| has gloss | eng: Linguistic demography is the statistical study of languages among all populations. Estimating the number of speakers of a given language is not straightforward, and various estimates may diverge considerably. This is first of all due to the question of defining "language" vs. "dialect". Classification of macrolanguages like Arabic, Chinese or Hindi as a single language has cultural or political reasons rather than a basis in linguistics. The second difficulty is multilingualism, complicating the definition of "native language". Finally, in many countries, insufficient census data adds to the difficulties. |