[Community-Discuss] Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 257, Issue 1

Thu Jan 18 21:06:54 UTC 2018

Well…

The africa-facts.org site doesn’t appear to provide numbers of people speaking the language to back up their
count and while they don’t assign a number to English, they do mention it at the top of the page with nearly 11 million native speakers. The fact that they focus on native speakers only leads me to believe that their statistics are also likely based on native speakers only and not total speakers continent-wide.

I tried to compile (what I consider more relevant) statistics of all speakers and not just native speakers.

The FOCAC site appears not to consider French or English at all and it’s not entirely clear why they consider Arabic in the absence of those two.

Fluentu appears to be a trimmed down version of the same content from africa-facts, including word for word duplication of the introductory text and other parts.

The geneeugene blog appears to focus on statistics for native speakers and appears to count the entire population of countries where the language is spoken vs. drilling down into actual speaker counts within the country.

The africaranking page does appear to be a better attempt than virtually any other site I found at doing the same sort of aggregation I was attempting. However, they don’t cite sources or really talk about their methodology, either, so I’d say that the margin of error in their data is probably similar to mine. I will note that with the exception of them placing Swahili at number 3 and French at number 4, we came to nearly identical conclusions in terms of order, though their report of more than 700 million English speakers (which I question) vs. my count of 196 million is a striking difference.

If we assume that they are correct that 700 million (of a total population of 900 million) people in Africa speak English, then it seems to me that the cost:benefit ratio of translation is rather questionable given the split of the remaining 23% across at least 4 languages.

However, I agree with whoever said we shouldn’t waste a lot of time on this. I think it is obviously logical to translate the site and principal documents into English (authoritative source), Arabic (First priority translation) and French (Second priority). These 3 cover the vast majority of community members, probably north of 90% if we are to believe the numbers on africaranking and certainly north of 50% based on my more pessimistic numbers.

