Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 October 2

= October 2 =

Health Care Prices
Does the precentage of an average individual british person taxes that goes to the NHS equal to amount of money spent by an average insured american on their own private health care plans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.146.124.35 (talk) 02:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The US spends by far the most money per person on health care of any country . This data shows the average cost per American so insured American's pay an even higher share than reflected by the graph.  Something to keep in mind is that some US health care is paid for by tax money as well (Medicare and Medicaid) and the cost of employer based health plans effectively comes out of wages, so the full costs aren't always obvious. Rckrone (talk) 06:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The last point is especially important: the average insured American is not actually paying their own premiums directly. If you pay them out of pocket, they are for most prohibitively expensive (thousands of dollars per year for even really poor plans). My wife has to pay for private healthcare at the moment (she is in between jobs), and it's some $2000 a year or so for "hazard insurance" that just caps anything she would owe at $5000. So if she gets hit by a car, or catches some virulent disease, she pays the first $5000 in services out of pocket, and then the insurance pays for the rest—that's the whole health plan, no regular doctor's visits, no prescriptions, nothing. All of this for someone who is in between benefits-giving jobs, and has a correspondingly low income! You can, perhaps, understand why the "private option" is not so appealing to us at the moment! --Mr.98 (talk) 15:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The NHS employs about 1.3 million employees out of a UK employed population of 29 million. So approximately 4.5% of the entire employed population is dedicated to health care. What is the cost of that? When about 1 worker out 20 workers is working in health care I suspect the actual cost is not inexpensive. What is the cost of wages plus material annually for the NHS? SunSw0rd (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Nobody said the NHS didn't cost a lot, but it is far cheaper than US health care. I don't know how many people are employed in health care in the US, but I expect it is at least as large (you have to include all the people working in the insurance industry as well). --Tango (talk) 03:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

A women-only Swedish city
I read a Chinese news report on a city in Northern Sweden that, according to the report, is the only women-only city in the world since 1820. However, the news only quoted the name in Chinese as 沙科保(pinyin:Shakebao), without its native name. Is there such a city in Sweden, and if so, what is its name in Swedish?--Poeticlion (talk) 08:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * According to the news report, the city:
 * forbids men to enter
 * has 25 thousand women as residents
 * was established in 1820 by the widow of a rich man
 * is situated near a woodland in Northern Sweden, therefore the women there live on forestry
 * --Poeticlion (talk) 08:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm Swedish, have never heard of this, and I find it highly unlikely (impossible!) that any city in Sweden would forbid people of a certain gender to enter it. Perhaps some community of 25 inhabitants could have such a rule, but certainly not a city of 25 000 inhabitants. Was the city supposed to exist to this day?/Marxmax (talk) 09:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * After a little Google translate, I must say that this is either the product of the journalist's or the chinese girl's vivid imagination. "Chako Paul City provides a woman having sex out of the city to come back you must first bathe, wash away the taste of a special body, and then a calm mood, taste and excitement to avoid the emotional impact of other women." Hilarious!/Marxmax (talk) 09:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply! Google gives tens of thousands of mentions of the "city" but they are probably derived from the very same source, since most of the Chinese media are used to doing mindless copying and pasting. The character 市 usually refers to a city or en kommun but another news article says 沙科保 is actually a castle. This article, from the government news agency Xinhua, shows a picture of the castle. (Pictures and texts are often duplicated in the same manner by Chinese media.) Now I tend to believe it is a hilarious and false urban legend, but I cannot be certain of this. --Poeticlion (talk) 10:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Assuming this place really is a municipality/kommun, it would, with a population of 25.000, be on the list of the 100 (out of 280) most populous municipalities of Sweden, so this is definately an urban legend. /Marxmax (talk) 11:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sweden is a small country. A town with 25 000 inhabitants is considered a medium-sized town, which means that pretty much everyone in the country would know at least something about it, even had it been a perfectly ordinary town. I assure you that this is an urban legend, and that such a town would be unthinkable, since you can't deny half the population access to somewhere big enough to house thousands of persons. /Julle (talk) 11:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * What solid evidence and counterargument!! !! It's not famous despite its alleged "relatively high population", and men should have allemansrätten to enter the place unobstructed by policewomen, so it has to be an urban legend. Now I have to think about another question: how to stop it from widespreading and persuade other people (esp. my girlfriend) to believe it's untrue. First to get the article off from Chinese wikipedia??...--Poeticlion (talk) 12:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't the characters in Gregory's Girl have a similar idea (preponderence of women, not women-only) about somewhere in South America? Vaguely recall it may have been Caracas... --Dweller (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That reminds me of a 1980s sci-fi film from Poland where two guys 'wake up' in the future and the entire world is populated by women (it's actually more complicated than that and has a very interesting ending). Can't for the life of me remember the name. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 10:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sexmission? --NorwegianBluetalk 11:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That is exactly the one! --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 12:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not very coincidentally, we have such a place in the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West. The women in the "Girls' Kingdom" gave birth to babies after drinking their river water, so they did not need men. --Poeticlion (talk) 12:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What happened to the male babies? --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 23:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Such an interesting story! Perhaps it is inspired by the fact that gender equality is so important in Sweden. But remember (And why not tell this to your girl friend, haha!), that gender equality work both ways: just as it would be unequal to prevent women to enter a particular city, it would be to prevent men from doing so. Equality means just that: equality. And, by the way: the more equal a society is, the less reason it would be for women to hide from men in a special city. --Aciram (talk) 12:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * From a Chinese point of view, they are not a stranger to having cities full of similar type people, so the Sweden story would be totally believable to them. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 13:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * As a Swede myself, I agree with Marxmax: there is no such town in Sweden. Interesting story, though, of the same kind as the belief that men has never walked on the Moon or that Santa Claus really exists, flying in a sled behind reindeer. Typically, if you want to believe in it, you can, because it is hard to prove that something does not exist. It should be noted that, despite the Swedish freedom to roam ("allemansrätten", as referred to above), you can exclude people from visiting your real estate - but only if it is gated real estate in direct access to a house where you live or a factory where safety requires it. Gated communities does not exist in Sweden, it has never been tested if it would be legal, but it would certainly be unimaginable in the Swedish political context - sort of beyond politically incorrect. Dagrqv (talk) 14:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, Sweden does have a gated community - Victoria Park in Malmö, but it is quite controversial. /Marxmax (talk) 16:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't forget also, those who think the world is flat. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There is of course a long tradition of female-only places in literature and mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples of feminist utopias. BrainyBabe (talk) 08:01, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Whilst it already well established that this is a hoax, i have to add that the castle on the photo in the Xinhua article cannot possibly have been taken in Sweden. Even more unlikely that such a castle could have been found in northern Sweden, to my knowledge there are no major medieval buildings in the northernmost parts of the country. --Soman (talk) 08:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * My guess that it is a foto of Taymouth Castle. Can anyone find the actual photo used?--Edaen (talk) 11:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC) [[File:Taymouth_Castle_(from_the_south).jpg|thumb|180px| Taymouth Castle

