which are always very exploitative and often racist. Working class Spanish speakers living in towns were in many ways also economically exploited, but considered “better than indigenous people” to be a core part of their identities, and also felt free to beat them, steal from them, etc. where they found the opportunity. It’s a situation broadly comparable to race relations in the US south, where poor whites considered “better than blacks” to be a defining part of their identity. Perhaps counterintuitively, the history of exploitation of indigenous communities, and the way indigenous people were shut out of many social and economic activities, led to the preservation of native languages.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]