Number of Speakers
The exact number of speakers of Somali is unknown. One source estimates that there are 7.78 million speakers of Somali in Somalia itself and 12.65 million speakers globally. Combined with a large international expatriate community, it is difficult to get a specific number of Somali speakers, but somewhere between 16 and 20 million worldwide seems a reasonable estimate. According to Gordon (2005), approximately 13 million people speak Somali, but upwards of 25 million individuals are commonly estimated to speak the language.
Read more about this topic: Somali Language
Famous quotes containing the words number of, number and/or speakers:
“Without claiming superiority of intellectual over visual understanding, one is nevertheless bound to admit that the cinema allows a number of æsthetic-intellectual means of perception to remain unexercised which cannot but lead to a weakening of judgment.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“What’s this, Aurora Leigh,
You write so of the poets and not laugh?
Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark,
Exaggerators of the sun and moon,
And soothsayers in a tea-cup? I write so
Of the only truth-tellers, now left to God,—
The only speakers of essential truth,
Opposed to relative, comparative,
And temporal truths;...
The only teachers who instruct mankind,
From just a shadow on a charnel-wall.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)