It’d be very interesting to do a proper survey with a representative sample and an open set of languages!

@rauschma yea you forgot Dutch 😏

@melroy @rauschma y español también ...

@rauschma other: Klingon

@hengstenberg Daj, qatlho’!

@hengstenberg @rauschma There are indeed native speakers of that, who are not Klingons!

@irina @hengstenberg @rauschma
How did you check if he is not a Klingon?

@sjaakkeuvelaar I don't know if that person is a Klingon! I do know that some human children have been brought up as native speakers of Klingon. Who this person may or may not be one of.
@hengstenberg @rauschma

@irina @sjaakkeuvelaar @hengstenberg @rauschma
To date, one reported case of a child being brought up to be a native speaker of Klingon. Failed, partly because insufficient pool of others to talk to, partly because the language is not yet developed enough to be used for daily tasks, and partly because the child (Alec Speers) simply refused to continue using the language once he reached about 5 years old.

By comparison there are a few thousand native speakers of Esperanto.

@rauschma I'm English with dual French nationality and speak French (despite a hideous accent). Spent a few years in Germany but never really picked up the language (in my defence, the languages where I worked were English and French). Also learned a spot of Other on the banks of Lago di Como, which was nice!

My daughter speaks all of them, and Dutch. Which is just showing off, really.

@rauschma somewhat surprised but maybe I shouldnt be?

@rauschma

potlhbogh wa' Hol neH tu'lu'!

@benroyce @rauschma

LOL

@rauschma Fluently

@rauschma We are otherians!

@rauschma why? Hundreds of millions speak Spanish, at least, and there are hundreds of other languages in Europe alone.

@mdione Apologies for the silly joke: I’m pretending that “Other” is a language.

@rauschma ah, I can barely see the emoticon, I can't see what it is or what it's doing :)

@mdione @rauschma please let us pretend french is still an international language. We are barely in the deny stage.

@rauschma I think you can add as many as you want?

@ellohir Nice! I can see that poll but I can’t create such a poll myself.

@rauschma @ellohir diverse languages and diverse polling capability!

seems like a collaboration between you two champions would be a very cool bit of business. looking forward to the next poll.

@ellohir @rauschma depends on your instance's settings

@rauschma
It can allow more options, but I believe that that has to be enabled by the instance admin.

@murdoc @rauschma

how you access mastodon may also makes a difference. I've used a different apps and the functionality changes radically.

@murdoc @rauschma people on Mastodon instances also cannot vote in 32-option polls. No idea where exactly the limit of their feeble software is.

@rauschma

I selected English only because it was the closest to my native tongue, which is Minnesotan. Not indigenous Minnesotan, but a variant of American English that is only spoken in Minnesota.

No one from Yorkshire would recognize my language as English; and while I would recognize Yorkshirese as English, I would not comprehend most of it.

@rauschma supposedly the most spoken by first language are 1. Mandarin Chinese 2. Spanish 3. English ... and you missed the first two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

Edit: omitted the first two and included nos. 21 and 22. "Other" would get a lot more votes if poll-takers were representative of the global population.

@ghouston True! (As a silly joke, I pretended that “Other” is a language.)

Everything about this poll is indeed very unscientific (the sample etc.): https://fosstodon.org/@rauschma/117430069059928752

@rauschma I know of a considerably sized spanish speaking community.

@rauschma Remarkable how many of us aren't from the Western world, huh?

@anatudor Sarcasm? I was trying to make a joke by pretending that “Other” is a language (hence the emoji). It clearly didn’t work well. I’ll edit the post to either clarify or remove the joke. 😬

It’s such a big planet, I’m constantly humbled by how little I know about it. I recently started to learn Chinese and at the same time got to know so much new history (dynasties, colonialism, Mao, etc.).

@rauschma fwiw i lol'd

@virtulis OK, good! Humor is so tricky, I especially in writing. There were also a few self-identified Otherians in the replies—which made me chuckle.

@rauschma oh I absolutely do identify as Other and love to finally be represented!

note: "Otherian" generally refers to people living in or coming from Other, however when referring to language and culture of Other people the correct term is indeed "Other".

(this is also an attempt at humor)

@virtulis Random Other-related thought: I love trains and follow the Rail Baltica project with great interest. I hope Europe does much more with trains in the future—they are such a great way to travel.

@rauschma
Other: Farsi.

@rauschma Swedish.

@rauschma I would also guess this poll hasn't crossed to the Japanese side of Fedi, over at mastodon.social there is ALWAYS at least one Japanese tag trending. And sometimes all of them are.

@merri Interesting! I faintly remember several Fediverse server apps coming from Japan, which would fit.