Talk:Languages by speakers

Disambiguation
I suggest that this either be a disambiguation page, or that it be deleted, so that it will not show up as a result when typing into the search box (it might not be eligible for deletion, if it has important history). It is my belief that people who type this are not looking for the Lists of languages article, which this previously redirected to. If that is going to be the redirect target, the article needs to be adjusted so that people can easily find what they are looking for, near the top of the article, which I believe to be these articles:
 * List of languages by number of native speakers
 * List of languages by total number of speakers

If you believe that I am mistaken, please change or revert my edit. I can be as stupid as the next guy, and I will prove it if I must. However, it would be nice if you explain why you make the change that you do. A good edit summary might work, depending on the change. Thanks, --Kjkolb (talk) 08:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Encarta as a source?
That's interesting that Encarta 2006 is listed as a source... but what's Encarta's source? Last I checked encyclopedia's themselves are not primary sources. RobertM525 20:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Faroese
Faroese is missing. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 05:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Faroese is spoken by only 50 or 60 thousand speakers; none of the languages listed in these tables is spoken by less than 100,000 speakers. Mcswell (talk) 16:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Luxemburgish
Luxemburgish is missing too. It has 390000 speakers. --83.222.39.164 (talk) 00:18, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Table columns
The table columns differ among the various tables; the first one lists Encarta, then the Ethnologue, while the next one lists the Ethnologue, then the SIL estimate (which is doubly odd, since the Ethnologue comes from SIL). The first table ranks by Encarta's estimate, the second one by the Ethnologue, and the third one's ranking is unattributed.

Also, the numbered footnote from the so-called SIL estimates in the second and third tables links to a footnote which is actually about Encarta.

The third and following tables list the official status of each language, while the first and second do not. Possibly this is because the largest languages are official in certain countries, but (a) that's not true for all of them (Punjabi, for example), nor is it all the story (many of these languages are spoken by large populations in more than one country--Bengali and Portuguese, for instance, not to mention Spanish).

I have no idea which columns are which, nor (unfortunately) time to straighten this out. Mcswell (talk) 16:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Typo alert: I notice that the ranking of Hindi and Bengali seems to have been reversed. Bengali has fewer speakers by both the Encarta and Ethnologue rankings, yet is placed higher. Is this a case of the Encarta ranking having changed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.34.163 (talk) 16:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)