User talk:Asocall

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I saw your edit on the Mexico article, and I'm wondering about "Spanish native speaker". What precisely does the term "Spanish native speaker" mean?

Also would the statement that you changed be incorrect without the word "native"? Thank you.

Salut, Wanderer57 (talk) 00:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello Wanderer57.

There's a page named Native speaker, which redirects to First language. I thought it would be a correct expression, as I'm not a "native English speaker" and sometimes I have to use the Wikipedia as a help for writing English expressions. If the term that I used was incorrect I beg you to rewrite it using proper English, but I think the statement that I changed was incorrect before my edit. According to official census in different countries, it's a fact that there are approximately 300 million people in the world who speak Spanish as their first language, so the Mexicans would be a third of it, but it's obvious that there are some more millions of people who speak Spanish as a second or third language, so they should be considered "Spanish speakers" too, as I understand the term "speaker" means generally.

Thanks for your comment. Asocall 11:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Asocall:
 * Thank you. "Spanish native speaker" means the same thing to you as it does to me. (I believe "native Spanish speaker" would be a more usual word order, but that is a detail.) It is also expressed as "people whose first language is Spanish" and "people whose mother tongue is Spanish", which are both longer but probably more generally understood (I would think.)


 * Specifically, in the paragraph in the Mexico article, the statistic "one-third of ..." is based on the reference at the end of the sentence. This is a document which lists the populations of major Spanish-speaking countries.  This reference is written in terms of "Spanish speakers", no mention of "native". Because the sentence is based on this reference, it is better under Wikipedia policy to say "Spanish speakers" in our article.


 * My guess is that the sentence is likely true both with and without the word "native" added to it. For the great majority of Spanish speakers, Spanish would be their first language.


 * Another complication is that in a census of the people in (for example) Canada, someone whose first language was English, second was French and third was Spanish, would probably be counted as "English speaking", even if they were fluent in Spanish. Of course we can't deal with this complexity in our article.  However, I think it means that it is safer to just say "Spanish speaking", because it is less specific.


 * I hope this is clear enough. Please let me know.  It is a bit complicated.


 * Best wishes, Wanderer57 (talk) 16:58, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I still don't think that that reference is accurate enough for determinining how many people can speak Spanish, because it just gives population figures in some countries, even when those figures do not represent how many people speak Spanish as first language (for example, in Spain is estimated that only 74% of the population speak Spanish as their first language), and even when it doesn't mention some other countries where Spanish is the first language (Colombia, Paraguay, Equatorial Guinea...). Besides, the reference always talk about "native speakers". In the first paragraph you have: "'El castellano', as the Spanish language is today known, is extended across the globe. Being the third with the highest number of native speakers, Spanish is the mother tongue of approximately 330 million people in 21 countries". So, the only figure you can take from this text which would serve you as a reference is that in the phrase "Spanish is the mother tongue of approximately 330 million people in 21 countries". It doesn't say anything about the number of people who speak Spanish as an additional language. You can find more information on this topic in the List of languages by number of native speakers.


 * Anyway, it's still a matter of what interpretation do you give to the word "speaker" in English. If it's not a synonym of "native speaker", the reference given does not "demonstrate" anything about the certainty of the original statement. I mean, given that interpretation to the term "speaker" (less specific that "native speaker"), when you say that "for the great majority of Spanish speakers, Spanish would be their first language", you are making a value judgement which is not supported by any reference. Furthermore, you have some references in the article List of languages by number of native speakers which estimate a number of total (native and non-native) Spanish speakers between 400 million and 500 million, which contradicts that value judgement I referred before (given my interpretation of the term "speaker"), and would make the statement "almost a third of all Spanish speakers in the world live in Mexico" clearly false. Even if you ignore those references to other articles, that same phrase specifying that you are talking about "native speakers" would always be accurate according to the reference you give. However, if you don't specify, you are ignoring all possible facts that could contradict your assumption about the ratio "number of Spanish native speakers/total number of Spanish speakers". So, in this case, precision helps being more accurate according to our references, as I understand them.


 * Asocall 21:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I agree that a more precise reference would be good.


 * I also agree that my value judgements or, as I would call them, off-the-cuff statements were not supported by references. They were for the sake of discussion, nothing more.


 * The first sentence, for reference: "Mexico has the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world with almost two times more speakers than the second largest Spanish-speaking country." Based on the reference, the second largest is Spain, and the sentence might be changed to read:  "with two and one-half times" or "with well over two times". Would you agree?


 * I appreciate the chance to discuss this. Wanderer57 (talk) 00:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are right, I didn't notice that first sentence. Spain use to be considered the second largest country by number of Spanish speakers, with similar figures as Colombia and the United States (not cited in the reference, which I consider very incomplete and inaccurate, comparing to those given in more specific articles such as Spanish language or Hispanophone). I also think the sentence should be changed.


 * Thanks for your comments. Asocall 11:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I made one change. The wording is a bit awkward.  Wanderer57 (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

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