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Are most people monolingual? | ||
Tags: Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5098 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 17 of 25 15 October 2013 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think in terms of location etc also plays a role in the idea of monolingualism vs
understanding neighbouring languages. For example, Chinese characters for some of them are the same in Traditional and Simplified so Chinese can pretty much be classified as being translingual. The character 人 for example means the same thing in Traditional and Simplified and all that changes is the sounds, so rén being Mandarin or yan4 in Cantonese. But 人 can also be used as Japanese Kanji for the same meaning - person. Sometimes, languages are somehow, I feel, intertwined with their nearer languages, which is why I technically think that even though we have native languages, we should remember that certain words came from other languages and cultures. So does that truly make the term "monolingual" a complete truth? Yes and no ... Yes - because some people (take the UK for example) just down-right refuse to learn another language No - because of the influences some languages have on others, after all it has been said that apparently 30% or so of English words come from French and 30% is a rather high number. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 18 of 25 16 October 2013 at 6:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What do you mean by "translingual"? That the writing system is the same across multiple languages? This is clearly true, as traditional characters are used both for Cantonese and Mandarin in Hong Kong. Then again, the same goes for Latin letters, which are used by many different languages.
True, just like "pardon" is the same in French and English. Just different pronunciations.
Right. But this is just writing systems. It has very little to do with the languages.
I think that number is somewhat higher, but it depends on how you count. But are you seriously suggesting this means that English speakers are not monolingual, because they know French, too? That's a pretty weird way of looking at it, and it makes the term "monolingual" pretty much useless, since all languages have large amounts of loan words. Swedish has loads of German loan words and Mandarin has tons of Japanese loan words and so on. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5098 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 19 of 25 16 October 2013 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In regards to your response Ari, I will admit what I wrote seems badly constructed with
what I was meaning to say. What I meant to say is that, given the circumstances of how languages like Japanese, Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese share common factors of writing, it can help towards people learning quicker once they've learnt one of the languages. They seem to do that especially in Chinese culture, my friend who's parents are from Taiwan, he can speak speak Mandarin and Cantonese fluently and also has some mutual understanding of Hakka. For example, once someone knows Traditional Chinese and has learnt Mandarin, it will be quicker for that person to learn Cantonese or Japanese because of the similarities in writing. Same with what I meant to say regarding British English and French, not because we're 'neighbours' so to speak, but because of the the amount of words we have from French in English (especially British English) - it makes it generally more mutually easier I think for someone from my country to learn the basics of French instead of being monolingual - as the latest report stated in a newspaper a year or so ago that 95% of the UK's population only speak English. An example I can give is that in the US they generally now use the term 'slaughterhouse' whereas in the UK we (or from what I hear mostly) use the term 'an abattoir' which comes from the French 'un abattoir' We even used coined terms in the UK from French such as "c'est la vie" or R.S.V.P. Edited by languagenerd09 on 16 October 2013 at 2:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 25 17 October 2013 at 10:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In Europe, I'd say the monolinguals have the majority. For these reasons:
1.You can live a fully monolingual and good quality life (unless you require much more than the norm in terms of culture variety and travelling) even in small countries. The Czech Republic is just one of many examples. The fact that people in some countries learn English well due to to media is just a benefit of the good approach in the countries, not a necessary thing to survive and get a job. Most people in Norway or Sweden are said to speak English really well. But do they need it for a job of a fisherman, shop assistant outside of tourist areas or a miner and so on? Are there few translated or original books? Are there no subtitles in their tv? I doubt it. 2.In the big ones, many people don't care about other languages and don't learn even English beyond what they are forced to learn at school and free to forget once they get out. Italy could be a typical example. A standard Italian tourist edoesn't speak even basics of English. Or the russians, those often expect to be treated in Russian wherever they go. 3.Even multilingual countries may not be a guarantee of people in general being multilingual. My experience with the Swiss confirms that. THe french and Italian speaking Swiss in Berlin all came to learn German as second language and didn't understand each other. And the English popularity is still quite a new thing probably only as old as the internet. (I have a similar experience with South Africans. Their English natives don't speak Afrikaans. And their Afrikaans natives often have English as second language. And I have yet to meet a europe-descended south african who is much interest in the original african languages of the area.) 4.Does awesome passive knowledge of a closely related language count as not being monolingual? Many Czechs and Slovaks understand perfectly each other but speak only their language in the Czech-Slovak conversation. Slovaks are often even allowed to write their university assignments in Slovak, which I find slightly ridiculous. They want to study and live here, they should learn Czech actively in my opinion, especially as I have already seen a few occassions when it was a trouble (a Slovak doctor or nurse having communication trouble with a worse hearing old patient or with quite any czech child). I guess it is similar for Skandinavia. 