(OT) natural language speakers (was: Emacs learning curve)

[Drew Adams]

> > Interestingly (surprising to me, at least), there are more 
> > secondary speakers of French than of English (and Spanish
> > is #5 in secondary speakers).
> 
> Not surprising to me. French has long been considered a "language of
> culture". Even in Spanish-speaking countries, French as a second
> language was for a long time much more common than English (I should
> know, I was never taught English).

That part doesn't surprise me.  That intellectuals and rulers in Russia,
Romania, Rwanda, Rome, or Rochester learn French is neither surprising nor new.
A while ago most of (the ruling classes of) Europe spoke French on a fairly
regular basis.

What I'm guessing is that the current numbers have more to do with ex-colonies
than they have to do with "culture"-seeking upper classes and intelligentsia.
In particular, African colonies that have large populations.  Just an uninformed
guess, however.

Lemme see (...googles...).  This helps a bit, but not as much as I'd like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language.  It does say: 

"A majority of the world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According
to the 2007 report by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, an
estimated 115 million African people spread across 31 Francophone African
countries can speak French as either a first or a second language."

and

"Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to
expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid demographic growth."

> I heartily recommend the Language Log posts about the "million word".

Thank you.  Interesting.  This too was helpful in that regard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Language_Monitor
 
> Calvin said it succinctly: "verbing weirds things".

;-)

> (And, as everybody knows, if there's two things the anglo-saxon
> culture should be remembered for, surely they are Shakespeare and
> Calvin & Hobbes :-)

Some thing-counters would count that as 3 things.