estimate(s) of numbers of CJ speakers?

[Ros’ Haruo]

The problem (or a major part of it, anyway), of which we Esperanto speakers
have been long, famously and often painfully aware, is that in the absence
of a census authority that has an active interest in minority language
communities, it is unlikely that really meaningful statistics can be
collected; the evidence will generally be at best anecdotal, and there will
be few if any safeguards to ensure that some sort of fluency threshold has
been met before a person is counted as a "speaker". Most governmental census
authorities have, if anything, a bias against registering small language
communities, and the few (e.g. some tribal) that are not biased that way may
have the opposite tendency, counting speakers where there are really only
dilettantes and dabblers, and people who wish they were speakers and feel
shame at not being such.

lilEnd

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 7:37 PM, Sally Thomason <thomason at umich.edu> wrote:

> Dear Chinook Listers,
>
> A student of mine is writing a paper on Chinook Jargon
> and wondering how many speakers of the language there
> are currently.  A 1990 census report he saw says 17
> (but that might've been just US speakers, and I assume
> there are more in Canada).  That number seems awfully
> low, given the vigorous revitalization efforts that have
> now been under way for some time.
>
> So...does anyone have an educated guess as to how many
> speakers there are now, in Canada + the US?
>
>   - Sally
>
> To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to
> the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
>

To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
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