]]

FWIW, the city name "Shakebao" sounds vaguely like Skellefteå. Thuresson (talk) 08:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * All this discussion makes me think of Herland, which one of my college dorm neighbours had to read for his women's lit class. Nyttend (talk) 16:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That is one of the single-gender worlds I had in mind in my previous comment, along with Joanna Ross's The Female Man. There are many others. BrainyBabe (talk) 11:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And as for why the Chinese may have cultural links to this myth, see Qian Ma's 2004 book Feminist Utopian Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Chinese and English Fiction : A Cross-Cultural Comparison here. BrainyBabe (talk) 11:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The town exosts. Female lesbian lumberjacker 80.216.205.38 (talk) 11:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

As Edaen pointed out, the picture is the Taymouth Castle Club House, see http://www.igougo.com/attractions-reviews-b96015-Perthshire-Taymouth_Castle.html for a different view of the same section. Chinese media is hilarious, to think someone actually sat down and wrote this complete piece of garb...um, fiction; and it gets somehow gets picked up and propagated across several major news agencies, all without any fact-checking. They are less credible than the National Enquirer...though certainly quite adept at writing fiction to cover up the human rights violations... Tendancer (talk) 20:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Another Swedish town?
Is there actually a Swedish town called Rawlson on a river called the Rillerah? →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.186.107 (talk) 06:59, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * List of rivers of Sweden has nothing that looks anything like "Rillerah". →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 08:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And List of cities in Sweden likewise has nothing that looks like "Rawlson". →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 08:56, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