Owen

> On Jan 18, 2018, at 7:13 AM, mohammed at ntc.gov.sd wrote:
> 
> At first, sorry for sending this as an HTML-formatted message.
> The table below represents a number of information sources that seem to be reliable. The source of the information is on the first column, and the table contains the number of the most widely spoken languages in Africa. "N/A" means the language didn't show up on the list, numbers are the order in which the language appears.
> It's noticed that "English" didn't appear in most of the lists provided by these sources, whereas, all sites seem to agree that "Arabic" and "Swahili" are the most widely spoken languages in Africa.
> 
> Source / Language
> English
> Arabic
> French
> Swahili
> Hausa
> Amharic
> https://africa-facts.org/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-africa/  <https://africa-facts.org/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-africa/>	
> N/A
> 9
> 10
> 1
> 5
> 2
> http://wwwT.focac.org/eng/zjfz/fzzl/t619829.htm  <http://www.focac.org/eng/zjfz/fzzl/t619829.htm>	
> N/A
> 1
> N/A
> 2
> N/A
> 4
> https://www.fluentu.com/blog/languages-spoken-in-africa/  <https://www.fluentu.com/blog/languages-spoken-in-africa/>	
> N/A
> 1
> 5
> 2
> 3
> 4
> https://geneeugene.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/top-10-most-widely-spoken-languages-in-african/  <https://geneeugene.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/top-10-most-widely-spoken-languages-in-african/>	
> 4
> 1
> N/A
> 2
> 3
> 5
> http://www.africaranking.com/most-spoken-languages-in-africa/5/  <http://www.africaranking.com/most-spoken-languages-in-africa/5/>	
> 1
> 2
> 4
> 3
> 5
> N/A
> 
> Best
> Mohammed Yousif
> From: "Kangamutima zabika Christophe" <funga.roho at yandex.com <mailto:funga.roho at yandex.com>>
> To: community-discuss at afrinic.net <mailto:community-discuss at afrinic.net>
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:27:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 257, Issue 1
> 
> Bien qu'Owen n'a pas mentionné a source de ces statistiques, je pense aussi la priorité serait accordé hormis à l'anglais, le français, l'arabe et le swahili (qui est la aussi la 4ème langue de l'union africaine). Tout est question de volonté. Je pense que pour le français, si Afrinic approchait une organisation partenaire d'Afrinic comme l'OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francopohonie), de voies et moyens pourraient être trouvé pour résoudre cette problématique. Malheureusement à Afrinic27 j'ai rencontré beaucoup des locuteurs arabophones qui ne s'exprimaient qu'en anglais et quelques rares fois en français. Je pense que ceux ci devraient revendiquer vigoureusement leurs droits du fait qu'ils forment une large majorité de la communauté d'internautes africains.
> 
> 17.01.2018, 13:01, "community-discuss-request at afrinic.net" <community-discuss-request at afrinic.net>:
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> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Re: Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 252, Issue 1
> >       (mohammed at ntc.gov.sd)
> >    2. Target large communities (was: Community-Discuss Digest, Vol
> >       252, Issue 1) (sm+afrinic at elandsys.com)
> >    3. Re: Target large communities (was: Community-Discuss Digest,
> >       Vol 252, Issue 1) (Owen DeLong)
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 16:24:07 +0200 (CAT)
> > From: mohammed at ntc.gov.sd
> > To: Nishal Goburdhan <nishal at controlfreak.co.za>
> > Cc: community-discuss at afrinic.net
> > Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 252,
> >         Issue 1
> > Message-ID:
> >         <29774168.1444256.1516112647332.JavaMail.zimbra at ntc.gov.sd>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> >
> > I believe If we want to rebalance the language gap we have to target large communities and reach the largest segment of them. Arabic-speaking African countries are more than ten countries. So, it's of high importance that the site should be translated into Arabic to ensure greater access to the community. It's worth mentioning that the main reason why Arab don't participate in AfriNIC or any other ICT-related event is the language.
> > As to who is going to do the translation, we can ask help from Arab volunteers. I, myself, would be very happy to participate in the translation process.
> >
> > Mohammed Yousif
> >
> > ??? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ?????? ??????? ????? ???????? ????????? ??????? ??????? ??? ???? ????? ????. ??????? ????????? ??????? ?????? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ????? ??????? ????? ???? ???? ??? ???????. ?? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ???? ?????? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ????????? ?????? ????????? ????????? ?????????? ?? ?????.
> > ???? ??????? ??????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ??????? ????? ????????? ???????? ??? ?????? ???? ? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ?? ???? ???????.
> > ???? ????
> >
> > The Arabic-speaking African countries, that are more than ten
> > 
> 
> > From: "Nishal Goburdhan" <nishal at controlfreak.co.za <mailto:nishal at controlfreak.co.za>>
> > To: community-discuss at afrinic.net <mailto:community-discuss at afrinic.net>
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 7:57:20 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 252, Issue 1
> >
> > On 10 Jan 2018, at 17:28, Kangamutima zabika Christophe wrote:
> >
> >>  Monsieur Barrett,
> >>
> >>  Pouvez vous nous ?clairer sur l'?tat d'avancement du processus de
> >>  traduction des pages web du site internet d'Afrinic en fran?ais? Un
> >>  mois apr?s AFRINIC27 o? vous et votre administration avez promis ?
> >>  la communaut? francophone de mettre les bouch?es double afin de
> >>  r??quilibrer la fracture linguistique subie par la communaut?
> >>  d'internautes africains francophones.
> >
> > ???? ?? ????? ??????? ?
> >
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> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 07:58:59 -0800
> > From: sm+afrinic at elandsys.com
> > To: Mohammed Yousif <mohammed at ntc.gov.sd>,
> >         community-discuss at afrinic.net
> > Subject: [Community-Discuss] Target large communities (was:
> >         Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 252, Issue 1)
> > Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20180116070922.127abc40 at elandnews.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> >
> > Hi Mohammed,
> > At 06:24 AM 16-01-2018, mohammed at ntc.gov.sd wrote:
> >> I believe If we want to rebalance the language gap we have to target
> >> large communities and reach the largest segment of them.
> >> Arabic-speaking African countries are more than ten countries. So,
> >> it's of high importance that the site should be translated into
> >> Arabic to ensure greater access to the community. It's worth
> >> mentioning that the main reason why Arab don't participate in
> >> AfriNIC or any other ICT-related event is the language.
> >> As to who is going to do the translation, we can ask help from Arab
> >> volunteers. I, myself, would be very happy to participate in the
> >> translation process.
> >
> > Thank you for providing the above input. I wondered why the
> > participation from Arabic-speaking African countries was relatively low.
> >
> > Regards,
> > S. Moonesamy
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 13:45:30 -0800
> > From: Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com>
> > To: sm+afrinic at elandsys.com
> > Cc: community-discuss at afrinic.net
> > Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Target large communities (was:
> >         Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 252, Issue 1)
> > Message-ID: <CDFD0EC2-C527-4BAB-9429-3DF463270E05 at delong.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> >
> > If we?re looking for liguistic priority, perhaps we should focus on demographics by popluation?
> >
> > This is my best attempt to incorporate both native and non-native speaker statistics. Reliable sources for the information are difficult to find and it took multiple sources using inconsistent data formats to attempt to compile the list.
> >
> > Sources included a variety of wikipedia pages and other google searched locations.
> >
> > I?m the first to admit this is not a scientific survey and may have issues with accuracy.
> >
> > In order, the top 10 are:
> >
> > English (196M)
> > Arabic (140MM)
> > French (120MM)
> > Swahili or Kiswahili (100MM)
> > Hausa (70MM)
> > Berber (56MM)
> > Yoruba (28MM)
> > Oromo (26MM)
> > Amharic (22MM)
> > Igbo (18MM)
> >
> > Total: 776MM
> >
> > So the top 10 languages would cover roughly 15/16ths of the population.
> > If we move cover the top 5, we get 626MM or roughly 3/4 of the population.
> > The top 3 (English, Arabic, French) will cover 456MM or roughly 1/2 of the population.
> >
> > I do find it interesting that the first African language comes in at number 4.
> >
> > Owen
> >
> >>  On Jan 16, 2018, at 07:58 , sm+afrinic at elandsys.com <mailto:sm+afrinic at elandsys.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>  Hi Mohammed,
> >>  At 06:24 AM 16-01-2018, mohammed at ntc.gov.sd <mailto:mohammed at ntc.gov.sd> wrote:
> >>>  I believe If we want to rebalance the language gap we have to target large communities and reach the largest segment of them. Arabic-speaking African countries are more than ten countries. So, it's of high importance that the site should be translated into Arabic to ensure greater access to the community. It's worth mentioning that the main reason why Arab don't participate in AfriNIC or any other ICT-related event is the language.
> >>>  As to who is going to do the translation, we can ask help from Arab volunteers. I, myself, would be very happy to participate in the translation process.
> >>
> >>  Thank you for providing the above input. I wondered why the participation from Arabic-speaking African countries was relatively low.
> >>
> >>  Regards,
> >>  S. Moonesamy
> >>
> >>  _______________________________________________
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> >>  Community-Discuss at afrinic.net
> >>  https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss
> >
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> > End of Community-Discuss Digest, Vol 257, Issue 1
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> 
> -- 
> KANGAMUTIMA  ZABIKA
> Contrôleur des douanes
> Direction des Systèmes et Technologies de l'Information
> Direction Générale des Douanes et
> Accises
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