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Bilingual Cities | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| LorenzoGuapo Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6447 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: French | Message 1 of 29 12 May 2010 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would like to know how people view bilingual cities, to name a few Brussels and Barcelona. If you don't know the two languages of a city which one do you decide to learn? Also if you have one of the languages as a native language do you decide to learn the other language when you visit such place or just use your native langage. Also for those of you who come from bilingual cities which language do you feel more comfortbale with and do you have a preference or not? Also if you come from one of these cities what do you expect from foreigners, for them to learn both languages or is 1 sufficient?
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6668 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 2 of 29 12 May 2010 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Brussels: French, Barcelona: Spanish. As a foreigner, people in both cities will accept that you don't speak Flemish resp. Catalan (which may not be so for a Walloon in Brussels or an Andalusian in Barcelona). And of course French and Spanish will be much more useful for you, unless you plan to stay there for the rest of your life (and even then, it would be crazy to try to live in Barcelona without learning Spanish).
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| hanni aka cordelia0507 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5607 days ago 69 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Dutch* | Message 3 of 29 13 May 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The people who live in such cities tend to speak both languages, but one is sufficient for people who are not from there. I've noticed that people in Brussels switch languages quite often while moving around town and at work. I don't know quite how they know when to switch language, I guess it's something they're just used to.
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| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5374 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 29 19 May 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Amsterdam is a bilingual city too,although unoffically of course.Nearly all Amsterdammers are bilingual in English and Dutch.I am impressed when an Amsterdammer
can switch from Dutch to English and back to Dutch with pretty little effort. If a non English-speaking person say for example someone from Eastern Europe or Latin America goes to live in Amsterdam,the chances are that particular person will not speak Dutch,but if he or she can speak reasonably good English.Then he or she will find easier to intergrate into Dutch society because most Dutch speak very good English. The situation with Brussels.Officially it's bilingual in Flemish and French,but in reality it's mostly a French-speaking city surrounded by Flemish-speaking Flanders. If a foreign resident say from Britain or Ireland moves to Brussels and can speak passably good French,but cannot speak Flemish. I would think that the British or Irish person would not have too many problems intergrating into Brussellian life.However if it was a French-speaking Belgian who could not speak Flemish.Then that would most likely be a very different story. EDIT: I've merged these posts. Please don't double post in future. Thanks. Edited by patuco on 20 May 2010 at 1:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 29 20 May 2010 at 1:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd propose Gibraltar but not only could it probably not be classed as a city, but the Spanish abilities of a great deal of the residents is declining very rapidly.
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| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5907 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 6 of 29 20 May 2010 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Any city in Sub Saharan Africa... literally any... most urban areas are such a mix of
languages you'd have to speak of poly-lingual cities... 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6143 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 7 of 29 20 May 2010 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Roughly, there are two types of bilingual cities:
a) those with a colonial/heritage language as an official language and the local languages which are spoken alongside. As ennime said, virtually the whole of sub- Saharan Africa falls into this category, also parts of India. In S-S Africa in particular there are so many languages spoken that you'll probably have to content yourself with the official language and just try to pick up the local language of the people you tend to deal with the most/get closest to. b) multi-lingual countries which have chosen one of a variety of closely related languages to be the standard. For example: Barcelona with Catalan and Spanish; Jakarta with, primarily, Indonesian and Javanese; Chiang Mai - Kum Mueang and Thai; any city in China where Mandarin isn't the language spoken at home; virtually everywhere in India will be Hindi and/or English + local state language; the situation in the Arab world probably falls into this category e.g. Cairo - MSA and Egyptian Arabic. In this case my advise would be to learn the "standard"/national language first, especially if you're clearly a foreigner (e.g. a white guy in South-East Asia). This is what people expect foreigners to learn and producing halting Javanese, say, is probably less effective than halting Indonesian. Once you are quite comfortable in the national language, then move on to the (normally more idiomatic and less-well resourced) "local" language (in inverted commas because non-national languages like Javanese, Cantonese and Malayalam have huge numbers of speakers). Edited by Fat-tony on 20 May 2010 at 7:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6247 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 8 of 29 20 May 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
a very sad truth, but basically no one speaks Dutch in Brussels, the Walloons especially being notorious for not knowing their other state language (the Flemish being much better on that department)
very very true, Amsterdam is very bilingual, if simply for the amount of tourists one has to deal with in the centre (Amsterdam is very small and tight, so tourist concentration is not at all spread out) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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