I thought it would be interesting to get some (totally unscientific) statistics of the user base here. All polls are anonymous, so don’t worry about revealing any personal information.
You are encouraged to post more polls. After all, polls are fun
My age is…
10-19
20-29
30-39
40-49
50-59
60-69
70-79
80+
0voters
I identify as
male
female
other
0voters
I currently live…
in the country where I grew up
elsewhere
0voters
My native language/one of my native languages is English
yes
no
no, but I consider myself fluent
0voters
I live in a country where my target language is spoken
yes
no
no, but I plan to move there
no, but I travel there often
0voters
Apart from my native language(s), I’m studying/have studied in the past…
1 language
2-3 languages
4-6 languages
7+ languages
0voters
The reason I’m learning a language/languages is…
out of necessity
for fun
a little bit of both
0voters
Is reading the means or the goal for you?
I don’t normally read a lot. I read native content in order to learn the language better.
I’m learning the language (at least partly) in order to read native content. I’d read a lot regardless of language learning.
I started to learn a language, and discovered the joy of reading along the way.
Other
0voters
When I read, I prefer…
reading extensively: I try to get the gist with as few lookups as possible
reading intensively: I look up everything and try to understand each sentence to the fullest
striking a balance between speed and comprehension
reading either extensively or intensively depending on the book and my mood
“Other” for me. Reading was my hobby to begin with, and I learned Japanese because I had to, not for fun. I am reading in Japanese because it gives me the pretense that it helps maintain my level.
That being said, LNs are quite different from both YA fiction and pulp from other languages, so it did open the door to a whole new range of trash reading (positive meaning).
I think I would group challenge with fun, but yes, the polls I made are totally unscientific and probably fail to predict many possible answers. Sorry about that
Feel free to make all the polls you like (even variations on mine)! I promise I’ll answer them all.
Oh yes, and I didn’t think it likely there would be anyone in the 0-9 age bracket, but who knows?
Answers are anonymous though. It’s safe to answer, I promise
By the way 18 is a little high I think? I understand it’s for legal reasons, but I’d think that it would be fine for people in their teens to register and use the site, personally.
Maybe once we have more reliable 18+ tags, and a way to filter those books/videos out, the policy will be changed?
I agree though, even now, I think it’d be perfectly fine for teens to use Natively. Since the covers are monitored before being accepted, at worst you can come across an 18+ book/video with a non explicit cover, but then you’d still have to go outside of Natively to see/read it.
Anonymous for us, but obviously Discourse stores the info internally. I don’t know if admins get that info, but if they do, they could use that to kick you out. (I think you could easily argue you were joking though).
Yes, in most places I see a 13 years old limitation. I wonder if it’s related to the site having basically no control of 18+ covers/material?
Ohh I love this! A few of my hunches have so far proven correct, it’s a slightly older demographic (yay, similar age peers) and predominantly female. I observed the same for other book-related spaces.
Let me add two (the first one is for your primary target language):
When did you start learning?
0-6 months ago
6-12 months ago
1-3 years ago
3-6 years ago
> 6 years ago
0voters
What’s your highest level of education or equivalent? (counts if you’re doing it atm)
Do you mean any other language by that? Or our main target language? Because for me, these two answers would be wildly different (<3 years for Korean, but 9-10 years for Spanish).
I think that’s because most websites are operated by people in the US, and US law (COPPA) imposes much stricter controls on websites used by under 13s. So most sites prefer to forbid users under that age rather than jump through the hoops. Other jurisdictions might put the boundary in a different place, or not make a distinction at all.
I answered no to this, then thought about it, then decided people doing just duolingo don’t count.
I also know several people who are second language speakers of English but if they’re not studying anymore and just living it I don’t know if it counts either
Edit: oh but I do know people learning English now! Not close friends but I’ll change my answer
Oof talk about it. I have a very lovely friend, she’s been doing Duolingo for like… 6 months? And she just recently started realizing she might have to learn Kanji.
And then she started the Chinese course thinking it would help her with learning Kanji… I mean… I do see the way of thought - but…
