Catalan speakers the 15th most productive Wikipedists
Congratulations on Catalan users for hitting 50,000 articles on Wikipedia. Although quantity isn’t everything–articles in English are almost invariably far better than in other languages–they’re way ahead of Arabic and Klingon speakers, to mention several. Just for fun I’ve taken data for the first fifty languages by articles published from Wikipedia’s multilingual statistics and total speaker population numbers from Ethnologue and used the simplest of spreadsheets (Gmail account needed; “live” excerpt below is done with iframe) to generate this new ranking showing which language’s speakers are publishing most articles per head:
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Speaker numbers are naturally prone to uncertainty and wild fluctuation driven by political manipulation, and it's reassuring to see that Ethnologue has got rid of 4 million fantasy Catalan speakers since David quoted its Generalitat-sourced numbers at me in 2004. The reasoning in the regional administration and stats service continues, however, to be that inventing speakers is a sensible way of achieving lobbying weight in Brussels with a view to bankrupting the EU via the translation and interpreting budget.
Ethnologue doesn't give numbers for Norwegian's main dialects, so I've generously allotted total Norwegian population numbers to both Nynorsk and BokmĂĄl.
2M sounds like a lot of Esperantists to me, but lowering the number makes them even more ridiculously productive than they already are, particularly when you realise that Ido is not a misspelt West African language but an Esperanto variant.
How many people are capable of Simple English? I've put 3B, but 3 might be more accurate, and I'm afraid I'm not one of them.
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Spanish history
- EL DISCURSO BOLCHEVIQUE: EL PARTI COMMUNISTE FRANÇAIS Y LA SEGUND A REPUBLICA ESPAÑOLA (1931-1936)
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VAL VALDIVIESO, MÂŞ ISABEL DELMARTINEZ SOPENA, PASCUAL
90.00€
Modern Spanish fiction
- EL OFICINISTA (PREMIO BIBLIOTECA BREVE 2010)
SACCOMANO, GUILLERMO
18.00€ - LA ENMILAGRADA
GOMEZ-ARCOS, AGUSTIN
18.95€ - DIAS DE HIELO Y FUEGO
ORDOÑEZ, ROCIO
18.00€
Spanish classics
- TRAGEDIA DE NUMANCIA
CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE
33.00€ - LIFE IS A DREAM / LA VIDA ES SUEÑO (ED. BILINGÜE INGLES-ESPAÑOL)
CALDERON DE LA BARCA, PEDRO
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On this day
Barcelona
- March 21 1848
En Barcelona como en otras partes comienza hoy la primavera, que en honor de la verdad no suele ser aqui la estacion mas hermosa del año. Cierto que ya los árboles comienzan á echar hoja, y que la linda y olorosa violeta alfombra los jardines y ribazos, y que le hacen cortejo otras flores; per...
Josep Pla, Palafrugell (1918-9)
- 21 de març de 1918 En aquest paĂs tenim un costum molt curiĂłs. Quan ens trobem, al carrer, dues persones, cara a cara, no tenim, a penes, res a dir-nos. Però, una vegada acomiadats i fets set o vuit passos, se’ns ocorren tot d’una una sèrie de coses urgents a dir a la persona que hem deixat fa un moment. [...]
- 21 de març de 1919 Inici de la primavera. Biblioteca. Tot traduint Renard penso que Ă©s mĂ©s important dominar un ofici qualsevol que posseir una curiositat dilatada, vastĂssima. La curiositat es pot improvisar; un ofici, no. La curiositat Ă©s superficialment agradable, però deixa una certa buidor amarga per dintre. Un ofici Ă©s monòton i pesat, però tĂ© moments d’una voluptuositat [...]
The peepul's choice
- Bloody Galicians
- Binding referendum on the future of Catalonia, hosted by Kalebeul
- How not to win la Guerra de los Toros, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley revisited
- Tour guide learns routes from Google Streetview
- Photos and video of snowstorm in Park GĂĽell
- Kalebeul’s 5% bookstore
- The Two Gardeners
- Why less democracy is better for Europe
- Administrative note
- Kalebeul, voice of the voiceless
- Follow la quiniela live with PHP data import to Excel
- Man combing Vietnamese pot-bellied pig in Cuenca courtyard
- The naming of El Picazo
- What’s your ex-pat blogging style?
- The coming and going of the gypsies
- The green of the louse/Lo verde del piojo
- Fiesta mayor programmes and Zapatero
- Barcelona and the great European fire sale
- Lipoplasty loaf
- Interactive electronics/dance performance
- Windows Vista: Error en el servicio Servicio de perfil de usuario al iniciar sesion. No se puede cargar el perfil de usuario
- New Abramovich yacht pictures
- Some more sun goddesses
- Traductor castellano-andaluz
- Dogs’ bollocks
- Follow la quiniela live with PHP data import to Excel
- How regional language policy in Spain is pissing off foreign investors
- Sagrada Familia mural
- Jaws is not a feminist shero
- Forum auction not to include mayor Clos

January 4th 2007 22:36
Cool survey. 64 million French speakers, though–what? Ah, right, native speakers, and I see they’re being very conservative about who is a native speaker. What matters in Wikipedia is effective command, though, not native-speakerness.
January 5th 2007 01:18
I just took the biggest number in Ethnologue without asking questions. One could waste a considerable amount of time doing this kind of thing properly.
January 5th 2007 01:27
(I suppose I should give write permissions to the Googlesheet to Mr All and Ms Sundry. One of the reasons this shared number crunching stuff puts a baby smile on my face is that I spent fruitless days in the late 90s trying to get even relatively simple server-based MS Access things running. God, that was bad software.)