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I once met somebody from Namibia who claimed to speak nine languages to a reasonable extent without having specifically studied them: English, German, Afrikaans, Xhosa plus five local African languages I can't remember.
That's not too unusual in Southern Africa. The thing is, America is so insular, to us even bi-lingualism seems unusual, let alone multi-lingualism. But multi-lingualism is actually quite common world-wide.
The reason why some of these countries are bi-lingual, and often their second language is English is simply because it's recognized world wide as the language of business. Some of the other countries that the OP mentioned are bi-lingual in their native language as well as the language of those who colonized them. So if we go by those two criteria then the US is just fine. We know English (colony) and English (business).
Switzerland
Belgium (esp. Flanders)
Luxembourg
South Africa
Parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland
Parts of Spain (Catalunya, Basque country, Valencia)
Quebec
Singapore
Places where almost everyone* speaks a second or even third language (non-native):
Netherlands
Scandinavia
Ukraine. The majority of people speak both Russian and Ukrainian, often switching back and forth or mixing them depending on the situation. However, only Ukrainian is official.
Ukraine. The majority of people speak both Russian and Ukrainian, often switching back and forth or mixing them depending on the situation. However, only Ukrainian is official.
That is probably true, more or less, in all the former Soviet republilcs.
That is probably true, more or less, in all the former Soviet republilcs.
Depends on the republic. In Kazakhstan, it's like that. Probably also in Belarus. In the Baltic states or Georgia, knowledge of Russian has declined in the younger generation, and language correlates more closely with ethnicity.
My mother's cousin visited the states last year from Vietnam. Due to the communist influence, he is fluent in Russian having studied in Moscow during the college years back in the late 80s as well as French. His daughter is fluent in Czech. He mentioned about how many of the younger Vietnamese now are also fluent in Chinese and Korean these days. English is also growing in popularity. His Vietnamese neighbor sends their kids to American schools in Vietnam(HCMC).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli
Why just pick Hong Kong in China? The majority of Chinese are bilingual in the sense that they speak Mandarin and another local dialect/language. Mandarin is an acquired language when children go to school. 95% of Chinese don't speak Mandarin as their native language or use it with family members. It is the language for work, school or with people from elsewhere.
Cantonese is just one of the regional dialect in China.
Not quite true. 'Dialect' means different things in China. Some consider 'Cantonese' a 'dialect' even if it's a different language from Mandarin (more different than French and Spanish). 'Beijing' dialect is more equivalent to a Yorkshire or Southern dialect. 'Wu' or Shanghainese is basically another language, similar to the relationship between Scots and English. The majority of Chinese people speak ONLY Mandarin. Only in places like Guangdong, Fujian, Shanghai, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Xijiang, Tibet are most people bilingual.
I, too, was surprised by Hong Kong. Level of English proficiency was lower than I expected, much lower than Singapore. In Singapore bilingualism is universal, although some older people cannot speak English or not very well. In Malaysia, knowing 3 or 4 languages is very common.
Scandinavia and the larger cities in Northern Europe also bit the bill. English knowledge in the former British colonies in Africa is lower than I expected, too.
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