5.Some EU institutions have full mouth of plurilingualism yet nothing is done about it. Nothing. No change in the copyrights and similar things affecting the cultural flow, too much English support at the expense of other large languages (which basically cripples the intern mobility of EU citizens) and so on. 6.Despite what it looks like, even good knowledge of English isn't necessary and required of university educated people in many areas. They often need to pass an English course and exam yet their real skills aren't good. They can survive in English but they are nowhere near functional and they choose not to do the few easy steps to change it (basically just to use what they learnt so far). Sure, it is different if you got a degree in international business or politology etc. But as a doctor or engeneer without much of ambition, you don't need it. As a natural scientist, you need to read and write science articles yet you may not be able to ask what time is it. As a psychologist or non-language teacher you don't need to use other languages at all. Politicians get a huge budget for translators not only in the small countries. And even the passive or partial knowledge of all these people is just the top of the general population. My only direct experience with countries outside Europe are Egypt and Japan. In Egypt, it depends on whether you count MSA and dialect as separate languages. But a large part of the population knows a foreign language enough for tourist services because a lot of people are part of the tourist industry. Not only guides and hotel staff. It is very common for a guide to take a group to several shops or companies owned by cousins and uncles eager to sell as much as possible. And there is more than just English. I met people speaking some French or Russian, I guess German could be pretty popular too. The Egyptians, apart of some of their politicians obviously, fully realize how much is their economy dependant on the tourist popularity of the country. On the contrary in Japan, most people we met didn't speak English or spoke it really badly at the very edge of being understood a basic sentence. They didn't even seem to know there are any other european languages for understandable reasons. But do they often learn another foreign language such as Mandarin or Korean? I have no clue. It seemed to me that Japan is very proud of being self sufficient in its own culture (despite heavy influences from the USA), its technology and food production. And a friend of my dads, a japanologist, confirms that most japanese aren't even much interested in other cultures to the point of learning another language. They travel a a lot these days but they usually use a japanese speaking guide therefore there is no need to learn even English. We all know knowing more languages out of necessity is common in most african countries, in India, Indonesia nd so on. And those are all well populated areas, which changes the overall numbers. But how is the situation in smaller or less important monolingual countries? Do the average Vietnamese or Thai learn other languages? Does anyone have a direct experience? I would take it as more reliable since the official statistics usually take into account only what is forced in schools. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 25 17 October 2013 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
True. Apart from tourist offices, travel agencies, museums and the likes, I doubt that the employer will even ask for skills in English. I know places where the range is from nearly native English down to maybe a strong A2/a weak B1.
Some months ago, a few Italians got surprised when they found out that they couldn't speak Italian to us at work. Well, they could, but they wouldn't get a response.
Passive understanding - yes. Active skills - not. The Danes and Norwegians residing in my area probably adapt their pronunciation and choice of words a little (maybe they count themselves as functioning in Swedish as well), but tourists, students etc. don't. The Danes and Norwegians who visit the library never adapt. They don't have to. I'd never add Da/No unless I had active speaking and/or writing skills. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5098 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 22 of 25 20 October 2013 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
As in reference to a school in Thailand, I was the foreign teacher for English and students were also learning Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. They also had to learn basic words/phrases of Vietnamese, Khmer, Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog etc - all based on the forthcoming changes to ASEAN and the expectations students are told regarding ASEAN and tourism. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 23 of 25 20 October 2013 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think it's fair to say that most people on HTLAL are pretty well educated and highly literate. But in every
country there are many people who did not do well at school and don't pursue academic interests. Most people have ordinary jobs which require only the native language of the country. I sometimes wonder if we over-estimate the abundance of multi-lingualism because we our assumptions are based on our professional experiences, visits to other countries as a tourist or on business, communication with like-minded people online and so on.....and not necessarily from encounters with the average Joe on the street, away from the tourist and commercial setting. Take Germany for instance. It's a commonly-held belief (in the UK at least) that all Germans speak English to at least a reasonable level. That would certainly be the case if you mingled with university-educated people and those involved in international business and tourism......perhaps even with bright young people in general. But my experience of spending time in medium-sized towns is somewhat different. To talk to the plumber, the bus driver and the assistant in the Bäckerei - the only language that really works is German. Now, Germany is a country with a highly-respected education system and a strong international outlook. The counter argument is of course that in a large country with a successful economy, you can easily find work without knowing other languages. Even so, in the smaller so-called trading nations, there must still be an awful lot of people who can build a career in one language. I may be totally wrong to float the possibility that monolingualism may actually be the norm in a worldwide context, but it's certainly out there beyond the English-speaking states. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 24 of 25 20 October 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yet it almost every British-made documentary I've seen in which a film crew travels to Russia and interviews ordinary people (young ones included) they speak in Russian and an English translation is dubbed over the top. Edited by beano on 20 October 2013 at 12:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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