Re: Ethnologue.

J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> Glancing over all these ethnologue entries, I notice that most people's
> languages have over 100,000 speakers.  Some have millions of speakers.  I
> know that Tokana and Tepa have (or had) fewer than 30,000 speakers apiece
> (in the case of Tepa probably far fewer).  Are there any other conlangs on
> the list with very small (fictional) speaker bases?
Phalera has many languages with small speaker-bases. The number for
Phalera itself is in the tens of millions, but that's a result of artificial inflation by
the regime in power for propaganda/nationalistic purposes.  The true number
of speakers is much lower, especially if you discount not highly intelligible
dialects and speakers for whom it is only a written language or interlanguage.
That would bring the number down to the single digits of millions.  Then, counting
the more divergent dialects as separate languages, these two number in the millions
because Proto-Phaleran was the prestige language of the entire system, and before
the Collapse, the educational systems and bureacracies, which sought to impose
linguistic homogeneity on the planet, were more up to snuff.  It is only when you look
at languages that developed on Phalera before the arrival of Tlaspi speakers that you
find truly small speaker-bases.  These usually number anywhere between a couple
hundred thousand down to hundreds of speakers.  Most have either mediocre growth
rates, are endangered, or nearly extinct.  The exception that proves the rule is C'ali,
which has almost as many speakers as all Phaleran dialects combined.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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