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if you tell people in Argentina, the U.S., Macau and Nigeria that they are European What? Nobody was saying anything of the sort. Brazil has a large populati

if you tell people in Argentina, the U.S., Macau and Nigeria that they are European What? Nobody was saying anything of the sort. Brazil has a large population of ethnic Japanese. A number of them are able to speak Japanese. That doesn't make Japanese a Brazilian language. Nor does it make those born and raised in Brazil Japanese, aside from discussions of ethnicity.

jarek 15y ago
Okay, let's back up a bit. My point in stating that some European languages are also "non-European" was that learning them gives a larger, partially-non-European audience and thus more motivation (economic, cultural, what have you). Even to an European, there is a difference between learning a language spoken by 45 million people on their continent and a language spoken by 350 million people worldwide. By the simple proximity/diversity theory, a whole lot more Swedes would be learning Polish right now - this is not happening to say the least.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  How about Finnish/Norwegian? If the proximity theory holds no water, then I would expect that even though every Norwegian is within something like 200 miles of Sweden, you'd see almost no Norwegians speaking Swedish.
  - jarek 15y ago
    I'm not sure if these are the best of examples. Norwegian and Swedish are by and large mutually intelligible, probably on a level comparable to Australian and U.S. English. Norwegians essentially are speaking Swedish, without trying. Finland has had a large (currently ~5%) Swedish-speaking minority for a long time. While a large amount (~50%) of Finnish-mother-tongue Finns can speak Swedish, this is expected given the Swedish minority, the previously large and prestigious role of Swedish in Finland, the relative populations (~5M vs ~9M for Sweden), and the relative linguistic isolation of Finnish. I wouldn't claim the proximity theory holds no water - it's just not the entire story.

jarek 15y ago

Okay, let's back up a bit. My point in stating that some European languages are also "non-European" was that learning them gives a larger, partially-non-European audience and thus more motivation (economic, cultural, what have you). Even to an European, there is a difference between learning a language spoken by 45 million people on their continent and a language spoken by 350 million people worldwide. By the simple proximity/diversity theory, a whole lot more Swedes would be learning Polish right now - this is not happening to say the least.

sliverstorm 15y ago
How about Finnish/Norwegian? If the proximity theory holds no water, then I would expect that even though every Norwegian is within something like 200 miles of Sweden, you'd see almost no Norwegians speaking Swedish.
- jarek 15y ago
  I'm not sure if these are the best of examples. Norwegian and Swedish are by and large mutually intelligible, probably on a level comparable to Australian and U.S. English. Norwegians essentially are speaking Swedish, without trying. Finland has had a large (currently ~5%) Swedish-speaking minority for a long time. While a large amount (~50%) of Finnish-mother-tongue Finns can speak Swedish, this is expected given the Swedish minority, the previously large and prestigious role of Swedish in Finland, the relative populations (~5M vs ~9M for Sweden), and the relative linguistic isolation of Finnish. I wouldn't claim the proximity theory holds no water - it's just not the entire story.