From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,FREEMAIL_FROM, INVALID_MSGID,LOTS_OF_MONEY,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: "Joseph Santaniello" Subject: Re: English SUCKS, Chinese is the only language you need!! Date: 1997/11/20 Message-ID: <651f78$rj2$4@news1.sol.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 291004409 References: <34557f2b.1934172@news.mindspring.com> <3473723c.200248081@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <34737E7F.9D5@mWilden.com> <3475921d.208410468@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <650e6p$ahv$1@darla.visi.com> Organization: SOL Internett Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-11-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <650e6p$ahv$1@darla.visi.com>, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: >>>> of Mandarin (999 million) as of English (487 million). > >>It's from the 1997 Almanac (from Microsoft Bookshelf) and the figures >>are for mid 1996. > >>These figures include non-native speaker. > >I have a hard time believing this one. Just about all of the U.S., >most of Canada, all of the U.K., a third of Europe, and a large portion >of Asia, speak English, at least as a second language. 487 sounds about right if you figure the poulations for the areas you mention are "about" as follows: US 270M, Canada 29M, UK 58M, 1/3 Europe 150M, and half of Japan (optimistic) 70M, Australia 15M (?). Plus everybody else in Asia who maybe speaks English still falls way below 999M for Mandarin. Joe