A few years ago Newsweek reported that Britain was planning to send a team of English teachers to India to get the Indians to speak standard British English instead of Indian English.
This report drew some indignant letters to the editor about racism, imperialism, “Where do they get off thinking their English is better than anyone else’s” etc.
But one witty letter writer quipped: “Your article says there are 90 million English speakers in India. If that figure is correct, they should be teaching the British to speak it!”
Collounsbury
Crioulo is still spoken in Cape Verde but it is fading as a separate dialect. I have spoken with native speakers and it is mutually intelligible with Brazilian Portuguese. I generally have had a greater difficulty understanding speakers from the rural North of Portugal than Crioulo. That said, it may very well be true that some consider this more of a separate language than I did. Let me also add the disclaimer that I have never personally visited CV so it may be that those I spoke with spoke dialects much closer to standard Portuguese. I should also add that I speak the Nordeste form of Brazilian Portuguese, having lived in the state of Bahia for a few years. And it contains a greater amount of African influences than other regional dialects. So it may be that other Portuguese speakers may find it less intelligible than I have.
Sao Tome and Principe is listed as only speaking Portuguese. This may mean that the local dialect is a Creole form that is close enough that it is fully intelligible. Or it may mean that a local Creole never developed. I don’t have enough information to debate the point.
In addition to Crioulo there are several other ‘Creole languages’ in which Portuguese plays a large part.
Papiamento is spoken in Aruba, Netherlands Antilles and is a Dutch/Native/Native combination.
Portunol, or Brazilero is spoken in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay and is a Spanish/Portuguese/Native combination.
I find Portunol intelligible but not Papiamento. So although IANALinguist my guess is that Portuguese plays a more dominant role in Crioulo and Portunol than in Papiamento.
I also left my list those areas where Portuguese has a significant number of speakers but where it is still only spoken by a small minority. The CIA lists these as Bermuda, Gibraltar, Spain, and the United States (mainly in NYC, Boston, Philadelphia and Northern California).
I have no direct experience with Guinea-Bissau so you may be right. The CIA gives Portuguese as the most spoken language. But given the linguistic richness of the area it may actually account for a significantly smaller percentage than I had assumed. I willingly concede the point.
As far as Mozambique and Angola are concerned, I have personal experience and the CIA backs me up on it. It is the most commonly used language in either nation. But it is not a majority language in either. It is believed to be spoken by 30%-40% in both nations. However it is probably not a cradle tongue for the majority of the speakers. Like NW Africa there is a great number of languages in each nation and Portuguese is used between the various tribal groups.
However as Brazil and Portugal alone provide 183 million speakers. I think my guess that worldwide there are 185 to 190 million speakers, still seems likely.
JellyDonut
I personally think the case that Brazilian Portuguese and Iberian Portuguese are different languages is fairly weak. I personally have found that the difference is roughly comparable to the US vs the UK. That is while some regional dialects are non-intelligible, on the whole the two are intelligible. In fact Brazil does a significant export of TV shows to Portugal. Something that would be difficult if it was not intelligible.
As others have pointed out in all it is a very complex issue. It is hard to draw firm lines and a difference in definitions can lead to wildly differing results.
I willingly accept your judgement on intelligiblity with the caveat that overseas cabo-verdeans tend to be more educated (and that in Portuguese) than non-travelling folks. Obviously that implies greater standardization.
Not being a lusophone I can only rely on 2nd hand reports, that is what others tell me, but that is to be treated with caution. I haven’t been to CV in a long time so it may be greater penetration of education has gone farther to “standardize” local usage. Dunno.
Well, here we get into that misty area of users versus mother tongue speakers. Same deal for the ‘Francophone’ nations. I have no doubt that Portuguese remains a very used language not just in Bissau but in surrounding coastal areas. It has a long history. My comments were largely directed at the colonialy rooted mythology of equating 2nd langauge speakers in Africa with native speakers. Subtle difference sometimes.
Taking the French example, in regards to West Africa there are virtually no native, mother tongue speakers but a much larger body of people who speak French with a wide variety of levels of mastery. Skill level in French has very clearly declined in the past 20 years, largely linked to declining relevance and collapsing school systems. While French remains an important elite and vehicular (trade, commerce etc) language, native vernaculars like dioula are gaining ground.
My estimation in re Bissau is based on first hand reports and the analagous collapse of the school system. Clearly their long civil war has not done much to help things.
In regards to Angola, for example, my understanding has always been that Portuguese has for centuries (since the independant lusophile Xtian kingdoms of the 16th century forward) been the ‘elite’ and trade language so clearly it’s going to have deeper roots, much deeper than Bissau.
I’d add that even in West Africa there remains traces of old Portuguese trade tongues outside of Bissau and some folks in Senegal, for example, speak a whack-ass creole which I was told has a lot of similarities to old school Cabo Verde usage.
BTW that’s ethnic groups or language groups, not tribal groups. Those big names one sees identify linguistic groupings.
Anyway, we get into a morass of trying to determine mother-tongue versus 2nd language speakers. Based on my experience, I maintain no small doubt that there are many native speakers, but certainly a large number of 2nd langauge users.
Seems quite reasonable.
I’ll second, by the way, Mojo’s comments in re Ethnologue. One has to approach their figures with immense caution and take them as merely indicative. Not solely because of their bias, which is real and clear, but also because frankly the data on much of this stuff is quite clearly lacking. A lot of this (for Africa especially) comes from humanities academics seat-of-the-pants estimates, not rigorous statistical data.
Sure, 189 million. There are 120 million people in the nation of Bangladesh (check here or here) and I would wager that over 95% of them speak Bengali as their first language. From bangladesh online:
Calcutta, which I’d say is at least 80-85% Bengali, has around 30 million people in the metro area. (No cite, but I lived there for awhile and that, of course, makes me an expert! ) So that brings our total to around, oh, 150-155 million. Then there are the people in the backwoods of Bengal State around Calcutta, probably at least a dozen million. Then there are the people around the backwoods who speak bengali, another few mill. Finally, there are expatriates around the world, let’s say 1 million total. That all adds up to, by my count, around 180 million native speakers or so.
Bengali is a beautiful language, by the way, kind of like a lilting Sanskrit structured like Japanese. [sigh] I miss Calcutta.
