I wish to find out approximately how many English-speaking adults are
learning the languages listed below as a second language.

French
Spanish
Italian
German
Dutch
Russian

Additional geographical or demographical information would also be
useful, but not essential. I am interested in adults learning at
university, college, evening classes or independantly, but I am not
interested in learners below the age of 18 (i.e. school children). 

An answer asap would be appreciated.

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 02 Mar 2003 15:37 PST

I believe this question, as asked, is probably far to oborad to answer
accurately. You see, many countries have english speaking peoples,
even those whose native language itself is not english. In other
countries, Belgium, parts of Africa, Australia and Canada for example,
english is a dual language in certain regions as opposed to native
French, Afrikaans, Neo-Nyungar or whatever in others.

If you can specify certain countries you are interested in, you might
get better results.

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by cymraes-ga on 03 Mar 2003 00:52 PST

Thanks for the comments, Tutuzdad and Googleexpert. 

I realise that the question's a tricky one - that's why it's posted
here!! If i narrowed it down and said that i was interested in
language learners living in the UK, USA, Canada, NZ and Australia then
it would be fair enough to extrapolate from the locations that the
majority of language learners living in those countries will count
English as their mother tongue. I realise that there are probably
loads of people in Europe that also speak English that may be learning
another language, but as you so rightly point out, numbers would be
hard to quantify.

I was unable to find more information about the other european
langauges you listed, but here's what I found.

"Why Learn another language if the whole world speak english?"
http://www.uri.edu/iep/pdf/grandin/grandin_rifla_talk_2001.pdf

From the link below:
39/85 English Speaking Adults speak Spanish.
19/85 English Speaking Adults speak French.

http://www.ecsel.psu.edu/~rdevon/gepws/FLS%20April021.htm

Googleexpert, 

Thanks for the link - this feature is very interesting and will
certainly help. If anyone does locate any hard stats, then that'd be
great, but if not then this certainly gives me some ammunition and
some good arguments for the provision of language learning tools to
English speakers.