Is English your first language?
0 voters
I read an article today that got me thinking and was just wondering, how many of the foreigners here are native English speakers?
Mods, if this is in the wrong area I apologize. Feel free to move it where ever it may belong but please leave it up, as I’m doing research for an article of my own.
You can probably combine this poll with the one “Where are you from?”, to see if there is any correlation.
It all depends on how you look at it. Looking at the government stats for 2004 (many thanks to Miranda for providing them!), the following details emerge:
Resident foreigners
Total
423,456
Of that total the vast majority (at least 372,000) are S.E. Asians mostly here as labourers, domestic helpers and ‘foreign spouses’. Included in that total are 90,000 from the Philippines, the majority of whom will have good English skills, if perhaps not native.
Westerners
Americans
10,514
Canadians
3,261
Brits
1,655
Aussies
952
Continental Europeans
2,388
Countries such as New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa apparently don’t merit a column of their own in the govt stats, so they get lumped in the ‘other’ column.
In addition there are the following populations which will contain some native English speakers (although the proportions are uncertain):
Malaysians
7,337
Indians
1,206
Singaporeans
1,122
A few words of caution in using the above figures - obviously there may be some within the ‘English-speaking country’ populations who don’t speak English as a first language (I’m thinking Quebecois). Also, these figures are for the resident population (i.e. those who have ARCs) so transient foreigners who leave the country every couple of months will not be included in the numbers. In addition, the number of Americans under the age of 15 (nearly 4,000) and unemployed (just over 1,000) is suspiciously large. I would guess that some of the children are Taiwanese born in the States to take advantage of a US passport, and so probably can’t be classed as native English speakers. The unemployed are either foreign spouses or Taiwanese who have acquired American citizenship, so a fair amount of uncertainty exists about the number of native speakers there too.
So if the question is related to the total number of foreigners, the proportion of native English speakers is quite low - around 3 to 6%.
If you wanted to know how many of the ‘western’ foreigners here are native English speakers, then judging by the fact that there are 2,388 continental Europeans listed, Anglophones probably make up 75-85% of the ‘western’ resident population.
Hope this goes some way to answering your question.
TFT
P.S. Yes, I do have way too much time on my hands.
[quote=“rob_the_canuck”]I read an article today that got me thinking and was just wondering, how many of the foreigners here are native English speakers?
Mods, if this is in the wrong area I apologize. Feel free to move it where ever it may belong but please leave it up, as I’m doing research for an article of my own.[/quote]
If you want this to be scientific at all, you shouldn’t be posting this on an English site.
[quote=“BAH”][quote=“rob_the_canuck”]I read an article today that got me thinking and was just wondering, how many of the foreigners here are native English speakers?
Mods, if this is in the wrong area I apologize. Feel free to move it where ever it may belong but please leave it up, as I’m doing research for an article of my own.[/quote]
If you want this to be scientific at all, you shouldn’t be posting this on an English site.[/quote]
Also, there’s no guarantee that the people who vote in this poll are representative of Forumosa members, or of the wider group of non-registered readers of Forumosa.
Taifeitang’s post was detailed and helpful. That’s probably more the kind of thing that rob_the_canuck should be looking at for meaningful research.
Those are interesting figures Taifeitang. All the Americans must be hiding in Taipei, because all I ever meet down here in the sticks are Canadians and South Africans.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them are Taiwanese that also hold American passports. Same goes for Canada, Australia and NZ. Unless the statistics are representative of “foreigners” only.
Citizen K - yep, I pointed that out in my earlier post. I agree that the number of ‘foreigners’ is probably inflated by Taiwanese holders of US/CN/Aus passports.
Dr Zoidberg - here’s my theory on why you’re right.
When I was living in Tainan the foreigners I met were almost exclusively either teachers or engineers. When I went to other (smaller) places to visit, like Pingdong, Taidong or Changhua, you could pretty much narrow that down to just teachers. Of course, there are the odd exceptions here and there, a few missionaries or someone with a Taiwanese spouse, but I think in general that my assumption holds true.
So, given that most of the foreigners where you are probably teach, the following figures are of interest:
Number of foreign nationals working as teachers (2004):
Canada
1,958
USA
1,772
UK
663
Australia
215
Percentage of total foreigners (all professions, all locations) resident in Taipei City
UK
47%
USA
46%
Australia
45%
Canada
34%
Again, no figures available for South Africans or Kiwis, unfortunately.
So although there are more Americans here in total, only 17% of them are teachers, whereas 60% of Canadians are. Non-teachers are much more likely to be in the big cities (particularly Taipei and Xinzhu), therefore that’s where the bulk of the Americans live. Bear in mind the caveats stated earlier - some of these people are probably Taiwanese Americans/Canucks/whatever and also that these figures only represent the legal foreign residents.
TFT