ELL: Fwd: Tribes, population

[Mike Cahill]

And of course, there is the Ethnologue itself, which gives population
figures of languages all over. Unfortunately, the Ethnologue posted
now on the Internet is the 13th edition, of 1996. The new 14th edition
of 2000 should be posted in about a month. But even the "old" one is
full of useful information. Find it on the internet at
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/.

Papua New Guinea and Brazil are countries which have lots of languages
in the hundreds.

Mike Cahill




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>Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:40:42 +0900
>To: aboriginal-studies-L at coombs.anu.edu.au,
>endangered-languages-l at carmen.mudoch.edu.au
>From: Tasaku Tsunoda <tsunoda at tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
>Subject: Tribes, population
>Cc:
>Bcc:
>X-Attachments:
>
>25 April 2001
>
>Dear Colleagues,
>    I would very much appreciate your information on the following
points.
>
>1. Population of the tribes in Aboriginal Australia
>On pp. 35 and 451 of their book $B%d(BThe Word of the first
Australians$B%f
(B (1968,
>First paperback impression), Robert and Catherine Berndt state that
the >average number of the population of the tribes was about 500.
>    I realize that the concept of tribe is not free from problems and
 has
>been criticized. Nonetheless, I would like to know a very rough
estimate >of the average size of the population of the tribes in
pre-contact days.
>    My question:
>    (1) Is there any more recent estimate ? If there is one, I would
like
>to cite it.
>
>2. Populations of aboriginal groups elsewhere in the world
>I have an impression that the (estimated) average size of 500 for
>Australian tribes is far smaller than that in other parts of the
world.
>    Example 1: On p.191 of the following paper:
>
>Matisoff, James A. 1991. Endangered languages of mainland Southeast
Asia. >In Robert H. Robins and Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck (eds.) Endangered
languages,
>189-228. Oxford and New York: Berg.
>
>Matisoff talks about Temiar, which has 11,593 speakers, and Semai,
which >has 18,327 speakers, and he refers to them as $B%d(Btiny
languages$B%f(B.
>    Example 3: One of our students works on an Aboriginal language of
>Taiwan (Bunun), which has about 30,000 speakers. He considers this
>language a minority language.
>    My questions:
>    (2) What is the (estimated) average of the population of a tribe
or a
>linguistic group in pre-contact days elsewhere in the world ?
>    (3) Would it be correct to say that the above-cited (estimate)
average
>for Aboriginal Australia is much smaller than that for other parts of
the >world ?
>
>    Again, I would very much appreciate your information.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Tasaku Tsunoda

--

Tasaku Tsunoda
Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
University of Tokyo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

Phone:  +81-3-5841-3790
Fax:     +81-3-5803-2784
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