number of languages vs number of speakers

[leosmith]

I'd like to know approximately how many people in the world can speak 9 languages. I've never seen a "number of languages vs number of speakers" chart. Have you?

[aokoye]

I feel like I've seen charts or at the very least lists but not necessarily of which languages people speak. If I've seen said lists/charts they've been in textbooks so I'll try to look later this week. In terms of 9 languages, I don't know that very many people have the utilitarian need to speak 9 languages. Or rather, I suspect that aren't many areas in which speaking 9 languages is going to be of much use in terms of one's immediate needs.

I mean I think one way to figure this out by country would be to do the math "ok there are this many people who live in X country, this many people speak A language, this many people speak B language, this many people speak C language" and so on. It's crude and easyish to poke holes in though.

[Stefan]

EU made a report named Europeans and their Languages (pdf) in which they go through these kind of stats. Not only how many that speaks multiple langues but also which languages are most common in different countries. They only go up o four languages though.

-) Only native language - 44%
-) at least 1 foreign language - 56%
-) at least 2 foreign languages - 28%
-) at least 3 foreign languages - 11%

Not exactly what you're looking for but I believe it will be difficult to find good data on as many as nine languages considering it's so unique that few researchers care to put it into a form. I might be wrong though.

[stelingo]

Any particular reason why you are interested in 9? Seems pretty random.

[reineke]

Worldwide share of mono/bi/tri/tetra/penta/xxx-linguals

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2111&hilit=Penta

[nooj]

I dont think youll find that kind of information.

However, i can tell you that in pre-colonisation and post-colonisation australia, many australian aboriginal peiple were/are highly multilingual, due in part to a cultural practice of exogamy, and cultural expectations of learning languages. This means that there were/still are people who speak upwards of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 languages. As australian languages die out, that period is fast coming to an end.

[YtownPolyglot]

This is going to open up some cans of worms.

How do we define languages? Do you count Afrikaans, Dutch and Flemish as three separate languages? How about Norwegian, Swedish and Danish? Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian?

And then how well do you have to speak a language to be able to count it? A slippery command of related languages is not the same thing as a native speaker of Icelandic who speaks nearly native Navajo.

There are probably a higher number of people in touristy areas than you might expect who can handle nine different languages for the purposes of selling souvenirs, checking tourists into rooms or driving a cab. They are impressive within their specialty vocabulary, but don't expect any really deep or meaningful conversation.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

I'd have to agree with some of the points put forward.

What counts as "speaking" a language? B2? Speaking only? Daily conversation? Specialized topics?

There are a few places where one could maybe find fantastically multi-lingual people (aside from here XD) such as multi-language call centers or perhaps people who work for the Foreign service (I'm not sure if it has the same name outside the United States), or perhaps the UN. But by the same token, then same types of people probably cap functionally at around ~4 because of the level of language use that they need.

As stated earlier, in heavily tourist areas, or particularly multicultural places one may meet tour guides, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, desk clerks and similar persons who can handle basic questions and answers in many, many languages, perhaps up to that 9. But can they talk about their family and their hobbies? Perhaps not. Probably not.

As this is a language learning forum, which one would probably assume would actively attract aggressively multi-lingual people, what percent of active members here have a good command of 9 languages? I would assume that a global distribution would be almost guaranteed to be smaller. If approx 11% of people speak 3 foreign languages (4 total) and we assume that the decrease here is linear (it seems to me that for every language after the first one, there is some kind of decay) then we can expect no more than 0.34375% of people to speak at least 9 languages (native + 8). If there are 7 billion people on the planet, that would be at the absolute most 1/4 Million people.

But of course, Europe doesn't adequately model the foreign language learning of other parts of the world, for example America where one fluent language seems the overwhelming norm. It seems that there would therefore be far less than a quarter million people. Just based on intuition I would assume that it's very, very low. Perhaps I'm being pessimistic, but maybe less than 100 living persons?

[leosmith]

If approx 11% of people speak 3 foreign languages (4 total) and we assume that the decrease here is linear (it seems to me that for every language after the first one, there is some kind of decay) then we can expect no more than 0.34375% of people to speak at least 9 languages (native + 8). If there are 7 billion people on the planet, that would be at the absolute most 1/4 Million people.

It's not linear. Using a best fit exponential decay equation for (100,1), (56,2), (28,3) & (11,4) would allow us to predict a value at (x, 9), I think. Unfortunately the only free tool I could find for this predicted about 6% (420 million), which is obviously too high. I think multiplying the percentage by (1/3) for each additional language beyond 4 will yield a conservatively large result. This would predict .11(1/3**5)(7 billion) = 3.2 million.

(equation edited per SophiaMerlin_II's corrections)

[smallwhite]

It's not linear. Using a best fit exponential decay equation for (100,1), (56,2), (28,3) & (11,4) would allow us to predict a value at (x, 9), I think. Unfortunately the only free tool I could find for this predicted about 6% (420 million), which is obviously too high. I think multiplying the percentage by (1/3) for each additional language beyond 4 will yield a conservatively large result. This would predict 11(1/(3*5))(7 billion) = 3.2 million.

Should not include (100,1)?
Should use numbers and not percentages?