That minuscule chance

Three counties in north Texas, Dallas, Tarrant, and Denton, have about 10 million people within their county lines.  Considering the population of the United States, that's but a drop in the bucket, about 3%.  If I compare the number 10 million to the world's population, it is not even a drop in the bucket, but a microscopic fragment of dust, 1.5 of 1%, or .00015.

That's about the same number of Catalan speakers in the world. They're from a region of Spain known as Catalonia, in which the main city is Barcelona.  People know Spanish there, certainly, but they nearly all know Catalan.  The number of speakers of Catalan is approximately 10 million.  So my chances of meeting someone who speaks Catalan, a language spoken by 1 1/2 of 1 percent of the world's population, living in a country across the Atlantic Ocean in a small area of a small country in Europe. would be minuscule, almost non-existent.

A few days ago, I was in my little pocket of the world working.  I was introduced to a young lady. I asked her where she was from.  "Barcelona," she said.  "Do you speak Spanish?" I asked.  "Yes, and Catalan, too," she replied.

Imagine my surprise and my first thought.  It's my lucky day.  1 in about a 50 million chance.  I should play the lottery.  Her accent in English was an interesting mix of three languages.  She was in the U.S. with her husband who was here on a work visa.  Wow, Catalan - I should be so lucky.  The language will probably disappear over the next couple of centuries and be subsumed by the surrounding Spanish language.  But, lucky me. I got to hear a language spoken by some of the fewest speakers in the world.

Now if I were to judge my luck for the coming year on this experience... no, I probably shouldn't go that far.