If I try to say Rawlson and Rillerah in swedish the closest I get is Råsun (Rawlson) and Rilleån, but neither exist in Sweden. Råsunda is a soccerstadium in the surburbs of Stockholm and Rickleå is a creek and a small village in nothern parts of Sweden. Who ever wrote the lyrics to the song might be an ancestor of Swedish chef. // Castrup (talk) 11:00, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it  interesting  that  it  is  in  fact  easier  to  prove  that  something  does  exist,  than  that  it  doesn't,  this  being  the  basis  for  all  the  Urban  Legends  in  modern  society ? If  such  a  place  existed - reminds me of Wonder Woman's Amazon - could one know for sure ? I am not disagreeing with the Swedes on this because how would I know ? I am not Swedish, ( although far enough back, to when the Vikings came to England, and were very nice to everyone, and only afraid of the Sky falling on their heads, who knows ? ), nor have I ever been there, though I  wouldn't mind - Scandinavia fascinates me. But if we say such a town does not exist, how could we be absolutely sure, in a country of what - nine million ? This is  the  sort  of  " well, you never really know " kind of talk that allows  us to want to believe in mysteries. I get the feeling, that even if they drained Loch Ness, as Burns did in that episode of the Simpsons, and found nothing, people would still say there was a Monster there - it was hiding under a pebble, or was invisible. What I mean is, if such a town were found, then it would be undeniable - you would only need one such discovery to verify it. But if it was not, and people looked in hundreds of towns all over Northern Sweden, and found nought, even hundreds of failures would not mean the theory is disproved. Reminds me of the rigour needed to make a Mathematical Proof -  the mathematician knows of no counter examples to his theory, but cannot use this fact to prove beyond doubt that it is true. One however could argue that if such a town were real, there should be some indication, but this to me goes against the egalitarian nature of Swedes in general, even though it is a Monarchy. We had a similar thing here in New Zealand in 1993, when some hunters claimed to have seen a living Moa. This is a flightless rattite bird similar to an Emu or Ostrich, believed to have been hunted to extinction some time ago. There was no undeniable proof  of  what  they  had  seen, but then no proof  they  hadn't  seen  it. This all  goes  back  to  the  idea  that  just  because  You  can't  see  something,  doesn't  mean  it  is  not  there. One way  around  this  is  to  use  common  sense,  and  sometimes  one  can  be  told  tall  stories  and  believe  them  without  thinking  it  through. In " All  the  President's  Men "  Woodward  and  Bernstein recall that there was a story  about  a  king  who  supposedly  waited in the snow to see the Pope, for ages, without going inside - if I remember rightly - it's been a while - the lesson in Journalism was  to  ask if such a story was likely, or possible, or any number of other things. It is true that sometimes Truth is Stranger than Fiction - there are proven examples of this, but one needs to look at each story one is told, and think about it. I was  recently told that recycling in New Zealand is more expensive than just making the stuff again from scratch. Immediately I was skeptical. One could seize this idea as if it is some of the usual Lone Gunman   X  Files type conspiracy theory,  or  consider,  would  any  city  council  and  big  business continue with something like that if it is a waste of money ? Doubt it. I am  not  of  the  belief  that  pollution  causes Global  Warming, since historically  there have been warm periods and cold snaps long before mankind  could  possibly have done enough pollution  to  cause it - but I like a clean planet. I see no point in pumping filthy smoke into the air, nor in  wasting raw material that can be recycled, and incidentally, seeing I mentioned it, I do believe there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK, that Oswald was part of it, with Jack Ruby, but I do not believe Oswald fired the fatal shot. Look at the film. Laws of Physics apply. Whether it was a coup as Oliver Stone suggested and Walter Cronkite disagreed with, I do not know. The Christchurch Star, right here in  my  city,  which Donald Sutherland's character was reading in the movie still has records of the premature announcement of details of the assassination on file. But perhaps I digress. One thing this serves to show, though, is how many legends there could be in the world, and how we may never know the truth or untruth of some of them. As for the possibility of this town in Sweden ? Yeah, doubt it. Such a thing would not be legal - although there are women and men only gyms in some places, fair enough - but a whole town ? If anyone had seen it, they would have made a mint selling pictures to the tabloids. If the female inhabitants kill any spies, then how would anyone live to tell about it ? By that rationale, I could say there is a city of giants in Tasmania, and prove it by saying that it must be true, because no one can disprove it, so it is like the evidence exitsts by default. The Russian.202.36.179.66 (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

