USA | NANUSA | South America | Europe | Asia | Africa | Oceania | ||
| English | .305 | .036 | .000 | .018 | .000 | .040 | .018 | .417 |
| Spanish | .112 | .054 | .139 | .004 | .000 | .000 | .004 | .314 |
| Portuguese | .000 | .000 | .054 | .004 | .000 | .004 | .000 | .063 |
| Japanese | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .045 | .000 | .000 | .045 |
| Tagalog | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .022 | .000 | .000 | .022 |
| Russian | .004 | .000 | .000 | .018 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .022 |
| Korean | .004 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .013 | .000 | .000 | .018 |
| French | .000 | .009 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .009 |
| Italian | .000 | .000 | .000 | .013 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .013 |
| Other | .004 | .000 | .000 | .036 | .031 | .004 | .000 | .076 |
| .430 | .099 | .193 | .094 | .112 | .049 | .022 | 1.000 |
The table uses 223 YouTube observations of mission calls, mostly from May, to create a frequency table of where missionaries serve and the languages they speak. It is a slightly different presentation of the data in my last post, “May Update on Mission Assignments by Language.” This data over represents calls to the United States but it does start to paint an interesting picture of the size and scope of the missionary program.
Reading by row gives the frequency that missionaries are called to preach the gospel in a given language by region. For example, 30.5% of missionaries were called to English missions in the United States, 3.6% in the remainder of North America, 1.8% in Europe, 4.0% in Africa, and 1.8% in Oceania. In total, 41.7% of missionaries will preach the gospel in English.
These numbers can be used to calculate the percentage of English speaking missionaries assigned to the United States or some other region by dividing the frequency that a missionary is assigned to a region by the frequency that a missionary is assigned to speak a given language. For example, (.305/.417=) .731 or 73.1% of missionaries assigned to preach the gospel in English are called to missions in the United States. The region to which the second highest percentage of English speaking missionaries are assigned is Africa at 9.7% which nudged out the remainder of North America at 8.6%.
Spanish provides an interesting example of an important language in the Church and its minority outreach program. Spanish is the second most common language assigned to missionaries; 31.4% of missionaries are assigned to preach in that language. Of the 31.4%, 44.3% serve in South America, not surprising, but 35.7% serve in the United States. That is more than the 17.1% of missionaries called to preach the gospel in the Spanish language in Latin America. A caution on the data is necessary at this point. Because the data comes from YouTube, and its users must have sufficient resources to have computers, cameras, and Internet access, it probably over represents calls from United States and other wealthy nations. Assume that the YouTube data only reports calls from the United States, it is still impressive that 11.2% of these missionaries are called to serve minority language communities in the United States. Missionaries are also called to serve in Spanish in Canada and Australia.
My next post updating the mission frequency table will contain considerably more data and give a better picture of what languages are spoken and where. I hope to show major languages by region for the United States, the remainder of North America, Europe and Asia.
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