Error in count

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Error in count

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Tue, 2022-09-06 02:13
Regarding: 
Population
State
Closed
ISO 639-3: 
apc

"Total users in all countries: 31,437,480 (as L1: 29,778,480; as L2: 359,000)."

But 29,778,480 + 359,000 = 30,137,480

I don't know which number is correct though.

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Comments

Chuck Fennig, Wed, 2022-09-07 11:04

Dear Antoine,

Thanks for bringing up this potential problem of the total users for [apc] not adding up.

I can explain it to you. For the country of Jordan, we have a 1,300,000 population, in the "All users" category. Since we have no L1 or L2 population for [apc] in Jordan, we don't know how the 1,300,000 splits out for L1 and L2 users, but it still gets added to the total population for [apc].

So, if you add 1,300,000 to the 30,137,480, you get 31,437,480 which is the total. I hope this makes sense.

Best wishes,

Chuck Fennig
Managing Editor, Ethnologue

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Thu, 2022-09-08 01:38

Thanks for the explanation, this means that for any language on Ethnologue, L1 + L2 may be inferior to "Total users in all countries" because there may always be uncategorized speakers?

Chuck Fennig, Thu, 2022-09-08 14:03

It would be good to find separate L1 and L2 population figures for [apc] in Jordan, but for languages in some countries, all we know is total speakers (= All Users). And, fortunately, this doesn't happen often (another outstanding case is Russian [rus]). In any case, we believe having some information (i.e. all users) is better than having none at all.

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