IOC and Barack
Is Barack going to the IOC and personally petitioning them to select his native country's city for the 2016 Olympics unprecedented by a head of state (or government)? Only interested in Olympics prior to 2016, not inclusive. Googlemeister (talk) 14:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No. "Heads of state have been instrumental in recent votes, creating somewhat of a new precedent.  Tony Blair helped London win the 2012 Olympics by traveling to Singapore to meet with IOC members ahead of that vote, and Russia's Vladimir Putin went to Guatemala to lobby in support of Sochi's bid for the 2014 Winter Games." source.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * In any case, he did not succeed. Blame it on Rio. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * See Old School King Oenomaus might have been the first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.124.125.107 (talk) 23:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * British Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal visit was considered to be one of the elements that decided London's selection for the 2012 Olympics over (inter alia) U.S. and French competitors who did not send national leaders to the IOC meeting. British national euphoria over winning this contest lasted less than 24 hours before the 7 July 2005 London bombings. In my opinion, Obama and Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, were both correct in their decisions to present their countries' cases to the IOC meeting in Copenhagen. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:37, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Check out this link and it's totally clear why Rio won out over Chicago. →Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 16:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Although the OP specifically excluded the 2016 bid, it's worth remembering that every country bidding had leaders there. Japanese PM Yukio Hatoyama, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (as already mentioned) and both King Juan Carlos and Spanish PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero   attended and had apparently announced their intentions to attend before Obama had. The Japanese tried to get a royal representative as well   but appear to  have failed. If Obama hadn't attended then the Chicago bid would have been the odd one out in lacking their countries head of government. And let's not also forget the Chicago bid effectively lost to Tokyo and Madrid not just Rio. So it's not that clear if Rio had not been there that Chicago would have won. Nil Einne (talk) 23:53, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Foreign currency reserve requirements
Foreign currency (e.g. Eurodollar) deposits sometimes pay higher interests because the banks don't have the same reserve requirements as in the home country. But why don't central banks lose control over the money supply if there are not the same reserve requirements in every country? MMMMM742 (talk) 14:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand your query but here are a few points:
 * The Fed bases its decisions on the M2 definition of money supply which excludes eurodollar deposits (but this says it does include overnight eurodollar deposits). Monitoring M3 would have its benefits but, according to money supply, it's not worth the effort of compiling the data. So the Fed has control over M2 despite what goes on in other countries.
 * Now think about what would happen to US money supply if an EU central bank altered the reserve requirement on eurodollar deposits in the EU. Nothing, right? Limiting central banks to alter reserve requirements within their own jurisdictions only, prevents them from affecting money supplies in other countries.
 * Also central banks seldom use reserve requirements to change the money supply anyway. They mostly use interest rates and trading bonds.
 * Does this help? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'm not actually asking about monitoring, but about controlling, but thinking again what I mean is probably no longer an issue since September or October 2008 when the Fed was allowed to pay interests on the reserves. By doing that they can probably pull any amount of money out of the system.
 * What I meant is:
 * The foreign banks lend almost all the US dollar money that is deposited, and that money is then again deposited outside the U.S. (indirectly of course, someone spends it, someone else deposits it). The money supply created by such transactions grows to at most 1/(reserve fraction). The smaller the reserve fraction the larger M3 becomes.
 * If - theoretically - the Fed thinks M3 is becoming too large, so it has to raise interest rates, then it actually does this by selling U.S. Treasury securities.
 * What if the foreign deposits have grown so large that the Fed runs out of Treasury securities and the interest rate still doesn't rise to the desired level, and M3 still grows rapidly?
 * MMMMM742 (talk) 20:23, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There isn't really anything a government can do about what people do with its currency overseas. They don't really need to, though - it is in a bank's interest to keep reserves in the currency the deposits are denominated in, otherwise they could get into serious trouble when people come to withdraw it. It also smooths out exchange rate risks. I believe the UK doesn't have any reserve requirements, it is just left to the banks to choose a reserve that works for them (although the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will step in if the bank is taking excessive risks - at least, that's the theory...), and the Bank of England still manages to maintain control of the money supply through interest rate changes and, recently, "quantitative easing". It also helps that the amount of a currency being used in other countries is usually a small fraction of the amount used at home. --Tango (talk) 23:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Criminal organisations in Russia
Quick query: were there any named criminal organisations operating primarily in the Russian Empire? Alternatively, were there any particularly infamous (non-political) criminals active in Russia between, say, 1850 and 1917? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 17:56, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Napoleon's Grande Army ? There were certainly many groups of anarchists committing criminal acts, such as the Circle of Tchaikovsky.  Their crimes were mostly printing seditious and inflammatory anti-government pamphlets, and trying to foment revolution.  As far as named criminals go, how about Rasputin?  Googlemeister (talk) 20:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * See: KAOS it is by far the most notable. 173.124.125.107 (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * KAOS did not operate during the Russian Empire, obviously. How about Sonya Golden Hand? Adam Bishop (talk) 03:18, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

APA Publication Manual errors
See below. I thought one of your editors might want to verify and modify the APA style entry accordingly.

