I like what Ethnologue do , and the amount of accurate material on their database, but I'm not paying nearly 500 dollars a year for it. Does anybody here know how I can view the hidden content without paying?
I'm getting seemingly inconsistent statements from a paper and from Ethnologue.
Bennett et al. (2015) say:
> Official census estimates suggest that about 40% of Guatemalans speak a Mayan language natively; this almost certainly underestimates the actual percentage of native Mayan speakers in the country, which is likely 50β60% or higher (Fischer and Brown, 1996a; England 2003)
(emph added)
In contrast, Ethnologue 2021 says this about Spanish:
> Spanish [spa] (Castellano, EspaΓ±ol). Autonym: Castellano, EspaΓ±ol. Users: 15,840,000 in Guatemala, all users. L1 users: 12,100,000 in Guatemala (2018 World Factbook). L2 users: 3,740,000 (2018)
(emph added)
So Ethnologue says that only 23.6% of Guatemalans speak a language other than Spanish as L1.
How do I explain this apparent discrepancy? Does it have to do with a distinction between βnative languageβ and βL1β? Is it just that Ethnologue has a more recent source? Is such a big difference (50-60% down to 23%) possible?
Sources
-
Bennett, R., Coon, J., & Henderson, R. (2016). Introduction to Mayan linguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass, 10(10), 455-468.
-
Fischer, E. F., & Brown, R. M. (1996). Introduction: Maya cultural activism in Guatemala. Maya cultural activism in Guatemala, 1-18.
-
England, N. C. (2003). Mayan language revival and revitalization politics: Linguists and linguistic ideologies. American anthropologist, 105(4), 733-743.
According to wikidata, Javanese's locations include Egypt, New Caledonia, Mauritania, Morroco and Saudi Arabia. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33549 says that this was sourced from the Ethnologue.
Can anyone with a subscription confirm / deny this? And if it is true, does anyone know how this came about?
https://www.ethnologue.com/country/in
I remember I once asked them for a list ranking the top 500 or the top 1000 spoken languages and they wanted to charge over $4,000!
(I posted this as a picture at first, but it was removed by Automoderator for being "low effort".)
These are the prices for monthly subscriptions to Ethnologue.com: https://i.redd.it/i8gnkgdcg3a51.png
I used to use Ethnologue.com a lot back in the day. It was a great resource for learning more about the world's languages and their classification. However, within the past few years they have put the content behind a paywall. It's a bit understandable that they would do that in order to try and cover some costs, but what's not understandable are the prices they set for the service. A thousand dollars per month for the "standard" package?
Note that the prices are a bit cheaper if you go for the yearly plan, but they're still simply outrageously high.
So does anyone know any alternative sources that have the same sort of info that Ethnologue did? I know of Linguist List and Glottolog, are there any more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
5.994% of Earthlings are native English speakers and 4.922% of the world are native Spanish speakers. That's nearly 11% but I'm going to be humble and say 10% because I'm not a snob or anything.
Eat shit, monolingual losers! / TΓΊ eres una manzana!
April fools, my loves.
I understand that it's a convenient and quick resource. But surely the quality of the information is terrible.
Look at the entry for Germany, for example.
Languages in Germany have been studied to excess; there is enough literature about linguistics in Germany to fill several libraries. Yet half of the information in the Ethnologue is wrong.
-
Two languages are each listed twice under two different names: Eastern Frisian / Saterfriesisch; Plautdietsch / Low Saxon
-
They list a dialect that is a subgrouping of another dialect in the same list: Westphalian is a part of Low Saxon
-
Some recognized German dialects are listed (Swabian, Bavarian, MainfrΓ€nkisch,...) -- others are unexplicably missing (MoselfrΓ€nkisch, ThΓΌringisch, ...)
-
The level of breakdown is arbitrary: the Upper German dialects are broken into several entitities: Swabian, Swiss German, Bavarian. But Low Saxon, which is generally considered on the same level as Upper German, is listed as one entity rather than being broken down into its dialects.
-
They list Yeniche, which isn't a language or dialect at all, but a jargon.
-
They list one random extinct language: Frankish. Why? Why not any other extinct ones, such as Polabian, which existed much more recently?
-
for Alemannic they use the misleading and improper name of Swiss German
So, their method of operation seems to be to collect languages they find in various books into one list, without any attempt at understanding what these books say or any effort at checking if the data make sense.
Do your worst!
It really does, I swear!
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies π
Theyβre on standbi
Buenosdillas
Pilot on me!!
