I’m fascinated with the ssiw map and the contributions to the forum from all over the world. Was this expected when ssiw started? Are there any facts and figures about the distribution of learners in the uk and worldwide?
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They are fascinating, aren’t they? SSiW is very lucky to have had @Sionned working on compiling the maps as a volunteer over the years. She may be able to give a few statistics for you when she sees this.
I don’t have any really hard numbers, but I can at least give you an idea. At one time we calculated that about 7% of our learners had markers on the maps. I don’t know how many we have total now, but if that percentage holds up it would mean we have nearly 26,000 learners worldwide. There are three maps (because Google doesn’t like to have more than 1000 markers on any one map). They are: 'Wales only", “UK and Ireland”, and the “Rest of the World”. Remarkably each of those maps has a similar number of markers to the others, The numbers as of right now are:
- Wales only has 575 markers
- UK and Ireland has 574
- Rest of the World has a bit more at 664
Based on those numbers, and assuming the ratio of markers to learners is similar in each case, you could extrapolate that about a third of our learners are in Wales, another third in the rest of the UK plus Ireland, and the last third in the rest of the world.
Really huge generalization, but perhaps it can give you an idea.
Thanks, Dee, for flagging this up for me!
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As an almost irrelevant aside, Klingon claims to be the fast growing language in the universe. The claim seems to be based on the fact that they have / have had learners in 45 countries (Klingon membership map). I’m guessing that we do better than that.
So only about a third of the learners actually live in Wales, I like that. Thanks for looking at the figures Sionned.