Mark

Mark A. Allan Head of Library Reference Services/Porter Henderson Library Angelo State University

Any opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect any official stance held by my employer.

I love the smell of book dust in the morning. It smells like...... knowledge.

From: Educ. & Behavior Science ALA Discussion List Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 2:30 PM Subject: APA Publication Manual 6th edition - errors

Hi all,

We have received word from our campus APA expert that the 6th edition contains many errors. Some (but not all) of the errors were corrected in a second printing. She is in constant contact with the folks at APA regarding the errors, so her information is from the source. With her permission, I am re-posting her email to me here:

So far, I know that the sample paper has errors in the running head and the figures. I haven’t searched for the rest of the errors – I’m waiting for the list of errata to be published in the next couple of weeks.

The problem is that they rely heavily on the sample document to convey many of their formatting instructions, and so lots of people are now doing it wrong. I agree that they should really do a product recall.

Look at the sample one-experiment paper (figure 2.1). If it has the words “Running head:” in the header at the top of every page, then you have the wrong version. This is the correct version:

http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/sample-experiment-paper-1.pdf

I suspect that many of us purchased copies from the first printing, which means that our copies have errors. Our campus bookstores may also be selling copies with errors.

I would like to respectfully suggest that APA do a product recall and replace the erroneous copies with free – and correct – copies!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news….


 * Welcome to Wikipedia. Anyone may edit the articles, please see WP:WELCOME Dmcq (talk) 20:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Urdu as Muslim World's Second language?
Which organization officially said that Urdu should be the second most spoken language of the Muslim World after Arabic? Someone told that as a Muslim, you should speak Urdu after you learned Arabic. I am a Bengali and our ethnic group is the second largest Muslim group in the Muslim World after the Arabs-I believe this fact is true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.119.102 (talk) 20:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Its too late, unless you had this translated, your speaking English before Urdu. I don't think that there is a work around at this point.  Is Arabic your first launguage?  If so you may not be fully Bengaleze. French is a beautiful launguage, possibly you could travel to Paris and study up.  Good luck! 174.152.228.209 (talk) 22:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ...I think you've missed the point of what the poster was asking, by a long shot. He/she is asking whether Bengali is the second most spoken language in the Muslim world after Arabic, rather than Urdu. I don't know if that's true—our articles on Bengali and Urdu seem to imply that Urdu is much more widely spoken than Bengali, though what percentage of that is Muslim, I don't know. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ...Looking Back the OP started with the question of "Which organization officially said", Since he asked this on the Humanites Desk instead of the Launguage Desk, I thought it best to recomend that he try to learn French. It's possible that the information on being Bengali and other factors, were only inserted as distractions to throw us off from selecting the correct answer. 173.103.254.88 (talk) 00:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Per the number of Bengali speakers versus the number of Urdu speakers, see List of languages by number of native speakers, which does give Bengali the edge. Note also however that according to our article Islam by country, there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country, so perhaps Indonesian would be even more useful for communicating with fellow believers.


 * To 74.14.119.102, sorry, I have not found the answer to your first question, about an organization suggesting Muslims should learn Urdu after learning Arabic. I hope another editor will be able to help you, or you might try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islam. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 00:40, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Understanding Indonesian should probably also allow you to communicate to a reasonable extent in Malay so you can probably add ~18? million Muslims from Malaysia, Brunei and perhaps Singapore. Not much but if the numbers are close enough it may push it over the edge. It's possible it will also enable you to communicate with some Pattani Malay Muslims in Thailand but I'm less certain of that. However bear in mind number of native speakers is not necessarily the greatest measure since there's no reason why being able to communicate with people in a second language won't be quite useful. Also bear in mind the Indonesia having the most Muslims is no guarantee there are more Muslim Indonesian (language) speakers then Bengali or Urdu because there would be some in Bangladesh, some in India and some in Pakistan (and also some in other countries like Afghanistan and of course even a few in countries with high immigrant populations like the UK and US). Considering these, it's even possible that English may be the best language given it's wide popularity as a second language. Nil Einne (talk) 04:15, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not language expert myself, but you might get more expert responses by posting your question at WP:Reference desk/Language —— Shakescene (talk) 04:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)